Judge, 1903-06-27 · page 13 of 21
Judge — June 27, 1903 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **Schlitz beer advertisement** disguised as editorial content in Judge magazine. It depicts a doctor and patient in conversation, with the doctor endorsing Schlitz beer's purity and health benefits. The satire targets early-20th-century advertising trends: manufacturers leveraged scientific authority and germ-theory anxieties (post-Pasteur) to market products. By framing beer consumption as medically advisable—claiming hops provide tonics, alcohol aids digestion, and proper hydration prevents illness—Schlitz positioned their product as health-promoting rather than merely recreational. The ornate hop-vine borders reinforce the "natural" purity message. This reflects the era's broader tendency to invoke doctors' endorsements to lend credibility to commercial products, a practice now heavily regulated but common then. The page is fundamentally **advertising**, not satire—though modern readers might find the beer-as-medicine pitch itself darkly humorous.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A Doctor’s Reasons Patient: “Why do you say Schlitz beer? Isn't any other beer as good?” Doctor: “Perhaps; but I don’t know it. Ido know that Schlitz beer is pure.” Patient: “What do you mean by pure?” Doctor: “I mean free from germs. Impurity means bacilli; and in a saccharine product like beer bacilli multiply rapidly. I do not recommend a beer that may contain them.” Patient: “How do you know that Schlitz beer is pure?” Doctor: “I have seen it brewed. Cleanliness is carried to extremes in that brewery. The beer is cooled in plate glass rooms, in filtered air. The beer is then filtered. Yet, after all these precautions, every bottle is sterilized—by Pasteur’s process—after it is sealed. I know that beer treated in that way is pure.” Patient: “And is pure beer good for me?” Doctor: “It is good for anybody. The hops form a tonic; the barley a food. The trifle of alcohol is an aid to digestion. And the custom of drinking beer supplies the body with fluid to wash out the waste. People who don’t drink beer seldom drink enough fluid of any kind A great deal of ill-health is caused by the lack of it.” Patient: “But doesn’t beer cause bilioust :ss?” Doctor: “Not Schlitz Beer. Biliousness is caused by ‘green’ beer—beer that is insufficiently aged. But Schlitz beer is always aged for months before it is marketed.” Ask for the brewery bottling. THE BEER THAT MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS comicbooks.com