Rebecca J. Keck

Mrs. Dr. Rebecca J. Keck (1838–1904), was a 19th-century woman physician and patent medicine entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest independent businesswomen in the Midwest.

The oldest daughter in a large Pennsylvania Dutch pioneer farming family, Rebecca Keck (née Ilgenfritz, sometimes spelled Ilginfritz) was born in Wooster, Wayne County Ohio in 1838. She moved with her parents to Fairfield, Iowa at the age of thirteen, where she may have completed schooling as far as the eighth grade. In 1857, she married John Conrad Keck, a merchant and mechanic newly arrived in Fairfield from Northampton County, Pennsylvania.

Three of Rebecca’s brothers died of tuberculosis between 1857 and 1869; while she was nursing them through their illnesses, she also gave birth to six children (five girls and a boy) and began to develop a reputation among her neighbors as an herbalist. During this time, her husband built up a substantial farm equipment and foundry business.

Following the national banking Panic of 1873, Mr. Keck’s foundry business collapsed and the couple began to collect herbs and brew her remedies together, which Rebecca Keck started to sell door to door. Seeking a wider market, in November, 1873, she took out her first advertisement for “Keck’s Catarrhochesis” in Dubuque. Success came very quickly; within three years she was advertising her “Catarrh Cure” heavily in a number of newspapers including the Dubuque Herald, the Davenport Gazette and the Chicago Times and Chicago Tribune.

Besides selling her remedies by mail order, she practiced as an “itinerant physician,” a common business model for the frontier, because sick people were scattered across long distances and lacked regular access to medical care. She would rent rooms in a local hotel or storefront for visits of two days to two weeks, and take out large advertisements in advance to advise her customers of her upcoming personal consultations. She traveled her entire circuit every two months, so that patients could see her for follow-up treatment. At its height, her practice served between 12,000 and 15,000 patients, and she would typically see 350 patients per week.

...
Wikipedia