biography
| name: |
Pinkham, Lydia (Estes)
|
pronunciation:
[pingkham]
| sex:
| female
|
| lived:
| (1819–83)
|
| biography:
| Manufacturer, born in Lynn, Massachusetts, USA. A young schoolteacher in Lynn, she became a member of the Female Anti-Slavery Society and a lifelong friend of Frederick Douglass. She took up various causes, including temperence and phrenology, until she married Isaac Pinkham in 1843. In 1875 Isaac went bankrupt speculating on real estate, and Lydia began selling a herbal remedy she had concocted called ‘Mrs Lydia E Pinkham's Vegetable Compound’. She did not live long enough to see it achieve its phenomenal success, but for some 50 years it was one of the most popular patent medicines in America. It was promoted especially for ‘women's weakness’, but the American Medical Association dismissed all its claims as fraudulent. |
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