Mandrake
has always been reputed to have aphrodisiac qualities.
Gamboge
is a large tree native to Ceylon and Southeast Asia, which produces a resinous gum, more commonly used by painters as a coloring material, but also sometimes employed in medicine as a cathartic.
Jalap
is a flowering plant which grows only at high altitudes in Mexico, and its root produces an extract with a powerful purgative effect. All of these ingredients possessed one especial feature highly prized by the patent-medicine manufacturers of the nineteenth century, i.e., they were derived from esoteric plants found only in geographically remote locations. One does find it rather remarkable, however, that the native Indian chiefs who confided the secrets of these remedies to Dr. Morse and Dr. Cunard were so familiar with drugs originating in Asia and Africa.
The Indians may very well have been acquainted with the properties of jalap, native to this continent, but the romantic circumstances of its discovery, early in the last century seem considerably overdrawn, as the medicinal properties of jalap were generally recognized in England as early as 1600.
Whether the formula for the Indian Root Pills had been constant since their "discovery"—as all advertising of the company implied—we have no way of knowing for sure. However, the company's book of trade receipts for the 1860s shows the recurring purchase of large quantities of these five drugs, which suggests that the ingredients did remain substantially unchanged for over a century. For other remedies manufactured by the company, the ingredients purchased included:
| Anise Seed Black Antimony Calomel Camphor Gum Arabic | Gum Asphaltum Gum Tragacanth Hemlock Oil Horehound | Laudanum Licorice Root Magnolia Water Muriatic Acid | Saltpetre Sienna Oil Sulphur Wormseed |