Opodeldoc Bottle
Figure 13.—Opodeldoc Bottlefrom the collection of Mrs. Leo F. Redden, Kenmore, New York. (Smithsonian photo 44201-E.)
In a thesaurus published in 1899, Godfrey's, Bateman's, Turlington's, and other of the old English patent remedies were termed "extinct patents."113The adjective referred to the status of the patent, not the condition of the medicines. If less prominent than in the olden days, the medicines were still alive. The first edition of theNational Formulary, published in 1888, had cited the old English names as synonyms for official preparations in four cases, Dalby's, Bateman's, Godfrey's and Turlington's.
Opodeldoc Bottle
Figure 14.—Opodeldoc Bottleas illustrated in the 1879 Catalog of Hagerty Bros., New York City, New York.
Thus as the present century opened, the old English patent medicines were still being sold. City druggists were dispensing them over their counters, and the peddler's wagon carried them to remote rural regions.114But the medical scene was changing rapidly. Improvements in medical science, stemming in part from the establishment of the germ theory of disease, were providing a better yardstick against which to measure the therapeutic efficiency of proprietary remedies. Medical ethics were likewise advancing, and the occasional critic among the ranks of physicians was being joined by scores of his fellow practitioners in lambasting the brazen effrontery of the hundreds of American cure-alls which advertised from newspaper and roadside sign. Journalists joined doctors in condemning nostrums. Samuel Hopkins Adams in particular, writing "The Great American Fraud" series forCollier's Weekly, frightened and aroused the American public with his exposure of cheap whiskey posing as consumption cures and soothing syrups filled with opium. Then came a revolution in public policy. After a long and frustrating legislative prelude, Congress in June of 1906 passed, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed, the first Pure Food and Drugs Act. The law contained clauses aimed at curtailing the worst features of the patent medicine evil.
The Patent Medicines In The 20th Century
Although the old English patent medicines had not been the target at which disturbed physicians and "muck-raking" journalists had taken aim, these ancient remedies were governed by provisions of the new law. In November 1906 the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture, in charge of administering the new federal statute, received a letter from a wholesale druggist in Evansville, Indiana. One of his stocks in trade, the druggist wrote, was a remedy called Godfrey's Cordial. He realized that the Pure Food and Drugs Act had something to do with the labeling of medicines containing opium, as Godfrey's did, and he wanted to know from the Bureau just what was required of him.115Many manufacturing druggists and producers of medicine were equally anxious to learn how the law would affect them. The editors of a trade paper, theAmerican Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record, issued warnings and gave advice. It was still the custom, they noted, to wrap bottles of ancient patent medicines, like Godfrey's Cordial and Turlington's Balsam, in facsimiles of the original circulars, on which were printed extravagant claims and fabulous certificates of cures that dated back some two hundred years. The new law was not going to permit the continuation of such 18th-century practices. Statements on the label "false or misleading in any particular" were banned.116
A few manufacturers, as the years went by, fell afoul of this and other provisions of the law. In 1918 a Reading, Pennsylvania, firm entered a plea of guilty and received a fifty dollar fine for putting on the market an adulterated and misbranded version of Dr. Bateman's Pectoral Drops.117The law required that all medicines sold under a name recognized in theUnited States pharmacopoeiaor theNational formulary, and Bateman's was included in the latter, must not differ from the standard of strength, quality, or purity as established by these volumes. Yet the Bateman Drops produced in Reading, the government charged, fell short. They contained only 27.8 percent of the alcohol and less than a tenth of the morphine that they should have had. While short on active ingredients, the Drops were long on claims. The wrapper boasted that the medicine was "effective as a remedy for all fluxes, spitting of blood, agues, measles, colds, coughs, and to put off the most violent fever; as a treatment, remedy, and cure for stone and gravel in the kidneys, bladder, and urethra, shortness of breath, straightness of the breast; and to rekindle the most natural heat in the bodies by which they restore the languishing to perfect health." Okell and Dicey had scarcely promised more. By 20th-century standards, the government asserted, these claims were false and fraudulent.
