The Patent Medicine Business [pp. 380-383]

THE PATENT MEDICINE BUSINESS.
ART. VII.-THE PATENT MEDICINE BUSINESS.
[The vast amounts realized at the North out of this branch of traffic, can
scarcely have entered into the minds of our readers. We think they will be
interested in the following graphic sketch which tells but a part of the story.
We take it from the excellent report upon the manufacturing resources of
Buffalo, which was recently laid upon our table.-EDITORS REVIEW.]
EVERYBODY has heard of the great Wahoo man, Loveridge.
If they have not, it has been no fault of ink or type, as they have
aided liberally to extend his fame far and near. Now as to what
the Wahoo man is doing for his town. We find that Mr. Loveridge commenced in Buffalo some four or five years ago, without
a cent of capital, in the manufacture of Wahoo Bitters. He is
now giving employment to twenty or thirty hands, besides those
eiigaged in blowing his bottles, making his boxes, doing his printing and the like. He is manufacturing at the rate of $200,000 a
year of his bitters, pays $25,000 for bottles and $15,000 for government stamps, uses $6,600 worth of boxes, expends $3,000 in
advertising and $5,000 in printing annually. HIe gets all the
glass they can furnish him from Lockport and Clyde, N. Y., and
for the balance he sends to Pittsburg. If we had glass works
here we would keep this money at home; but as we have not, it
is sent abroad for an article that should be, and could as well be,
manufactured in Buffalo. Thus, Mr. Loveridge is contributing
to the growth of the city by employing its labor in various ways;
by investinfg his means in real estate and buildings, which we
understand he has done recently in the purchase of a store on the
Terrace, which he is fitting up for his increasing trade.
Here we will leave Mr. Loveridge, and tell the reader about
some other patent medicine men we have heard of. There was
once a man in Philadelphia by the name of Swaim, a poor bookbinder. He had a kind of sore on his leg which troubled him
very much. One day, as he was running over the pages of a
book he was binding his eye came across a recipe for making a
syrup which was said would cure scrofula, king's evil, and other
diseases of the blood. He copied it, got some of the materials
at the drug shop, took the medicine and in time was cured. He
then made some for his friends and acquaintances, and finally
left his binder's counter and entered into the manufacture of
"Swaim's Panacea." It began to sell, and finally its fame spread
wherever civilization had gone, and in some parts where the people do not enjoy that blessing to this day. He paid enormously
for advertising, and after many years he built blocks of stores
and splendid mansions in Philadelphia, where they appear in all
their magnificent proportions, the pride of the city and a mnonument to the memory and enterprise of a patent medicine man.
He died and left his heirs a million or more.
Doctor Dyott, living in, or about the same time, accumulated
a large fortune from a catalogue of patent medicines he prepared,
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