From the Wood Library-Museum’s Ben Z. Swanson Collection, the obverse (left) of this advertising card for Hall’s Coca Wine features Dudley Hardy’s ca.1916 depiction of a lady apparently enjoying the wine as a so-called “Elixir of Life.” As to “What Is It?” (right), readers learn from the card’s reverse about the “wonderful feats of endurance” accomplished by native Bolivians and Peruvians after chewing “only a few Coca leaves.” A subsequent anecdote features a knighted professor from the University of Edinburgh who had climbed Ben Voirlich twice “by the aid of coca only.” Touting Hall’s Coca Wine as a nervine and restorative “after illness of any description,” the card highlights the thousand British physicians a day who were prescribing “Hall’s.” To avoid counterfeit coca wines, the public was advised to look for a trademarked red keystone…not displayed on either face of this card! (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)