The Unrecorded Thermometer
The Thermometer — water at the top with health and happiness, rum at the bottom with 'murder, madness, despair' and the gallows — is the most celebrated image in the history of American public health, printed in magazines and almanacs from 1789 onward. This is the one form in which nobody knew it existed: a large illustrated broadside, printed by Samuel Wood and published by Francis Pell in New York in 1811, made to be hung on a wall.
It was unrecorded until this copy surfaced. The only other broadside format known, undated and without imprint, is at the American Antiquarian Society. Who Francis Pell was — a wealthy New Yorker with a taste for public benefaction, or a pseudonym covering a pirated edition — remains an open question.
A Moral & Physical Thermometer
A large illustrated broadside of the Thermometer, drawn from Rush's Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors and printed for public display in the year an anonymous pirated edition of the pamphlet also appeared in New York. Previously unrecorded; the only other broadside format known is an undated, imprintless sheet at the American Antiquarian Society. Francis Pell, the publisher, is otherwise a cipher — possibly a pseudonym, possibly the New York man of that name entangled in a $15,000 lawsuit. Water at the top, 'murder, madness, despair' and the gallows at the bottom, for the wall of a tavern or a schoolroom.