Patent Medicines.
In the early days of English commerce monopolies were granted by the sovereigns at their own pleasure, and often for their personal profit. Queen Elizabeth so largely abused her power in this direction that towards the end of her reign the discontent of her subjects compelled her to promise she would offend no more: and her successor, James I, gave a similar undertaking. The abuse, however, was continued until the Statute of Monopolies, passed in 1624, regulated all such grants, placing the power in the hands of Parliament, and limiting the period of privilege to fourteen years.
For the first century or thereabout of the administration of this Act, specifications of processes or formulas were not a condition of the patent. The idea was the introduction into the country of new industries, and it was supposed that the artificers who would have to be employed in any such industries would certainly acquire such necessary skill and knowledge about any new manufacture as would prevent any perpetuation of the monopoly. It was during the reign of Queen Anne that the law officers began to require that specifications should be filed before letters patent were issued. But the condition was not by any means uniformly or intelligently insisted upon, as will be seen immediately in the case of certain patented medicines.
The term “patent medicines,” as now popularly used, means generally secret medicines, and the meaning is therefore in exact contradiction to the expression. Truthfully to declare the composition of many of these proprietary compounds would ruin their sale. Not that the ingredients are often improper or injurious; this rarely occurs; but because the success of these remedies depends in most instances rather on the mystery with which the makers can surround them than on their exceptional merit.
But some old medicines which became popular, including a few the reputation of which lives to this day, were actually patented. The first compound medicine for which a patent was granted under the Act of 1624 was No. 388, and was dated October 22, 1711. It was granted to Timothy Byfield for his sal oleosum volatile, “which by abundant experience hath been found very helpfull and beneficiall as well in uses medicinall as others.” No particulars of the ingredients or method of manufacture are given.
Stoughton’s “great cordial elixir” comes next, in 1712, and there is nothing more in the proprietary medicine line until 1722, when a patent for Robert Eaton’s Styptick medicine appears. In that year a curious patent was granted to George Sinclair for “raising and cultivating the plants which are commonly called or do produce the balsam of tolu, Peru, and capair, dragon’s blood, coloquintida, scamony, rhubarb, jalap, ipecacuanha (and others named), and curing the insect commonly called cochenele and cultivating the plant which they feed and live upon.” No particulars of the inventor’s ideas are given.
Benjamin Okell’s patent for Dr. Bateman’s pectoral drops, stated to act by moderate sweat and urine, and to be useful in rheumatism, afflictions of the stone, gravel, agues, and hysterics, was dated March 31, 1726, and was granted to him in recognition of the long study, application, and great expense he had been put to in finding out this remedy and bringing it to perfection. He furnished no particulars. Bateman’s drops probably always depended on opium for its efficacy, and in time various formulas for a medicine under that name for coughs came to be adopted. In 1833 the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy published the following formula “to represent Bateman’s Pectoral Drops because of its general use, and to secure uniformity.” They said the preparation was then being sold in strengths varying from 7½ to 100 grains to the pint. The formula prescribed was: Diluted alcohol, 4 gallons; red sanders, rasped, 2 oz. Digest for 24 hours, filter, add opium in powder 2 oz., catechu in powder 2 oz., camphor 2 oz., oil of anise ½ oz. Digest for ten days.
The patent for John Hooper’s Female Pills, granted in 1743 to John Hooper, apothecary and man midwife of Reading, contains a copy of an affidavit made by the patentee, who, being “obliged to give under his hand and seal a particular description of his invention,” came before the King in Chancery, and satisfied the royal representative with a specification declaring that his medicine was “compounded as followeth:—Of the best purging stomatick and anti-hysterick ingredients, duly proportioned and made into a powder, and beat into a mass for pills with sufficient quantity of a strong infusion of the above-mentioned ingredients; and when the same is made into pills about the bigness of a small pea, two or three are to be given to persons from 7 years of age to 15, and three or four from 15 years of age to 70 every other night.” Hooper must have been a humorist.
Betton’s British oils “for the cure of rheumatic and scorbutic and other cases” had been patented in 1742. The oil was “extracted from the black, pitchy, flinty roch or rock lying immediately over the coal in coal mines.” This was reduced to powder and then subjected to heat in a closed furnace, by which means the oil was obtained.
The patent for Dr. James’s fever powder (1747) is referred to at length elsewhere. It is agreed that the preparation could not be produced by the process detailed; but, according to Lord Mansfield, it was also defective in another respect. In a judgment given by that eminent authority in 1778 (in the case of Liardet v. Johnson) he illustrated an argument he was using by a reference to Dr. James’s patent, “in the specification of which,” he said, “he has mentioned the articles only of which those powders were composed, and omitted the proportion or quantity.” Consequently Lord Mansfield added, “Dr. James never durst bring an action for infringement, and it was certainly wise in him not to do so, for no patent could stand on such a specification.” His lordship went on to enlarge on the extreme importance of exact quantities in the exact formulas for medicines.
