Fellows Profile: William H. Helfand

William H. Helfand

Falls Village, CT

The connection between pharmaceutical history and art may be nebulous to those who don’t much contemplate such things. But browse through the hundreds of medical and pharmaceutical prints and advertisements that NYAM Fellow William H. donated to the Rare Book Room and the link comes into sharp focus. Many of the donated items are “pharmaceutical trade cards,” a bit larger than baseball cards but scads more flamboyant.

The beautifully (and sometimes bizarrely) illustrated cards were used by manufacturers of non-prescription medicines from the 1880s to 1900 to promote their questionable cures, and were given free to customers at drugstores and other shops to lure them back. Today, they showcase a time when blatant quackery was widespread and when the absence of television or radio gave birth to quirky advertising alternatives.

“Materials such as trade cards are a reflection of their time,” said , an NYAM Fellow since 1988 and a retired executive with Merck & Company, the global pharmaceuticals firm. “You see what people did to sell their products.”

The trade cards were often adorned on the front with idyllic scenes like cherubs holding flowers; some bore disturbing illustrations like that of a portly man wielding a carving knife near a bandaged, shaken patient. The artwork had little or no connection to the products advertised on the cards’ flip sides, most of which failed to live up to the outlandish claims. Dalley’s Magical Pain Extractor could not “…cure a felon quicker than anything else known,” for example, despite criminals’ best hopes. “These people concocted remedies,” explained in a recent interview. “Some were out-and-out frauds.”

But for as long as the medicine manufacturers continued to produce the cards and distribute them, consumers continued to buy the products. “People were gullible,” he said.

, 78, is an award-winning historian, writer and collector. Over the years he has donated a large group of prints and advertising ephemera to the NYAM. He is an active Friend of the Academy Rare Book Room and has been passionate and outspoken about the value of the Library’s unique historical collections.

Part of ’s passion for the NYAM Library derives from the fact that he uses it heavily when researching history-related articles and books (he’s written five books, including the recent Pharmacy: An Illustrated History.). and his late wife, Audrey, endowed an annual medical humanities fellowship at the Academy to encourage more scholars and members of the general public to use the Rare Book Room, which he calls “a great library.” The fellowship provides $5,000 to a scholar working in the field. “We have Google and the Internet now, but there’s no substitute for holding a book in your hand,” said.

NYAM President Jeremiah A. Barondess, M.D., said ’s generosity and his knowledge of medical history have been invaluable. So important, in fact, that Dr. Barondess presented with the NYAM Plaque for Exceptional Service in May at the 157th Annual Meeting of the Fellows. “He has lent his mind, his wisdom, his counsel and his substance to this place,” Dr. Barondess said of .

’s collecting odyssey began back in the early 1950s when he was still in pharmacy school. “I wanted to be an art collector, but paintings were too expensive,” he recalled. So, his first purchase (for five English pounds) was a 1774 caricature found in a British book catalog showing a man holding a mortar and pestle. Portions of his collections reside at institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Library of Medicine (for which he is a consultant), and at the Library Company of Philadelphia, a non-profit research library of which is president of the board.

plans to continue giving pieces of his collection to the NYAM so that the public can view them. “I spent a lot of time and effort to put these objects together,” said, sitting in his apartment where the walls are adorned with prized pharmaceutical-related acquisitions. “I can’t take them with me.”

Member of Section(s):
History of Medicine and Public Health