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Abstract

In the 1870s, the Illinois state legislature passed a series of increasingly restrictive laws regarding the promotion and sale of drugs that could induce abortion. The laws limited what could be advertised, what could be sold, and if drugs could be marketed to specifically female consumers. Designed to inhibit access to everything from traditional botanical remedies to pharmaceutical blends, the laws extended beyond the typical prescriptions and patent medicines to include all possible types of preparations. Despite the Comstock Act and Illinois’s requirements, pharmacies and mail‐order catalogs continued to distribute contraceptive and abortifacient products to the public across the state of Illinois.

I use Dodd’s Drugstore and the Hofferkamp family in Springfield, Illinois, as a case study to explore how drugstores and consumers may have complied with and subverted these restrictive laws in the late nineteenth century. The Hofferkamps frequented Dodd’s Drugstore, leaving an archaeological signature of chronic pain and archival records of disability. Artifacts uncovered at the Hofferkamp home site indicate that the family may have engaged in family planning with products obtained from Dodd’s Drugstore. By combining newspaper advertisements, archaeological artifacts, spatial analysis, and public records, I discuss how pharmacies dispensed these restricted remedies to patients and customers who sought the preparations despite obstructive regulations and societal perceptions.