A scrapbook-style collage of medical trade ephemera, showcasing colorful illustrations of medical advertisements

Mütter Museum · Logan Square / Rittenhouse

Marketing Medicine: The Art of Selling a Cure

Orain ikusgai2025(e)ko urriaren 11(a) – 2026(e)ko abenduaren 31(a)·25 $

Two centuries of medical trade ephemera show how jingles, patient testimonials and celebrity endorsements taught medicine to sell itself.

Erakusketaren webgunea Erosi sarrerak

On display, the Fall 2024 Goop catalogue sits beside a January 2022 issue of Dr. Oz's The Good Life magazine. Reviewing the show for the New York Sun, Mario Naves opened on W.C. Fields and Gwyneth Paltrow, linked by an archetype Fields made famous: the patent medicine salesman.

You start with medical texts from colonial America, move through the printed ephemera that boomed with new remedies in the 1800s and early 1900s, then the drug reps and direct-to-consumer ads of the 20th century, and finish at today's wellness industry. Naves called it "a jewelbox array of period literature, vintage advertising, arrant chicanery, and brown bottles filled with mysterious liquids." If you've ever bought a gummy vitamin because a podcast host swore by it, you're the final chapter.

Come to read ads and labels, not for the specimens the Mütter is known for. Entry is included with general admission ($25 adults), and the museum stays open until 8pm on Tuesdays through 27 October.

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Goop meets Dr. Oz
Look for the Fall 2024 Goop catalogue displayed next to a January 2022 Dr. Oz/The Good Life magazine, the wellness industry filed as trade ephemera.
The brown bottles
Look for the brown bottles the New York Sun noticed, still filled with mysterious liquids, among the vintage ads that once sold them.