An American drug company’s humourous calendar

A rare complete calendar issued by an American drug company to sell their wares in France, three featuring skulls-headed figures, the last a skeleton. The first (January-March) shows a figure at a Turkish bath, wearing a bathrobe, drinking a tonic 'Après Les Fêtes'. The second (April-June), depicts a figure in a checked suit playing a banjo, singing 'Une Vieille Chanson Nègre'. The third (July-September) has a pharmacist holding the cork of a bottle in his teeth as be mixes a prescription, 'Toujours Exact et Selon la Formule'. The last features an anatomy professor and his pupil examining a skeleton of a murder victim. All four caricatures were drawn by Louis Crusius (1862-98), a pharmacist who attracted attention by filling his shop with his own whimsical drawings. In 1890 he earned a medical degree from St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons; only four years later he became a professor there, specialising in anatomy, although he still continued with his art. He died on the operating table. The Antikamnia Chemical Company sold patented medicines and is regarded as an early proponent of junk mail because of their creative marketing across the world. They published calendars by Crusius every year for 1897 to 1901, this being the last. The use of his skull figures were prophetic: one of the main ingredients of its patent medicine, Antikamnia, was an analgesic, Acetanilide, which had toxic side-effects. When the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was passed the company stopped using Acetanilide.