Other manufacturers sold Bateman's Drops without running afoul of the law. In 1925, ninety-nine years after the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy pamphlet was printed, one North Carolina firm was persuaded that it still was relevant to tell potential customers, in a handbill, that its Drops were being made in strict conformity with the College formula.118For Compound Tincture of Opium and Gambir Compound, however, most manufacturers chose to follow theNational formularyspecifications, which remained official until 1936.
Another old English patent medicine against which the Department of Agriculture was forced to take action was Hooper's Female Pills. Between 1919 and 1923, government agents seized a great many shipments of this ancient remedy in versions put out by three Philadelphia concerns.119Some of the packages bore red seals, others green seals, and still others black, but the labeling of all claimed them to be "a safe and sovereign remedy in female complaints." This theme was expanded in considerable detail and there was an 18th-century ring to the promise that the pills would work a sure cure "in all hypochondriac, hysterick or vapourish disorders." No pill made essentially of aloes and ferrous sulphate, said the government experts, could do these things. Nor did the manufacturers, in court, seek to say otherwise. Whether the seals were green or red, whether the packages were seized in Washington or Worcester, the result was the same. No party appeared in court to claim the pills, and they were condemned and destroyed.
In one of the last actions under the 1906 law, a case concluded in 1940, after the first federal statute had been superseded by a more rigorous one enacted in 1938, two of the old English patent medicines encountered trouble.120They were British Oil and Dalby's Carminative, as prepared by the South Carolina branch of a large pharmaceutical manufacturing concern.
According to the label, the British Oil was made in conformity with the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy formula given in an outdated edition of theUnited States dispensatory. But instead of containing a proper amount of linseed oil, if indeed it contained any, the medicine was made with cottonseed oil, an ingredient not mentioned in the Dispensatory. Therefore, the government charged, the Oil was adulterated, under that provision of the law requiring a medicine to maintain the strength and purity of any standard it professed to follow. More than that, the labeling contravened the law since it represented the remedy as an effective treatment for various swellings, inflammations, fresh wounds, earaches, shortnesses of breath, and ulcers.
Dalby's Carminative was merely misbranded, but that was bad enough. Its label suggested that it be used especially "For Infants Afflicted With Wind, Watery Gripes, Fluxes and Other Disorders of the Stomach and Bowels," although it would aid adults as well. The impression that this remedy was capable of curing such afflictions, the government charged, was false and fraudulent. Moreover, since the Carminative contained opium, it was not a safe medicine when given according to the dosage directions in a circular accompanying the bottle. For these and several other violations of the law, the defending company, which did not contest the case, was fined a hundred dollars.
Throughout the 19th century, occasional criticism of the old English patent medicines had been made in the lay press. One novel121describes a physician who comments on the use of Dalby's Carminative for babies: "Don't, for pity's sake, vitiate and torment your poor little angel's stomach, so new to the atrocities of this world, with drugs. These mixers of baby medicines ought to be fed nothing but their own nostrums. That would put a stop to their inventions of the adversary."
Opium had been lauded in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the old English proprietaries began, as a superior cordial which could moderate most illnesses and even cure some. "Medicine would be a one-armed man if it did not possess this remedy." So had stated the noted English physician, Thomas Sydenham.122But the 20th century had grown to fear this powerful narcotic, especially in remedies for children. This point of view, illustrated in the governmental action concerning Dalby's Carminative, was also reflected in medical comment about Godfrey's Cordial. During 1912, a Missouri physician described the death of a baby who had been given this medicine for a week.123The symptoms were those of opium poisoning. Deploring the naming of this "dangerous mixture" a "cordial," since the average person thought of a cordial as beneficial, the doctor hoped that the formula might be omitted from the next edition of theNational formulary. This did not happen, for the recipe hung on until 1926. The Harrison Narcotic Act, enacted in 1914 as a Federal measure to restrict the distribution of narcotics,124failed to restrict the sale of many opium-bearing compounds like Godfrey's Cordial. In 1931, a Tennessee resident complained to the medical journalHygeiathat this medication was "sold in general stores and drug stores here without prescription and is given to babies." To this, the journal replied that the situation was "little short of criminal."125The charge leveled against his competitors by one of the first producers of Godfrey's Cordial two centuries earlier (see page 158) may well have proved a prophecy broad enough to cover the whole history of this potent nostrum. "... Many Men, Women, and especially Infants," he said, "may fall as Victims, whose Slain may exceed Herod's Cruelty...."
