Part 8

English Patent Medicines Go West

The double reprinting of the formulas was one token of the continuing role in American therapy of the old English patent medicines. There were others. In 1829 with the establishment of a school of pharmacy in New York City, the Philadelphia formulas were accepted as standard. The new labels devised by the Philadelphians with their more modest claims of efficacy had a good sale. It was doubtless the Philadelphia recipes which went into the Bateman and Turlington and Godfrey vials with which a new druggist should be equipped "at the outset of business," according to a book of practical counsel. To local merchants who lacked the knowledge or time to do it themselves, drummers and peddlers vended the medicines already bottled. "Doctor" William Euen of Philadelphia issued a pamphlet in 1840 to introduce his son to "Physicians and Country Merchants." His primary concern was dispensing nostrums bearing his own label, but his son was also prepared to take orders for the old English patent medicines. Manufacturers and wholesalers of much better repute were prepared to sell bottles for the same brands, empty or filled.

England, op. cit. (footnote 89), pp. 73, 103.

Carpenter, op. cit. (footnote 73).

William Euen, A short exposé on quackery ... or, introduction of his son to physicians and country merchants, Philadelphia, 1840.

In the early 1850's a young pharmacist in upstate New York, using "old alcohol barrels for tanks," worked hard at concocting Bateman's and Godfrey's and Steer's remedies. John Uri Lloyd of Cincinnati recalled having compounded Godfrey's Cordial and Bateman's Drops, usually making ten gallons in a single batch. Out in Wisconsin, another druggist was buying Godfrey's Cordial bottles at a dollar for half a gross, sticking printed directions on them that cost twelve cents for the same quantity, and selling the medicine at four ounces for a quarter. He also sold British Oil and Opodeldoc, the same old English names dispensed by a druggist in another Wisconsin town, who in addition kept Bateman's Oil in stock at thirteen cents the bottle. Godfrey's was listed in the 1860 inventory of an Illinois general store at six cents a bottle.

James Winchell Forbes, "The memoirs of an American pharmacist," Midland Druggist and Pharmaceutical Review, 1911, vol. 45, pp. 388-395.

John Uri Lloyd, "Eclectic fads," Eclectic Medical Journal, October 1921, vol. 81, p. 2.

Cody & Johnson Drug Co., Apothecary daybooks, Watertown, Wisconsin [1851-1872]. Manuscript originals preserved in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, cataloged under "Cady."

Swarthout and Silsbee, Druggists daybook, Columbus, Wisconsin [1852-1853]. Manuscript original preserved in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

McClaughry and Tyler, Invoice book, Fountain Green, Illinois [1860-1877]. Manuscript original preserved in the Illinois State Historical Society, Springfield.

Farther west the same familiar names appeared. Indeed, the old English patent medicines had long since moved westward with fur trader and settler. As early as 1783, a trader in western Canada, shot by a rival, called for Turlington's Balsam to stop the bleeding. Alas, in this case, the remedy failed to work. In 1800 that inveterate Methodist traveler, Bishop Francis Asbury, resorted to Stoughton's Elixir when afflicted with an intestinal complaint. In 1808, some two months after the first newspaper began publishing west of the Mississippi River, a local store advised readers in the vicinity of St. Louis that "a large supply of patent medicines" had just been received, among them Godfrey's Cordial, British Oil, Turlington's Balsam, and Steer's "Ofodeldo ."

Harold A. Innis, Peter Pond, fur trader and adventurer, Toronto, 1930.

Peter Oliver, "Notes on science, medicine and public health in the United States in the year 1800," Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 1944, vol. 16, p. 129.

Isaac Lionberger, "Advertisements in the Missouri Gazette, 1808-1811," Missouri Historical Society Collections, 1928-1931, vol. 6, p. 21.

