UPDATE (7/20): This event will take place INDOORS in the library's first-floor Meeting Room. If you're uncomfortable attending, you can watch live on the town's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo07nLNoxiVUZjn_P-P9HYw.

Local historian Irene Axelrod performs as Lydia Pinkham, a Massachusetts inventor and marketer of an herbal-alcoholic "women's tonic" for menstrual and menopausal problems. Pinkham was a successful patent-medicine proprietor who claimed that her Vegetable Compound could cure any “female complaint” from nervous prostration to a prolapsed uterus. Once of the most famous women in America, Pinkham was the first woman to have her picture advertising her own product. Her products were sold worldwide and can still be found in stores where healthcare products are sold. Axelrod, who hails from Pinkham's hometown of Lynn, is a retired librarian from the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, and now works at the House of the Seven Gables. After the play, audience members will be able to view some of the original advertising items that Pinkham successfully used.

This living history performance will take place on the library's back lawn. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own blankets or chairs. In case of inclement weather, the performance will be rescheduled for August. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library.