Dr. James also patented his “analeptic pills” in 1774. They were to be compounded of equal parts of pil. rufi, gum ammoniacum, and his own fever powder. The two first named ingredients were to be “placed in a large cave underground furnished with the conductors of electrical fire” by which they were to be dissolved. The powder was then to be added and the pills to be made up with gum arabic.
In the second half of the eighteenth century the patents for compounded medicines become more numerous, but they are generally of no present interest. The names of a very few have come down to our day. Ann Pike’s itch ointment (patented 1760) may be noticed. To prepare this, pomatum and calomel were first mixed and allowed to stand several days; another ointment was made with hogs’ lard and Jesuit’s bark, and this was likewise set aside for a few days. These two ointments were then blended together, mercury added to them, and the mass stirred daily for some time. Two other ointments were also made and combined like the others, the ingredients of these being deer suet, turbith mineral, lard, powdered tutty, flowers of brimstone, and wood soot.
In 1777 Robert Grubb patented a medicine called the Frier’s Drops, “for the cure of the venereal disease, scurvy, rheumatism, stranguary and gleets.” It contained calomel, antimony, guaiacum wood, balsam of Peru, hemlock, sugar candy, oil of sassafras, tartaric acid, and gum arabic, with spirit of wine. The particular interest of this is the name which may have been the original of the Friar’s Balsam named in the Medicine Stamp Act. The Friar’s Balsam known to us cannot be traced as a proprietary medicine.
Gale’s Spa Elixir, patented 1782, is notable as a specimen of condensed information. Its composition is thus described:—“R. fer. q.l.; cor, anima., sp.vin. esse.tinc. anima: super:aq: nat:, sp.sal: q.s.; dissolve, digest, correct, evaporate, and extract the elixir S.A.” The abbreviated terms and the punctuation are copied from the specification.
Nathaniel Godbold’s Vegetable Balsam was patented in 1785, Spilsbury’s Anti-scorbutic Drops in 1792, Ching’s Worm Lozenges in 1796, and Innocenza della Lena winds up the century with a formula conceived quite on the lines of the pharmacy then departing. It was for “A certain medicine called flogistical and fixed earth of Mars or powder of Mars.” It is not stated what the medicine was for, but its preparation was awe-inspiring. Mineral earth of iron, copper, crude antimony, mineral salt, and urine were digested for a considerable time in an unvarnished vessel, hermetically sealed, deep down in the earth. Subsequently the mixture was exposed to the rays of the sun for a period, more urine was added, and the interment and the exposure were several times repeated.
Roche’s Embrocation for whooping-cough, patented in 1803, was declared to be compounded of oil of elder, rose leaves, chamomile flowers, oil of caraway, oil of rosemary, cochineal, and alkanet root. This remedy is still popular, but it is understood to have a composition very different from that specified.
Perkins’s Metallic Tractors were patented on March 10th, 1798. Benjamin Douglas Perkins claimed to have discovered “an art of relieving and curing a variety of aches, pains, and diseases in the human body, by drawing over the parts affected or those contiguous thereto, in certain directions, various pointed metals, which from the affinity they have with the offending matter,” or from some other cause, “extract, or draw out the same, and thus cure the patient.” The metals used were combinations of copper, zinc, and gold; or of iron, silver, and platinum. The tractors were invented by Elisha Perkins, the father of Benjamin, who died at New York in 1799. The tractors were united together like a pair of compasses, and one of the arms was obtuse and the other pointed. They professed to apply galvanic action to the relief and cure of pain and disease. Galvani’s report of his experiments was only published about 1790, and not much earlier Mesmer’s animal magnetism had excited marvellous interest in Paris. Perkins’s Tractors had an enormous popularity for a time in England and in Denmark, but nowhere else to any extent. Two Bath doctors, named Falconer and Haygarth, professed to get as good results with tractors made of wood, many patients of the Bath Hospital declaring that these promptly relieved their pains. From these experiments it was argued that the alleged cures were entirely due to the imagination of the sufferers.
After 1800 medicinal compounds are only rarely patented. Of those known to the present generation, Ford’s Balsam of Horehound appears in 1816, Savory’s Seidlitz Powders were protected in 1815, Ridge’s Food, 1862, and Page Woodcock’s Wind Pills, 1852. A patent was taken in 1853 by Sir James Murray for aerating cod-liver oil with carbonic acid gas, and William Brockedon’s patent for compressing drugs and blacklead, which has borne fruit a thousandfold in these later days, was granted in 1843.