Turlington's product played a particular role in the Indian trade, thus demonstrating that the red man has not been limited in nostrum history to providing medical secrets for the white man to exploit. Proof of this has been demonstrated by archaeologists working under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution in both North and South Dakota. Two pear-shaped bottles with Turlington's name and patent claims embossed in the glass were excavated by a Smithsonian Institution River Basin Surveys expedition in 1952, on the site of an old trading post known as Fort Atkinson or Fort Bethold II, situated some 16 miles southeast of the present Elbowoods, North Dakota. In 1954 the North Dakota Historical Society found a third bottle nearby. These posts, operated from the mid-1850's to the mid-1880's, served the Hidatsa and Mandan Indians who dwelt in a town named Like-a-Fishhook Village. The medicine bottles were made of cast glass, light green in color, probably of American manufacture. More interesting is the bottle from South Dakota. It was excavated in 1923 near Mobridge at a site which was the principal village of the Arikara Indians from about 1800 to 1833, a town visited by Lewis and Clark as they ascended the Missouri River in 1804. This bottle, made of English lead glass and therefore an imported article, was unearthed from a grave in the Indian burying ground. Throughout history the claims made in behalf of patent medicines have been extreme. This Turlington bottle, however, affords one of the few cases on record wherein such a medicine has been felt to possess a postmortem utility.

Wedel and Griffenhagen, op. cit. (footnote 54).

Fur traders were still using old English patent medicines at mid-century. Four dozen bottles of Turlington's Balsam were included in an "Inventory of Stock the property of Pierre Chouteau, Jr. and Co. U, M[issouri]. On hand at Fort Benton 4th May 1851...." In the very same year, out in the new State of California, one of the early San Francisco papers listed Stoughton's Bitters as among the merchandise for sale at a general store.

A. McDonnell, Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana, 1941, vol. 10, pp. 202, 217.

California Daily Courier, San Francisco, April 25, 1851.

Newspaper advertising of the English proprietaries--even the mere listing so common during the late colonial years--became very rare after the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy pamphlet was issued. Apothecary George J. Fischer of Frederick, Maryland, might mention seven of the old familiar names in 1837, and another druggist in the same city might present a shorter list in 1844, but such advertising was largely gratuitous. Since the English patent medicines had become every druggist's property, people who felt the need of such dosage would expect every druggist to have them in stock. There was no more need to advertise them than there was to advertise laudanum or leeches or castor oil. Even the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in 1837 took judicial cognizance of the fact that the old English patent medicine names had acquired a generic meaning descriptive of a general class of medicines, names which everyone was free to use and no one could monopolize.

Political Examiner, Frederick, Maryland, April 19, 1837.

Frederick Examiner, Frederick, Maryland, January 31, 1844.

Massachusetts Supreme Court, Thomson vs. Winchester, 19 Pick (Mass.), p. 214, March 1837.

As the years went by, and as advertising did not keep the names of the old English medicines before the eyes of customers, it is a safe assumption that their use declined. Losing their original proprietary status, they were playing a different role. New American proprietaries had stolen the appeal and usurped the function which Bateman's Drops and Turlington's Balsam had possessed in 18th-century London and Boston and Williamsburg. As part of the cultural nationalism that had accompanied the Revolution, American brands of nostrums had come upon the scene, promoted with all the vigor and cleverness once bestowed in English but not in colonial American advertising upon Dalby's Carminative and others of its kind. While these English names retreated from American advertising during the 19th century, vast blocks of space in the ever-larger newspapers were devoted to extolling the merits of Dyott's Patent Itch Ointment, Swaim's Panacea, and Brandreth's Pills. More and more Americans were learning how to read, as free public education spread. Persuaded by the frightening symptoms and the glorious promises, citizens with a bent toward self-dosage flocked to buy the American brands. Druggists and general stores stocked them and made fine profits. While bottles of British Oil sold two for a quarter in 1885 Wisconsin, one bottle of Jayne's Expectorant retailed for a dollar. It is no wonder that, although the old English names continue to appear in the mid-19th-century and later druggists' catalogs and price currents, they are muscled aside by the multitude of brash American nostrums. Many of the late 19th century listings continued to follow the procedure set early in the century of specifying two grades of the various patent medicines, i.e., "English" and "American," "genuine" and "imitation," "U.S." and "stamped." American manufactories specializing in pharmaceutical glassware continued to offer the various English patent medicine bottles until the close of the century.

James Harvey Young, "Patent medicines: the early post-frontier phase," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Autumn 1953, vol. 46, pp. 254-264.

Cody and Johnson Drug Co., op. cit. (footnote 97).

Van Schaack, Stevenson & Reid, Annual prices current, Chicago, 1875; Morrison, Plummer & Co., Price current of drugs, chemicals, oils, glassware, patent medicines, druggists sundries ..., Chicago, 1880.