A number of the old English brands, he recalled,
were still imported and sold at the time. But his apprenticeship years
were heavily encumbered with duties involving the American versions.
"Many, very many, days were spent," Brewer remembered, "in compounding
these imitations, cleaning the vials, fitting, corking, labelling,
stamping with fac-similes of the English Government stamp, and in
wrapping them, with ... little regard to the originator's rights, or
that of their heirs...." The British nostrums chiefly imitated in this
Boston shop were Steer's, Bateman's, Godfrey's, Dalby's, Betton's, and
Stoughton's. The last was a major seller. The store loft was mostly
filled with orange peel and gentian, and the laboratory had "a heavy
oaken press, fastened to the wall with iron clamps and bolts, which was
used in pressing out 'Stoughton's Bitters,' of which we usually
prepared a hogshead full at one time." A large quantity was needed. In
those days, Brewer asserted, "almost everybody indulged in Stoughton's
elixir as morning bitters." [83]

[83] William A. Brewer, "Reminiscences of an old pharmacist."
_Pharmaceutical Record_, August 1, 1884, vol. 4, p. 326.

[Illustration: Figure 10.--GODFREY'S CORDIAL, early 20th century
bottles manufactured in the U.S.A. (_U.S. National Museum cat. Nos.
M-6989, and M-6990; Smithsonian photo 44287 B._)]

Other drugstores certainly followed the practice of Brewer's employer,
in cleaning up and refilling bottles that had previously been drained
of their old English medicines. The chief source of bottles to hold the
American imitations, however, was the same as that to which Waldo and
Rantoul had turned, English glass factories. It was not so easy for
Americans to fabricate the vials as it was for them to compound the
mixtures to fill them. In the years before the War of 1812, the British
glass industry maintained a virtual monopoly of the specially-shaped
bottles for Bateman's, Turlington's, and the other British remedies.
When in the 1820's the first titan of made-in-America nostrums, Thomas
W. Dyott of Philadelphia, appeared upon the scene, this venturesome
entrepreneur decided to make bottles not only for his own assorted
remedies but also for the popular English brands. In time he succeeded
in improving the quality of American bottle glass and in drastically
reducing prices. The standard cost for most of the old English vials
under the British monopoly had been $5.50 a gro