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nent, which ijade fair to malce goods hard to get, 

 customers would be wise to make their purchases be- 

 fore the supply became exhausted. Boyd's prediction 

 was sound. The Boston Tea Party of the previous 

 December had evoked from Parliament a handful of 

 repressive measures, the Intolerable .'\cts, and at the 

 time of Boyd's advertisement, the first Continental 

 Congress in session was .soon to declare that all im- 

 ports from Great Britain should be halted. 



This Baltimore scare advertising may well have been 

 heeded by Boyd's customers, for trade with the mother 

 country had been interrupted before; in the wake of 

 the Townshend Acts in 1767, when Parliament had 

 placed import duties on \'arious products, including 

 tea, .Xmerican merchants in various cities had entered 

 into nonimportation agreements. Certainly, there 



PAPER 10: OLD ENGLISH PATENT MEDICINES IN 



Figure 7- — Bottles of British Oil, igth and early 

 20th century, from the Samuel Aker, David and 

 George Kass collection, .Albany, New York. {Smith- 

 sonian photo 44201 -fl.) 



was a decided decrease in the Boston advertising of 

 patent medicines received from London. With re- 

 spect to imports of any kind, it became necessary to 

 explain, and one merchant noted that his goods were 

 "the Remains of a Consignment receiv'd before the 

 Non-Importation Agreement took place." "' \Vhen 

 Parliament yielded to the financial pressure and abol- 

 ished all the taxes but the one on tea, nonimportation 

 collapsed. This fact is reflected in an advertisement 

 listing nearly a score of patent medicines, including 



"' Massachusetts Gazette, Boston, December 21, 1769. 

 AMERICA 169 



