Figure 4. — Patrick Anderson. M. D.. fioin a box of 

 Anderson's Scots Pills. From Wootton's Chronicles of 

 pharmacy, London, 1910. {Smithsonian photo 44286-C) 



to bring along, but no record to suljstantiate such an 

 incident has been encountered. It would seem that 

 the use of English packaged remedies in America 

 was most infrequent before 1700. Samuel Lee, 

 answering questions posed from England in 1690 

 about the status of medicine and pharmacy in Mas- 

 sachusetts, mentions no patent medicines.-^ Neither 

 does the 1698 account book of the Salem apothecary, 

 Bartholomew Brown. ^^ 



In the Boston Xeivs-Letter for October 4, 1708, 

 Nicholas Boone, at the Sign of the Bible, near the 

 corner of School-House-Lane, advertised for sale : 

 "D.\ffy"s Eli.xir Sahitis, very good, at four shillings 

 and sixpence per half pint Bottle."' This may well 

 be the first printed reference in America to an English 

 patent medicine, and it certainly is the first news- 

 paper advertisement for a nostrum. Preceding 

 the News-Letter in colonial .\merica, there had been 

 only one paper, the Puhlick Occurrences Both Foreign 



2' George L. Kittredge, "Letters to Samuel Lee and Samuel 

 Sewall relating to New England and the Indians," Colonial 

 Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, 1913, vol. 14, pp. 142-186. 



2» Bartholomew Brown, Apothecary day book, Salem [1698]; 

 manuscript original preserved in the Library of the Essex 

 Institute, Sairm, Massachusetts. 



and Domestic.- i his journal had lasted but a single 

 issue. Then its printer had returned to England, 

 where he took up the career of a patent medicine 

 promoter, vending "the only Antfelical Pills against 

 all Vapours, Hysterick and Melancholly Fits." The 

 Xeivs-Letter had begun with the issue of April 27, 

 1704, about 4 years before Boone's advertisement 

 for Daffy's remedy made its appearance, but during 

 that time, only one advertisement for anything at 

 all in the medical field had appeared, and that was 

 for a home-remedy book. The English physician, 

 by Nicholas Culpeper, Doctor of Physick.^ This 

 volume was also for sale at Boone's shop. 



Patent-medicine advertising in the Neivs-Letler prior 

 to 1750 was infrequent. Apothecary Zabdiel Boyls- 

 ton, who a decade later was to earn a role of esteem in 

 medical history by introducing the inoculation for 

 smallpo.x, announced in 1711 that he would sell "the 

 true Lockyers Pills." ^ This was an unpatented 

 remedy first concocted half a century earlier by a "li- 

 censed physitian" in London. The next year Boylston 

 repeated this appeal,'" and in the same advertisement 

 listed other wares of the same type. He had two vari- 

 eties, Golden and Plain, of the Spirit of Scur\y-Grass; 

 he had "The Bitter Stomach Drops," worm potions for 

 children; and a wonderful multipurpose nostrum, 

 "the Royal Honey Water, an Excellent Perfume, good 

 against Deafness, and to Make Hair grow. ..." 

 The antecedents of this regal liquid are unknown. 

 Boylston also annoimced for sale "The Best [Daffy's] 

 Elixir Salutis in Bottles, or by the Ounce." This is a 

 provocative listing. It may mean merely that the 

 apothecary would break a bottle to sell a dose of the 

 Elixir, which was often the custom. But it also may 

 suggest that Boylston was making the ElLxir himself, 

 or was having it prepared by a journeyinan. This 

 latter interpretation would place Boylston well at the 

 head of a long parade of American imitators of the old 

 English patent medicines. 



Other such shipments of the packaged English 

 remedies may have come to New England on the 

 latest ships from London during the next .several 

 decades, but they got scant play in the advertising 

 columns of the small 4-page Boston News-Letter. 

 Another reference to "Doctor .Anthony DafTey's Orig- 



-' Frank L. Molt, American journalism, N'cw 'S'oik. 1 141, 

 pp. 9-10. 

 28 Boston .Vews-Letler, Boston, February 9, 1708. 

 2» /*!</., March 12, 1711. 

 »» Ibid., March 24, 1712. 



PAPER 10: OLD ENGLISH P.^TENT MEDICINES IN .\MERICA 



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