recipitated a perfect fury
of competitive advertising. As in the case of Daffy's, there was a
family feud. A son of Stoughton and the widow of another son argued
vituperously in print, each claiming sole possession of Richard's
complicated secret, and each terming the other a scoundrel. The
daughter-in-law accused the son of financial chicanery, and the son
condemned the daughter-in-law for having run through two husbands and
for desperately wanting a third. In the midst of this running battle, a
third party entered the lists as maker of the Elixir. She was no
Stoughton--though a widow--and her quaint claim for the public's
consideration lay in this, that her late husband had infringed
Stoughton's patent until restrained by the Lord Chancellor.

These ten medicines--Stoughton's and Daffy's Elixirs and the eight
which the Philadelphia pharmacists were later to select--were by no
means the only packaged remedies available to the 18th-century
Englishman who resorted to self-dosage for his ills. Between 1711, when
the first patent was granted for a compound medicine, and 1776, some 75
items were patented in the medical field.[23] And, along with Godfrey's
Cordial and Daffy's Elixir, there were scores of other remedies for
which no patents had been given. A list of nostrums published in _The
Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1748 totaled 202, and it was admittedly
incomplete.[24] The proprietor with a patent might do his utmost to
keep this badge of governmental sanction before the public, but the
distinction was not great enough in such a crowded field to make things
clear. The casual buyer could not keep track of which electuary had
been granted a patent and which lozenge had not. They were all bottles
and boxes upon the shelf. In use they served the same purpose. One term
arose in common speech to apply to both, and it was "patent medicine."

[23] British Patent Office, _op. cit._ (see footnote 4).

[24] Poplicola, "Pharmacopoeia empirica or the list of nostrums
and empirics," _The Gentleman's Magazine_, 1748, vol. 18, pp.
346-350.

English Patent Medicines Come to America

When the first English packaged medicine, patented or unpatented, came
to the New World, cannot be told. Some 17th-century prospective
colonist, setting forth to face the hazards of life in Jamestown or
Baltimore or Boston, must have packed a box of Anderson's Scots Pills
or a bottle of Daffy's Elixir to bring along, but no record