Nineteenth Century Photography of Doctors
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The image below shows a man wearing a bowler hat holding an umbrella in his right hand and a square carrying case typically used to carry "medicines" in his left hand, and another person wearing a top hat holding a bottle in his right hand and a medical bag and binaural stethoscope in his left hand, circa 1890. This cabinet card by Van de Grif in Sidney, Australia is most likely an image of a drug salesman trying to sell a bottle of "medicine" to a doctor. While the science of medicine was advancing in the late 19th century with the use of diagnostic instruments like the stethoscope, the "patent medicine" business flourished. These nostrums were claimed to have miraculous curative powers. A series of exposes of these false claims by Samuel Hopkins Adams in Collier's Weekly lead to the Food & Drug Act of 1906 in an attempt to control the burgeoning drug industry in America.
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