Dr. Jeanne Walter's Famous Rubber Garments

New York: Dr. Jeanne Walter, n.d. [ca. 1915-20].

24mo (5 3/4 x 3 7/16 inches; 143 x 88 mm), 23, [1] pages, in printed stapled wrappers (soft cover).

An early 20th-century version of fat shaming: Dr. Jeanne Walter promises to reduce your "superfluous flesh" if you buy her medicated rubber garments. "Any physician will tell you that by inducing profuse perspiration you can reduce flesh, relieve any kind of rheumatism, skin diseases and many other ailments because it stimulates circulation and eliminates waste products through the pores" (page 3).

This pamphlet features a woman modeling such products as chin, bust, and abdominal reducers as well as jackets, suits, belts, and pants. All in glorious black-and-white halftone illustrations. Most products are aimed at women, although a page is devoted to a mustachioed guy wearing an abdominal belt that works by "stimulating circulation in the organs of digestion, and, by drawing out the uric acid from the system, relieving any rheumatic condition that may exist" (page 20).

The pamphlet doesn't carry a date. But 1915 would have been the earliest date of issue, based on an advertisement in The New York Times of October 3, 1915, in which the company announced a new address of 353 Fifth Avenue, the same address printed on the pamphlet.

OCLC shows one institutional holding of a 1909 edition that carries a different title, pagination, and size, at the American Textile History Museum Library. However, there are no holdings of this edition. RARE.

CONDITION: Some nicks and creasing to wrappers, stains to lower wrapper, rusting to staples, tiny ink mark at bottom corner throughout. A Very Good copy.