Nestlé's Lactogen — Die-Cut Can Booklet with 1926-1927 Calendar
Vintage advertising booklet, die-cut in the shape of a Lactogen can, printed in one dark blue ink on tan stock, issued 1925. Approx. 3.60 x 5.00 in. closed, 7.20 x 5.00 in. open flat. Stapled.
The front cover is the can itself: “LACTOGEN,” A Basic Diet for Infants, A NESTLÉ Product, with the trademark of a bird feeding its young in a nest, and the line Prepared in U.S. America by Nestlé's Food Co. Inc., 130 William St., New York, N.Y., U.S.A. The back cover is a calendar for 1926 and 1927.
Inside are three spreads written for doctors. The first compares the Advantages of “Lactogen” Over Cow's Milk point by point, and sets out An Interesting Parallel quoting Dr. Kerley's Practice of Pediatrics, with an analysis table comparing Lactogen, dry and diluted, with average breast milk after Dunn's Pediatrics of 1917. It notes that the Complete “Lactogen” Book is mailed to physicians upon request. The second spread is a Differential Diagnosis Table of Nutritional Disturbances of Infancy, credited to “Infant Feeding,” 1922, by C. G. Grulee, A.M., M.D., LL.D. The third is an Obstetric Table for calculating a due date from the first day of the last menstruation, based on an average gestation of 280 days.
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Historical Context
This was not written for mothers. It was a desk piece for a doctor, with a calendar on the back so it stayed on the desk all year, and tables inside he might actually reach for. Every time he used them, the can was on the cover.
The obstetric table is still correct: the 280-day rule it uses is the one obstetricians use today. The diagnosis table is very much of its time, and it is what makes the booklet a real document of how American infant feeding was argued over in the 1920s.
Condition
Light edge wear and faint surface soiling; both staples present; the covers and all three inside spreads are complete and the text fully legible. Please view the images carefully.
About The Printing
This is a twentieth-century commercial printing, not a Victorian chromolithograph. It is printed in a single dark blue ink on tan stock, laid down as solid areas of color with crisp edges rather than blended tone.
Under magnification the ink sits in solid fields with no dot structure and no four-color rosette. The exact press method cannot be determined with certainty from a scan, so none is claimed here.
Provenance
This item comes from the personal collections of my family estate, accumulated over more than 200 years — including items that came west by wagon train to Colorado and later to Oklahoma. Now that my parents have passed we cannot keep all of these cherished items. They were well-educated antiques collectors/traders and continued to build their collections over more than 60 years. The vast majority of the pieces are from the Victorian Era, however there are plenty of older and newer items. Everything has been stored in a climate-controlled environment over time.
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