In the very early 20th century, the “patent medicine” industry was still booming. Companies like Smith’s Bile Beans and Lash’s Bitters realized that people were more likely to keep a card if it was colorful and funny.
A common card from this era might show a man clutching his stomach while looking longingly at a woman. The text would read something like: “I’d be yours if my liver were better!” On the back, it would explain that the only way to win her heart was to first cure your “sluggish bile” with their specific brand of pills. These weren’t just cards; they were tiny, romanticized health interventions.
Not all medical Valentines were sweet. In the 1910s and 1920s, “Vinegar Valentines” were incredibly popular. These were anonymous, mean-spirited postcards sent to people you didn’t like. If someone was a hypochondriac or particularly clumsy, they might receive a card with a caricature of a bandaged fool. A common trope was a card sent to single women depicting them as a "sour-faced nurse" with a caption like: “You’re a pill that no one wants to swallow.” It was a brutal era for medical humor!
After WWI, the image of the nurse shifted from a “sour” figure to a romanticized hero. This is when the medical puns we know today began to take their modern shape. Cards from the 1920s and 1930s often featured a nurse in a crisp white cap literally stitching a broken heart back together with a needle and thread.
Unlike the digital, sleek cards of today, early 20th-century cards used chromolithography. This gave them a distinct “vibrant but slightly off-register” look. They often used “mechanical” elements—like a flap you could lift (a doctor’s bag that opens to reveal a heart) or a wheel you could turn to change the “diagnosis” of the sender’s love.
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