American Medical Association.  Nostrums an d Quackery: Articles on the Nostrum Evil and Quackery, Reprinted, With Additions and Modifications, From the Journal of the American Medical Association.  2nd ed.  Chicago: American Medical Association, 1912.

        Extremely useful three volume set of brief articles about a huge variety of patent medicine products.  The AMA took great interest in running the most egregious patent medicine advertisers out of business during the period in which the medical profession was modernizing and establishing professional standards.  Most of these articles were published in JAMA and were geared toward debunking the claims or exposing the dangers of a specific product.  The collection includes many illustrations.  There is no source which makes patent medicine ads from the Progressive Era more readily available for convenient study. 

Apple, Riva D.  "They Need it Now: Science, Advertising, and Vitamins, 1925-1940."  Journal of Popular Culture 22 (Winter 1988): 65-84.

Berridge, Virginia, and Kelly Loughlin, eds.  Medicine, the Market, and Mass Media: Producing Health in the Twentieth Century.  New York: Routledge, 2004.

Bingham, A. Walter.  Snake Oil Syndrome: Patent Medicine Advertising.  Hanover, Mass.: Christopher, 1994.

Branyan, Helen B.  "Medical Charlatanism: The Goat Gland Wizard of Milford, Kansas."  Journal of Popular Culture 25 (Summer 1991): 31-37.

Cassedy, James H.  "Muckraking and Medicine: Samuel Hopkins Adams."  American Quarterly 16:1 (Spring 1964): 85-99.

Cramp, Arthur, M.D.,  Nostrums and Quackery and Pseudo-Medicine.  Chicago: American Medical Association, 1936.

Endres, Kathleen L.  "Strictly Confidential': Birth-Control Advertising in 19th Century City." Journalism Quarterly 63 (1986):748-51.

Engelman, Elysa R.  "The Face that Haunts Me Ever: Consumers, Retailers, Critics, and the Branded Personality of Lydia E. Pinkham."  PhD dissertation, Boston University, 2003.

Hecktlinger, Adelaide.  The Great Patent Medicine Era, or Without Benefit of a Doctor.  (checking citation)

Holbrook, Stewart H.  The Golden Age of Quackery.  New York: Macmillan, 1959.

Juhnke, Eric S.  Quacks and Crusaders: The Fabulous Careers of John Brinkley, Norman Baker, and Harry Hoxsey.  Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002.

        Brief but useful study of Edward W. Bok, influential editor of the Ladies' Home Journal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The LHJ was one of the first important magazines to stop running patent medicine ads.  Bok worked with Will Irwin and Samuel Hopkins Adams to publish a series of important muckraking articles on the "patent medicine curse."  This series uncovered many of the secret recipes formulas and listed ingredients, which often included alcohol or various narcotics.  In his position as the editor of this influential women's magazine, Bok was able to promote reform effectively.  LHJ was a prime outlet for advertising geared toward women. The study illuminates some of Bok's other crusades, as well as highlighting the limits of his activism.  Bok, for example, did not support women's suffrage.  See also Chapter 30 of Bok's autobiography, The Americanization of Edward Bok.

Stillings, Dennis, and Nancy Roth.  "When Electroquackery Thrived." IEEE Spectrum 15 (November 1978): 56-61.

Thomas, Samuel J.  “Nostrum Advertising and the Image of Woman as Invalid in Late Victorian America.”  Journal of American Culture 5:3 (Fall 1982): 104-112.

Tomes, Nancy.  "Merchants of Health: Medicine and Consumer Culture in the United States, 1900-1940."  Journal of American History 88:2 (September 2001): 519-547.

Wilson, Bee.  Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, From Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Witherspoon, Elizabeth. M.  "Courage of Convictions: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the New York Times, and Reform of the Pure Food and Drug Act, 1933-1937."  Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 75:4 (Winter 1998): 776-788.