Source of Supply Severed
On September 29, 1774, John Boyd's "medicinal store" in Baltimore followed the time-honored custom of advertising in the Maryland Gazette a fresh supply of medicines newly at hand from England. To this intelligence was added a warning. Since nonimportation agreements by colonial merchants were imminent, which bade fair to make goods hard to get, customers would be wise to make their purchases before 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 Acts, and at the time of Boyd's advertisement, the first Continental Congress in session was soon to declare that all imports from Great Britain should be halted.
Figure 7.—Bottles of British Oil, 19th and early 20th century, from the Samuel Aker, David and George Kass collection, Albany, New York. (Smithsonian photo 44201-B.)
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 various products, including tea, American merchants in various cities had entered into nonimportation agreements. Certainly, there was a decided decrease in the Boston advertising of patent medicines received from London. With respect 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."[61 ] When Parliament yielded to the financial pressure and abolished 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 the remedies of Turlington, Bateman, the Bettons, Anderson, Hooper, Godfrey, Daffy, and Stoughton, as "Just come to Hand and Warranted Genuine" on Captain Dane's ship, "directly from the Original Warehouse kept by dicey and okell in Bow Street, London."[62 ]
The days of such ample importations, however, were doomed, as commerce fell prey to the growing revolutionary agitation. The last medical advertisement in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, before its demise the following February, appeared five months after the Battles of Lexington and Concord.[63 ] The apothecary at the Sign of the Unicorn was frank about the situation. He had imported fresh drugs and medicines every fall and spring up to the preceding June. He still had some on hand. Doctors and others should be advised.
Implicit in the advertisement is the suggestion that the securing of new supplies under the circumstances would be highly uncertain. That pre-war stocks did hold out, sometimes well into the war years may be deduced from a Williamsburg apothecary's advertisement.[64 ] W. Carter took the occasion of the ending of a partnership with his brother to publish a sort of inventory. Along with the "syrup and ointment pots, all neatly painted and lettered," the crabs eyes and claws, the Spanish flies, he listed a dozen patent medicines, including the remedies of Anderson, Bateman, and Daffy.
Even the British blockade failed to prevent patent medicines from being shipped from wholesaler to retailer. In the account book of a Salem, Massachusetts, apothecary,[65 ] the following entry appears:
| 4 cases Containing | |
| 1 Dozn Bottles Godfreys Cordial | 4/ |
| 5 Dozn Do Smaller Turling Bals | 18/ |
| 8 Dozn Bettons British Oil | 8/ |
| 6½ Dozn Hoopers Female Pills | 10/ |
| 4 Dozn nd 8 Boxs And. Pills | 10/ |