History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills Part 4

Diarrhoea Dropsy Debility Fever and Ague Female Complaints Headaches Indigestion Influenza Inflammation Inward Weakness Liver Complaints Lowness of Spirits Piles Stone and Gravel Secondary Symptoms

with particular stress upon their value as a "great female medicine."

Besides the major advertis.e.m.e.nt of the pills, consisting of an eight-inch column to be printed in each issue of the paper, smaller announcements were provided, to be inserted according to a specified monthly schedule among the editorial matter on the inside pages. Sample monthly announcements from the Judson Mountain Herb Pills contract used in 1860 were:

JANUARY

THE GREAT FEMALE MEDICINE

The functional irregularities peculiar to the weaker s.e.x, are invariably corrected without pain or inconvenience by the use of Judson's Mountain Herb Pills. They are the safest and surest medicine for all the diseases incidental to females of all ages, and more especially so in this climate.

Ladies who wish to enjoy health should always have these Pills. No one who ever uses them once will ever allow herself to be without them. They remove all obstructions, purify the blood and give to the skin that beautiful, clear and healthful look so greatly admired in a beautiful and healthy woman. At certain periods these Pills are an indispensable companion. From one to four should be taken each day, until relief is obtained. A few doses occasionally, will keep the system healthy, and the blood so pure, that diseases cannot enter the body.

MARCH

DISEASES OF THE CHEST AND LUNGS

These diseases are too well known to require any description. How many thousands are every year carried to the silent grave by that dread scourge Consumption, which always commences with a slight cough. Keep the blood pure and healthy by taking a few doses of JUDSON'S MOUNTAIN HERB PILLS each week, and disease of any kind is impossible. Consumption and lung difficulties always arise from particles of corrupt matter deposited in the air cells by bad blood. Purify that stream of life and it will soon carry off and destroy the poisonous matter; and like a crystal river flowing through a desert, will bring with it and leave throughout the body the elements of health and strength. As the river leaving the elements of fertility in its course, causes the before barren waste to bloom with flowers and fruit, so pure blood causes the frame to rejoice in strength and health, and bloom with unfading beauty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 19.--Card used in advertising Judson's Mountain Herb Pills.]

Any person who read the notices for both medicines carefully might have noticed with some surprise that the Mountain Herb Pills and the Indian Root Pills were somehow often recommended for many of the same diseases.

In fact, the Mountain Herb Pills and the Indian Root Pills used identical text in explaining their effect upon several disagreeable conditions. Always prominent in this advertising were reminders of our fragile mortality and warnings, if proper medication were neglected, of an untimely consignment to the silent grave.

Unfortunately, newspapers in the South had been utilized extensively just on the eve of the Civil War, and it undoubtedly proved impossible to supply customers in that region during the ensuing conflict. However, other advertising was given a military flavor and tied in with the war, as witness the following (for 1865):

GENERAL ORDERS--No. 1

_Headquarters_

Department of this Continent and adjacent Islands

Pursuant to Division and Brigade orders issued by 8,000 Field Officers, "On the Spot", where they are stationed. All Skedadlers, Deserters, Skulkers, and all others--sick, wounded and cripples--who have foresaken the cause of General Health, shall immediately report to one of the aforesaid officers nearest the point where the delinquent may be at the time this order is made known to him, and purchase one box of

JUDSON'S MOUNTAIN HERB PILLS

and pay the regulation price therefor. All who comply with the terms of this order, will receive a free pardon for past offences, and be restored to the Grand Army of General Health.

A. GOOD HEALTH Lieutenant-General

By order Dr. Judson, Adjutant-General

Sold by all dealers.

Twenty years later, when the Civil War had pa.s.sed out of recent memory and Confederate currency was presumably becoming a curiosity, Comstock printed facsimiles of $20 Confederate bills,[9] with testimonials and advertis.e.m.e.nts upon the reverse side; it can be a.s.sumed that these had enough historical interest to circulate widely and attract attention, although each possessor must have felt a twinge of disappointment upon realizing that his bill was not genuine but merely an advertising gimmick.