Turlington's Balsam of Life bottles
Figure 15.—Turlington's Balsam of Lifebottles as pictured in a brochure dated 1755-1757, preserved in the Pennsylvania Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pa. According to Turlington, the bottle was adopted in 1754 "to prevent the villainy of some persons who, buying up my empty bottles, have basely and wickedly put therein a vile spurious counterfeit sort."
For those who persist in using the formulas of the early English patent medicines, recipes are still available. Turlington's Balsam remains as an unofficial synonym of U.S.P. Compound Tincture of Benzoin. Concerning its efficacy, theUnited States dispensatory126states: "The tincture is occasionally employed internally as a stimulating expectorant in chronic bronchitis. More frequently it is used as an inhalent ... It has also been recommended in chronic dysentery ... but is of doubtful utility."
A formula for Godfrey's Cordial, under the title of Mixture of Opium and Sassafras, is still carried in thePharmaceutical recipe book.127Remington's practice of pharmacy128retains a formula for Dalby's Carminative under the formerNational formularytitle of Carminative Mixture.
In the nation of their origin, the continuing interest in the ancient proprietaries seems somewhat more lively than in America. The 1953 edition ofPharmaceutical formulas, published by the London journalThe Chemist and Druggist, includes formulas for eight of the ten old patent medicines described in this study. This compendium, indeed, lists not one, but three different recipes for British Oil, and the formulas by which Dalby's Carminative may be compounded run on to a total of eight. Two lineal descendents of 18th-century firms which took the lead in exporting to America still manufacture remedies made so long ago by their predecessors. May, Roberts & Co., Ltd., of London, successors to the Newbery interests, continues to market Hooper's Female Pills, whereas W. Sutton & Co. (Druggists' Sundries), London, Ltd., of Enfield, in Middlesex, successors to Dicey & Co. at Bow Churchyard, currently sells Bateman's Pectoral Drops.129
In America, however, the impact of the old English patent medicines has been largely absorbed and forgotten. During the past twenty years a revolution in medical therapy has taken place. Most of the drugs in use today were unknown a quarter of a century ago. Some of the newer drugs can really perform certain of the healing miracles claimed by their pretentious proprietors for the old English patent medicines.
A more recent import from Britain, penicillin, may prove to have an even longer life on these shores than did Turlington's Balsam or Bateman's Drops. Still, two hundred years is a long time. Despite the fact that these early English patent medicines are nearly forgotten by the public today, their American career is none the less worth tracing. It reflects aspects not only of medical and pharmaceutical history, but of colonial dependence, cultural nationalism, industrial development, and popular psychology. It reveals how desperate man has been when faced with the terrors of disease, how he has purchased the packaged promises offered by the sincere but deluded as well as by the charlatan. It shows how science and law have combined to offer man some safeguards against deception in his pursuit of health.
The time seems ripe to write the epitaph of the old English patent medicines in America. That they are now a chapter of history is a token of medical progress for mankind.
Four sides of a Turlington's Balsam of Life Bottle
Figure 16.—Turlington's Balsam of Life Bottle(all four sides) found in an Indian grave at Mobridge, South Dakota; now preserved in the U.S. National Museum. (Cat. No. 32462, Archeol.; Smithsonian photo 42936-A.)
Footnotes
1Unless 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 of the apothecary, London, 1929; C. J. S. Thompson,Quacks of old London, London, 1928; and A. C. Wootton,Chronicles of pharmacy, London, 1910, 2 vols.
2"How the patent medicine industry came into its own,"American Druggist, October 1933, vol. 88, pp. 84-87, 232, 234, 236, 238.
3Benjamin Okell, "Pectoral drops for rheumatism, gravel, etc.," British patent 483, March 31, 1726.
4British Patent Office,Patents for inventions: abridgements of specifications relating to medicine, surgery, and dentistry, 1620-1866, London, 1872.
5London Mercury, London, August 19-26, 1721.
