Relief First Offered in 1873.=--Away back in '73 these thoughts came to
Lydia E. Pinkham. She saw the most intense suffering about her on every
hand, and yet no one seemed able to give relief. Her thorough education
enabled her to understand that nearly all the suffering of womankind was
due to diseases and affections peculiar to her sex.

The whole question resolved itself into just this: If a remedy could be
made that would relieve all inflammations and congestions of the
ovaries, Fallopian tubes, uterus, and other female organs, the days of
suffering for women would be largely over.

=First Made on a Kitchen Stove.=--Could this be done? Mrs. Pinkham
believed with all her heart that it was possible. So on a kitchen stove
she began the great work which has made her name a household word
wherever civilization exists. Without money, but with a hopeful heart,
she made up little batches of this remedy to give to neighbors and
friends whom she felt could be relieved by it.

The story soon spread from house to house, from village to village, from
city to city. Now it looked as if a business might be established upon a
permanent basis, a basis resting upon the wonderful curative properties
of the medicine itself.

="We Can Trust Her."=--By judicious advertising the merits of this
remarkable remedy were set forth; and before she was hardly aware of it,
she found herself at the head of one of the largest enterprises ever
established in this country.

That face so full of character and sympathy, soon after it was first
published, years ago, began to attract marked attention wherever it was
seen. Women said, "Here is one to whom we can tell our misery, one who
will listen to our story of pain, one whom we can fully trust." And so
the letters began to arrive from every quarter. Now hundreds of these
letters are received every day. More than a hundred thousand were
written in a single year. Everyone is opened by a woman, read by a
woman, sacredly regarded as written strictly in confidence by one woman
to another. Men do not see these letters.

=Men Never See Your Letters.=--Do you want a strange man to hear all about
your particular disease? Would you feel like sitting down by the side of
a stranger and telling him all those sacred things which should be known
only by women? It isn't natural for a woman to do this; it isn't like
her, isn't in keeping with her finer sense of refinement.

=No Boys Around.=--And then, how would