[Footnote 9: These facsimile bills were registered as a trademark at the United States Patent Office. In his registration application, Mr.

Comstock described himself as a citizen of the United States, residing at Morristown, N.Y.--although he had served three terms as mayor of Brockville, Ontario, prior to this time.]

Back in the 1850s, the Comstock Company in lower Manhattan had an advertising agent, one Silas B. Force, whose correspondence by some unexplained happenstance was also deposited in the loft of the Indian Root Pill building in Morristown, even though he was not an exclusive agent and served other clients besides the Comstocks. One of these was Dr. Uncas Brant, for whom Force had the following announcement printed in numerous papers:

AN OLD INDIAN DOCTOR WHO HAD made his fortune and retired from business, will spend the remainder of his days in curing that dreadful disease--CONSUMPTION--FREE OF CHARGE: his earnest desire being to communicate to the world his remedies that have proved successful in more than 3,000 cases. He requires each applicant to send him a minute description of the symptoms, with two Stamps (6 cts) to pay the return letter, in which he will return his _advice prescription_, with directions for preparing the medicines &c.

_The Old Doctor_ hopes that those afflicted will not, on account of delicacy, refrain from consulting him because he makes _No Charge_.

His sole object in advertising is to do all the good he can, before he dies. He feels that he is justly celebrated for cure of Consumption, Asthma, Bronchitis, Nervous Affections, Coughs, Colds, &c.

Address

DOCT. UNCAS BRANT Box 3531, P.O., New York

This type of an apparently free diagnosis of medical ills, prompted solely by the benevolence of some elderly or retired person, was a familiar petty swindle around the middle of the last century. The newspapers carried many such announcements from retired clergymen, old nurses, or Indian doctors, frequently persons who had themselves triumphed over dread diseases and had discovered the best remedies only after years of search and suffering, always offering to communicate the secret of recovery to any fellow sufferer. The victim would receive in reply a recipe for the proper medicine, always with the advice that great care must be taken to prepare it exactly as directed, and with the further advice that if the ingredients should not prove to be conveniently available the benevolent old doctor or retired clergyman could provide them for a trifling sum. Invariably, the afflicted patient would discover that the ingredients specified were obscure ones, not kept by one druggist in a hundred and unknown to most of them. Thus, he would be obliged, if he persisted in the recommended cure, to send his money to the kindly old benefactor. Frequently, he would receive no further reply or, at best, would receive some concoction costing only a few cents to compound. The scheme was all the safer as it was carried on exclusively by mail, and the swindler would usually conclude each undertaking under any given name before investigation could be initiated.

Besides partic.i.p.ating in such schemes, Force apparently devoted a large part of his energy in collecting accounts due him or, in turn, in being dunned by and seeking to postpone payment to newspapers with whom he was delinquent in making settlement.

Other forms of advertising employed over the years included finely engraved labels, circulars and handbills, printed blotters, small billboards, fans, premiums sent in return for labels, a concise--_very_ concise--reference dictionary, and trade cards of various sorts. One trade card closely resembled a railroad pa.s.s; this was in the 1880s when railroad pa.s.ses were highly prized and every substantial citizen aspired to own one. Thus, almost everyone would have felt some pride in carrying what might pa.s.s, at a glance, as a genuine pa.s.s on the K.C.L.R.R.; although it was signed only by "Good Health" as the general agent, ent.i.tled the bearer merely to ride on foot or horseback and was actually an advertis.e.m.e.nt of Kingsland's Chlorinated Tablets. Another card played somewhat delicately but still unmistakably on the Indian Root Pills'

capacity to restore male virility. This card pictured a fas.h.i.+onably dressed tomcat, complete with high collar, cane and derby, sitting somewhat disconsolately on a fence as the crescent moon rose behind him, with these reflections:

How terribly lonesome I feel! How queer, To be sitting alone, with n.o.body near, Oh, how I wish Maria was here, Mon dieu!

