oubtedly
imported from Britain. For example, in 1753 apothecary James Carter of
Williamsburg ordered from England "3 Quire Stoughton's Directions"
along with "1/2 Groce Stoughton Vials."[46] These broadsides or
circulars served a twofold purpose. Not only did they promote the
medicine, but they actually served as the labels for the bottles. Early
packages of these patent medicines which have been discovered indicate
that paper labels were seldom applied to the glass bottles; instead,
the bottle was tightly wrapped and sealed in one of these broadsides.

[45] "Dr. Bateman's Drops" (see footnote 7).

[46] James Carter, Apothecary account book, Williamsburg
[1752-1773]. Manuscript original preserved at Colonial
Williamsburg, Virginia.

American imprints seeking to promote the English patent medicines were
certainly rare. The most significant example may be found in the
Library of the New York Academy of Medicine.[47] In 1731 James Wallace,
a New York merchant, became American agent for the sale of Dr.
Bateman's Pectoral Drops. To help him with his new venture, Wallace
took a copy of the London promotional pamphlet to a New York printer to
be reproduced. The printer was John Peter Zenger, not yet an editor and
three years away from the events which were to link his name
inextricably with the concept of the freedom of the press. This 1731
pamphlet may well have been the earliest work on any medical theme to
be printed in New York.[48]

[47] _A short treatise of the virtues of Dr. Bateman's Pectoral
Drops_ (see footnote 6).

[48] Gertrude L. Annan, "Printing and medicine," _Bulletin of the
Medical Library Association_, March 1940, vol. 28, p. 155.

Now and then a physician might frown on his fellows for reading such
literature and prescribing such remedies, but he was in a minority.
Colonial doctors, by and large, had no qualms about employing the
packaged medicines. It was a doctor who first advertised Anderson's
Pills and Bateman's Drops in Williamsburg;[49] it was another,
migrating from England to the Virginia frontier, who founded a town and
dosed those who came to dwell therein with Bateman's Drops,
Turlington's Balsam, and other patent medicines.[50]

[49] Wyndham B. Blanton, _Medicine in Virginia in the eighteenth
century_, Richmond, Virginia, 1931, pp. 33-34.

[50] Maurice Bear Gordon, _Aesculapius comes to the colonies_,
Ventnor, New J