The Patent Medicine Business [pp. 380-383]

THE PATENT MEDICINE BUSINESS.
central office in Broadway, above Warren street, which, for a
long time remained his principal office. At length he made
terms with the druggists, and the pills became a regular article
on the price list of wholesale houses. Afterwards a site was
purchased at Yonkers, where a factory was built, which supplied
the demand. A sloop carried a load of hogsheads of pill boxes
up, and brought a load of pills in boxes back. The Doctor pro bably owns a steamboat to do his carrying business now. WVe
have no means of estimating his riches. The Brandreth House,
corner of Broadway and Canal street, is owned by him, and we
presume he owns whole squares of other real estate in that city.
The Doctor has represented Westchester in the Assembly and
Senate of his State on several occasions, and at one time was a
very active politician. His son is now a member of Assembly
firom the same district, and made an able speech a few days since
in favor of the eight hour system of labor. The pills keep sell ing, and give employment to over one hundred hands engaged in
the manufacture of them at the factory in Yonkers. Doctor B.
has made his mark as a patent medicine man of no mean ability.
Doctor Ayer of Lowell, came very near ruining all his relatives
after he started his Pills, Sarsaparilla and Cherry Pectoral. It
was a tedious timne he had in fighting, advertising bills and other
expenses. He spent what little he had, borrowed all his relatives
had, till finally the medicines began to make returns, and from
that time, some twenty years, he has been making money. He
owns a paper mill, where he makes a peculiar paper which he
claims is not easily counterfeited, in which he wraps his various
preparations. People who estimate his wealth, run him up into
millions. At one time he was, if he is not still, a heavy stockholder in the N. Y. "Tribune Association." Such men are apt
to leave their imprint even if they make their money in the manutiacture of patent medicines.
Wm. B. Moffat was a broken down silk merchant in New York.
Besides being a bankrupt, his health had become very much impaired from over-work, and trouble of one kind or another; in his
extremity, he conceived the idea of making a pill and bitters.
They cured his infirmities and made a millionaire of him in less
than twenty years. Persons familiar with New York, can tell
the number of magnificent stores he owns on Broadway, and
other parts of the city. He died some years ago, but the pills
and bitters didn't. The heirs carry on thle business as usual.
Perry Davis, the Pain Killer man; Donald Kenedy, proprietor
of the Great Medical Discovery who has refused one hundred
thousand dollars for his right; Seth W. Fowle, who bought Wistar's Balsam of Wild Cherry from Isaac Butts of Rochester;
Demas Barnes of New York, the largest Patent Medicine Depot
in America; Hostetter, Helmbold, the Mexican Mustang Liniment man, and a thousand others in the United States whom we
have not time to mention, can count their hundreds of thousands,
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