6A short treatise of the virtues of Dr. Bateman's Pectoral Drops, New York, 1731. A 36-page pamphlet preserved in the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine. This is an American reprint of an English original, date unknown.
7A broadside, issued in London,ca.1750, advertising "Dr. Bateman's Drops," is preserved in the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, New York. Later reprints of this same broadside are preserved in the private collection of Samuel Aker, Albany, New York, and in the Smithsonian Institution.
8Michael and Thomas Betton, "Oil for the cure of rheumatic and scorbutic affections," British patent 587, August 14, 1742.
9Edmund Darby & Co.,Directions for taking inwardly and using outwardly the company's true genuine and original British Oil; prepared by Edmund Darby & Co. at Coalbrook-Dale, Shropshire, ca. 1745. An 8-page pamphlet preserved in the Library of the College of Physicians, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
10London Gazette, London, March 1, 1745.
11John Hooper, "Pills," British patent 592, July 21, 1743.
12E. Burke Inlow,The patent grant, Baltimore, 1950, p. 33.
13Daily Advertiser, London, September 23, 1743.
14Robert Turlington, "A Specifick balsam, called the balsam of life," British patent 596, January 18, 1744.
15Robert Turlington,Turlington's Balsam of Life, ca. 1747. A 46-page pamphlet preserved in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D. C.
16Daily Advertiser, London, February 18, 1780.
17Broadsides,ca.1810-1822, advertising "Steer's Chemical Opodeldoc, for bruises, sprains, rheumatism, etc., etc.," are preserved in the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts; the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine; and the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, New York.
18Daily Advertiser, London, January 4, 1781.
19Ibid., September 7, 1743.
20London Mercury, London, August 19-26, 1721.
21Richard Stoughton, "Restorative cordial and medicine," British patent 390, 1712.
22From a broadside,ca.1750, advertising "Dr. Stoughton's Elixir Magnum Stomachum," preserved in the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.
23British Patent Office,op. cit.(see footnote 4).
24Poplicola, "Pharmacopoeia empirica or the list of nostrums and empirics,"The Gentleman's Magazine, 1748, vol. 18, pp. 346-350.
25George 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.
26Bartholomew Brown, Apothecary day book, Salem [1698]; manuscript original preserved in the Library of the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts.
27Frank L. Mott,American journalism, New York, 1941, pp. 9-10.
28Boston News-Letter, Boston, February 9, 1708.
29Ibid., March 12, 1711.
30Ibid., March 24, 1712.
31Ibid., November 14, 1720.
32Ibid., March 12, 1730.
33Ibid., January 4, 1739.
34Ibid., November 14, 1748.
35Ibid., June 7, 1750.
36Ibid., May 24, 1750.
37Ibid., December 31, 1761.
38Lester J. Cappon and Stella F. Duff,Virginia Gazette index, 1736-1780, Williamsburg, 1950, 2 vols.
39Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, May 27, 1737.
40Pennsylvania Gazette, Philadelphia, December 1, 1768.
41Boston News-Letter, Boston, November 24, 1763.
42James J. Walsh,History of the Medical Society of the State of New York, New York, 1907.
43Robert Turlington, "Turlington's Balsam of Life," 1755-1757. A later reprint of this same circular is preserved in the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana.
44Turlington's Balsam of Life(see footnote 15).
45"Dr. Bateman's Drops" (see footnote 7).
46James Carter, Apothecary account book, Williamsburg [1752-1773]. Manuscript original preserved at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.
47A short treatise of the virtues of Dr. Bateman's Pectoral Drops(see footnote 6).
48Gertrude L. Annan, "Printing and medicine,"Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, March 1940, vol. 28, p. 155.
49Wyndham B. Blanton,Medicine in Virginia in the eighteenth century, Richmond, Virginia, 1931, pp. 33-34.
50Maurice Bear Gordon,Aesculapius comes to the colonies, Ventnor, New Jersey, 1949, p. 39.
51Fielding H. Garrison,An introduction to the history of medicine, Philadelphia, 1924, pp. 405-408; and Richard H. Shryock.The development of modern medicine, New York, 1947, pp. 51-54.