The thought of it fills me with horrible doubt, I should smile, I should blush, I should wail, I should shout, Just suppose some fellow has cut me out!

Me out!

And underneath the lesson is given:

Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills The Best Family Pill in use

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 20.--A trade card advertising Kingsland's Chlorinated Tablets, which closely resembled a railroad pa.s.s.]

Testimonials submitted voluntarily by happy users of the pills were always widely featured in the almanacs, newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nts, and handbills. Although the easy concoction of the stories about Dr. Morse and Dr. Cunard might suggest that there would have been no hesitation in fabricating these testimonials, it is probable that they were genuine; at least, many have survived in the letters scattered over the floor of the Indian Root Pill factory. In some cases one might feel that the testimonials were lacking in entire good faith, for many of them were submitted by dealers desiring lenient credit or other favors. Witness, for example, the following from B. Mollohan of Mt. Pleasant, Webster County, West Va., on April 16, 1879:

Pleas find here enclosed Two Dollars & 50 cts $2 _50_ cts for which pleas place to my credit and return receipt to me for same. I cant praise your Dr Morse pill two high never before in all my recolection has there bin a meddison here that has given such general satisfaction. I hope the pills will always retain their high standing and never bee counterfeited.... I could sell any amt Pills allmost if money was not so scarce. I have to let some out on credit to the Sick and Poor & wait some time though I am accountable to you for all I recd & will pay you as fast as I sell & collect ... I have about one Doz Box on hand.

Mollohan's complaint about the shortage of money and the long delay in collecting many accounts reflected a condition that prevailed throughout the nineteenth century. Money was scarce, and the economy of many rural communities was still based largely on the barter system, so that it was very difficult for farmers to generate cash for store goods.

Consequently, country storekeepers had to be generous in extending credit, and, in turn, manufacturers and jobbers had to be lenient in enforcing collection.

Not all of the storekeepers could write as neatly and clearly as Mollohan. The following letter, quoted in full, from Thomas Cathey of Enfield, Illinois, on January 23, 1880, not merely presented a problem relating to the company's policy of awarding exclusive territories but offered considerable difficulty in deciphering:

mr c.u.mStock der ser i thaut i Wod rite yo u a few lineS to inform you that i was the fir St agent for you pills in thiS Setlement but th as iS Several agent round her and tha ar interfer With mee eSpeSly William a StavSon he liveS her at enfield he Wanted mee to giv him one of you Sur klerS So he Wod be agent but i Wodent let hi m hav hit an he rote to you i SupoSe an haS got a Suplye of pillS an ar aruning a gant mee he iS Sell ing them at 20 centS a box i Want you to St op him if you pleeS

mr c.u.mStock i Sent you too dollars the 21 p leeS Credet my a Count With hit mr. c.u.msto Ck i Want you to Send mee Sum of you pam pletS i Want you to Send mee right of three tow ns.h.i.+pS aS i am Working up a good trad her i wan t indin Cree an enfield an Carnie tonns.h.i.+pS rite Son aS poSSible an let me know whether you will let me have thoSe towns.h.i.+pS or not for my territory i Sold a box of pillS to melven willSon his gir l She haS the ChilS for three yer and he tride eve n thang he cood her wan nothing never dun her eny good one box of you pills brok them on her tha ar the beSt pillS i ever Saw in my life tha ar the beSt medeSon for the ChillS i ever Saw an rumiteS i am giting up a good trad i Want you to Send me Sum of you pampletS i want you to Stop theSe oth er agentS that iS botheran me an oblige you rite Son.

enfield White Co.

illS

thomaS Cathey

Sadly, we do not know how the company handled Mr. Cathey's request for sole representation in three Illinois towns.h.i.+ps.

After the pills achieved wide recognition and other methods of publicity, chiefly the almanacs, were well established, newspaper advertising was terminated. An invitation to agents (about 1885) declared that