PBA Galleries

W.W.Hayden, M.D. Autograph Letter Signed as President of the  New York Pharmaceutical Company, Bedford Springs, Mass. Jan. 8, 1889. 1 pg., inside the Company’s 2-pg. printed brochure, with an etching of “the New Laboratory” in Bedford Springs.

To George Frost: “…I will try and call on you…” The Company was established in 1866 “for the exclusive manufacture of the Viburnum Compound of Dr.Hayden, a medical preparation which has never been equaled in the annals of medicine…” Hayden’s Viburnum Compound, popularly known as VHC, was a tincture of Black Haw, a shrub used for centuries for gynecological purposes, to relieve menstrual cramps and prevent miscarriage. It became especially popular during the Prohibition Era of the 1920s among liquor-deprived American women who savored a medicine composed largely of Alcohol.