52Kittredge,op. cit.(footnote 25).
53"From past times an original bottle of Turlington's Balsam,"Chemist and Druggist, September 23, 1905, vol. 67, p. 525; Stewart Schackne, "Bottles,"American Druggist, October 1933, vol. 88, pp. 78-81, 186-188, 190, 194; Frederick Fairchild Sherman, "Some early bottles,"Antiques, vol. 3, pp. 122-123; and Stephen Van Rensselaer,Early American bottles and flasks, Peterborough, New Hampshire, 1926.
54Waldo R. Wedel and George B. Griffenhagen, "An English balsam among the Dakota aborigines,"American Journal of Pharmacy, December 1954, vol. 126, pp. 409-415.
55Sherman,op. cit.(footnote 53).
56Schackne,op. cit.(footnote 53).
57George S. and Helen McKearin,American glass, New York, 1941.
58Daily Advertiser, London, October 29, 1743.
59George Griffenhagen, "Stodgy as a Stoughton bottle,"Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, Practical Pharmacy Edition, January 1956, vol. 17, p. 20; Mitford B. Mathews, ed.,A dictionary of Americanisms on historical principles, Chicago, 1951, 2 vols.; Bertha Kitchell Whyte,Wisconsin heritage, Boston, 1954; Charles Earle Funk,Heavens to Betsy! and other curious sayings, New York, 1955.
60James H. Thompson,Bitters bottles, Watkins Glen, New York, 1947, p. 60.
61Massachusetts Gazette, Boston, December 21, 1769.
62Ibid., April 25, 1771.
63Ibid., September 7, 1775.
64Virginia Gazette(edited by Dixon and Nicholson), Williamsburg, June 12, 1779.
65Jonathon Waldo, Apothecary account book, Salem, Massachusetts [1770-1790]. Manuscript original preserved in the Library of the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass.
66Carter,op. cit.(footnote 46).
67Waldo,op. cit.(footnote 65).
68Pennsylvania Gazette, Philadelphia, July 11, 1776.
69Maryland Journal and Baltimore Gazette, Baltimore, October 29, 1782.
70New York Packet and the American Advertiser, New York, October 11, 1784.
71Waldo,op. cit.(footnote 65).
72Robert Rantoul, Apothecary daybooks, 3 vols., Beverly, Massachusetts [1796-1812]. Manuscript originals preserved in the Beverly Historical Society. Also see Robert W. Lovett, "Squire Rantoul and his drug store,"Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, June 1951, vol. 25, pp. 99-114.
73Joel and Jotham Post,A catalogue of drugs, medicines & chemicals, sold wholesale & retail, by Joel and Jotham Post, druggists, corner of Wall and William-Streets, New York, 1804; Massachusetts College of Pharmacy,Catalogue of the materia medica and of the pharmaceutical preparations, with the uniform prices of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, Boston, 1828; George W. Carpenter,Essays on some of the most important articles of the materia medica ... to which is added a catalogue of medicines, surgical instruments, etc., Philadelphia, 1834.
74John Dunlap,Catalogus medicinarum et pharmacorum, Philadelphia, 1771; John Day,Catalogue of drugs, chymical and galenical preparations, shop furniture, patent medicines, and surgical instruments sold by John Day and Company, druggists and chymists in second-street, Philadelphia, 1771; George Griffenhagen, "The Day-Dunlap 1771 pharmaceutical catalog,"American Journal of Pharmacy, September 1955, vol. 127, pp. 296-302; alsoThe New York Physician and American Medicine, May 1956, vol. 46, pp. 42-44; Smith and Bartlett,Catalogue of drugs and medicines, instruments and utensils, dyestuffs, groceries, and painters' colours, imported, prepared, and sold, by Smith and Bartlett, at their druggists store and apothecaries shop, Boston, 1795.
75London Mercury, London, August 19-26, 1721.
76Bernard Bailyn,The New England merchants in the seventeenth century, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955, pp. 35-36.
77Daily Advertiser, London, September 23, 1743.
78"Dr. Bateman's Drops" (see footnote 7).
79Turlington,op. cit.(footnote 15).