Description
A bold Baldwin’s Patent Herbal Medicines broadside combining enormous black lettering with an illustrated winged cherub holding a ribbon marked “The Medicine of Nature”. Beneath, the advertisement promotes a supposed life-invigorating remedy for nervousness, debility, consumption, insomnia and low spirits. The contrast between the playful figure and the emphatic list of ailments gives the design a distinctive character among plain typographic chemist posters.
George Baldwin established his London herbalist business in 1844. The Wellcome Collection holds this design and dates it provisionally to about 1900, placing it within the era of widely promoted patent remedies and ambitious health claims.
