half a century to two centuries old.' The 

 most ancient was Anderson's Scots Pills, a 

 product of the 1630's, and the most recent 

 was probably Dalby's Carminative, which 

 appeared upon the scene in the 1780's. Some 

 aspects of the origin and development of these 

 and similar English proprietaries have been 

 treated, but a more thorough search of the 

 sources and a more integrated and interpretive 

 recounting of the story would be a worthy 

 undertaking. Here merely an introduction 

 can be given to the cast of characters prior to 

 their entrances upon the American stage. 



The inventor of Anderson's Scots Pills was 

 fittingly enough a Scot named Patrick Ander- 

 son, who claimed to be physician to King 

 Charles I. In one of his books, published in 

 1635, Anderson extolled in Latin the merits of 

 the Grana Angelica, a pill the formula for 

 which he said he had learned in Venice. 

 Before he died, Anderson imparted the secret 

 to his daughter Katherine, and in 1686 she 

 in turn conveyed the secret to an Edinburgh 

 physician named Thomas \V^eir. The next 

 year Weir persuaded James II to grant him 

 letters patent for the pills. Whether he did 

 this to protect himself against competition 

 that already had begun, or whether the 

 patenting gave a cue to those always ready to 

 cut themselves in on a good thing, cannot be 

 said for sure. The last years of the 17th 

 century, at any rate, saw the commencement 

 of a spirited rivalry among various makers of 

 Anderson's Scots Pills that was long to con- 

 tinue. One of them was Mrs. Isabella Inglish, 

 an enterprising woman who sealed her pill 

 boxes in black wax bearing a lion rampant, 

 three mallets argent, and the bust of Dr. 

 Anderson. Another was a man named Gray 

 who sealed his boxes in red wax with his coat 

 of arms and a motto strangely chosen for a 

 medicine, "Remember vou must die."' 



a*©jBsawa»i3 



PREP.\RATION OF EIGHT 



5>iii']^si^ saisiDa;oii57:E^-> 



ADOPTED BT TDE 



PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE 



' Unless otherwise indicated, the early English history of 

 these patent medicines has been obtained from the following 

 sources: "Proprietaries of other days," Chemist and Druggist, 

 June 25, 1927, vol. 106, pp. 831-840; C. J. S. Thompson, 

 The mystery and art oj the apothecary, London, 1929; C. J. S. 

 Thompson, Qtiacks of old London, London, 1928; and .\. C. 

 VVootton, Chronicles oJ pharmacy, London, 1910, 2 vols. 



PHARMACY 



MAY 4th, 1824. 



SOLOMON W. CO.NR.^D, rRI.VTEH, 

 No. 32, Church Allfjr. 



Figure i. — The Philadelphi.\ College of Ph.\r- 

 MACY in 1824 set forth in this pamphlet formulas for 

 eight old English patent medicines. {Courtesy, Phila- 

 delphia College of Pharmacy and Science, Philadelphia, 

 Pennsylvania.) 



Competition already had begun when Godfrey's 

 Cordial appeared in the record in a London news- 

 paper advertisement during December 1721. John 

 Fisher of Hertfordshire, "Physician and Chymist," 

 claimed to have gotten the true formula from its 

 originator, the late Dr. Thomas Godfrey of the same 

 county. But there is an alternate explanation. 

 Perhaps the Cordial had its origin in the apothecar>- 

 shop established about 1660 by Ambroi.sc (Hancko- 



PAPER 10: OLD ENGLISH P.\TENT MEDICINES IN AMERICA 



157 



