Iia\c been made lor Maryland, \e\v-Vork, Jamaica, 

 etc. where their virtues have been truely experienced 

 with the greatest satisfaction." *^ That such promo- 

 tional items are extremely rare does not mean they 

 were not abundant in the mid-1 8ih century, for this 

 type of printed mailer, then as now, was likely to be 

 looked at and thrown away. A certain amount of 

 nostrum literature was undoubtedly imported from 

 Britain. For example, in 17.53 apothecary James Car- 

 ter of VV'illiamsburg ordered from England "3 Quire 

 Stoughton's Directions" along with "}^ Groce Stough- 

 ton Vials." ■'" The.se broadsides or circulars served a 

 twofold purpose. Not only did they {)romote the 

 medicine, but they actually served as the Lilx-ls for the 

 bottles. Early packages of these patent medicines 

 which have been discovered indicate that paper labels 

 were seldom applied to the glass bottles; instead, the 

 Iwttle was tightly wrapped and sealed in one of these 

 broadsides. 



American imprints scekint; lo [iromote the English 

 patent medicines were certainly rare. The most sig- 

 nificant example may be found in the Library of the 

 New York Academy of Medicine. ^^ In 1731 James 

 Wallace, a New York merchant, became American 

 agent for the sale of Dr. Batenian's Pectoral Drops. 

 To help him with his new \enture, Wallace took a 

 copy of the London pronunlonal pamphlet to a New 

 York printer to be reproduced. The printer was 

 John Peter Zenger, not yet an editor and three years 

 awa%- from the events which were to link his name in- 

 extricably with the concept of the freedom of the 

 press. This 1731 pamphlet may well have been the 

 earliest work on any medical theme to be printed in 

 New York.'* 



Now and then a physician might frown on his fel- 

 lows for reading such literature and prescribing such 

 remedies, but he was in a minority. Colonial doctors, 

 by and large, had no qualms about employing the 

 packaged medicines. It was a doctor who first adver- 

 tised Anderson's Pills and Bateman's Drops in Wil- 

 liamsburg; *" it was another, migrating from England 



" "Dr. Bateman's Drops" (see footnote 7). 



'"James Carter, Apothecary account book, Williamsburg 

 [1752-1773]. Manuscript original preserved at Colonial Wil- 

 liamsburg, Virginia. 



" A short treatise of the virtues of Dr. Bateman's Pectoral Drops 

 (see footnote 6). 



*' Gertrude L. Annan, "Printing and medicine," Bulletin of 

 llir Medical Library Association, March 1940, vol. 28, p. 155. 



*" Wyndham B. Blanton, Medicine in Virginia in the eighteenth 

 century, Richmond, Virginia, 1931, pp. 33-34. 



to the \'irginia frontier, who founded a town and 

 dosed those who came to dwell therein with Bateman's 

 Drops, Turlington's Balsam, and other patent 

 medicines.^ 



Complex Formulas and Distinctive Packages 



Indeed, the status of medical knowledge, medical 

 need, and medical ethics in the 18lh century per- 

 mitted patent medicines to fit quite comfortably into 

 the environment. As to what actually caused dis- 

 eases, man knew little more than had the ancient 

 Greeks. There were many theories, however, and the 

 speculations of the learned often sound as quaint in 

 retrospect as do the cocky assertions of the quack bills. 

 Pamphlet warfare among physicians about their con- 

 flicting theories achieved an acrimony not surpas.sed 

 by the competing advertisers of Stoughton's Elixir. 

 The aristocratic practitioners of England, the London 

 College of Physicians, refused to expand their ranks 

 even at a time when there were in the city more than 

 1,300 serious cases of illness a day to every member of 

 the College. The masses had to look elsewhere, and 

 turned to apothecaries, surgeons, quacks, and self- 

 treatment.^' The lines were drawn cvvn less sharply 

 in colonial .America, and there was no group to re- 

 semble the London College in prestige and authority. 

 Medical laissez-faire prevailed. "Practitioners are 

 laureated gratis with a title feather of Doctor," wrote 

 a New Englander in 1690. "Potecaries, surgeons & 

 midwifes are dignified acc[ording] to succes.se." '^ 

 Such an atmosphere gave free rein to self-dosage, 

 either with an herbal mbcture found in the pages of a 

 home-remedy book or with Daffy's ElLxir. 



In the 18th century, drugs were still prescribed that 

 dated back to the dawn of medicine. There were 

 Theriac or Mithridatum, Hiera Picra (or Holy Bit- 

 ters), and Terra Sigillata. Newer botanicals from 

 the Orient and the New World, as well as the ''chymi- 

 cals" reputedly introduced by Paracelsus, found their 

 way into these ancient formulas. Since the ])recise 

 action of individual drugs in relation to gi\en ailments 

 was but hazily known, there was a tendency lo blanket 

 assorted possibilities by mixing numerous ingredients 

 into the same formula. The formularies of the Mid- 



™ Maurice Bear Gordon, Aesculapius comes to the colonies, \'ent- 

 nor, New Jersey, 1949, p. 39. 



'■' Fielding H. Garrison, An introduction lo the history of medicine, 

 Philadelphia, 1924, pp. 405-408; and Richard H. .Shryock. 

 The development of modern medicine. New York, 1947, pp. 51-54. 



" Kittredge, op. cit. (footnote 25). 



166 



BULLETIN 218: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM ( >1 HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



