rveys expedition in 1952, on the site of an old trading post known as
Fort Atkinson or Fort Bethold II, situated some 16 miles southeast of
the present Elbowoods, North Dakota. In 1954 the North Dakota
Historical Society found a third bottle nearby. These posts, operated
from the mid-1850's to the mid-1880's, served the Hidatsa and Mandan
Indians who dwelt in a town named Like-a-Fishhook Village. The medicine
bottles were made of cast glass, light green in color, probably of
American manufacture. More interesting is the bottle from South Dakota.
It was excavated in 1923 near Mobridge at a site which was the
principal village of the Arikara Indians from about 1800 to 1833, a
town visited by Lewis and Clark as they ascended the Missouri River in
1804. This bottle, made of English lead glass and therefore an imported
article, was unearthed from a grave in the Indian burying ground.
Throughout history the claims made in behalf of patent medicines have
been extreme. This Turlington bottle, however, affords one of the few
cases on record wherein such a medicine has been felt to possess a
postmortem utility.[103]

[103] Wedel and Griffenhagen, _op. cit._ (footnote 54).

Fur traders were still using old English patent medicines at
mid-century. Four dozen bottles of Turlington's Balsam were included in
an "Inventory of Stock the property of Pierre Chouteau, Jr. and Co.
U[pper], M[issouri]. On hand at Fort Benton 4th May 1851...."[104] In
the very same year, out in the new State of California, one of the
early San Francisco papers listed Stoughton's Bitters as among the
merchandise for sale at a general store.[105]

[104] A. McDonnell, _Contributions to the Historical Society of
Montana_, 1941, vol. 10, pp. 202, 217.

[105] _California Daily Courier_, San Francisco, April 25, 1851.

Newspaper advertising of the English proprietaries--even the mere
listing so common during the late colonial years--became very rare
after the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy pamphlet was issued.
Apothecary George J. Fischer of Frederick, Maryland, might mention
seven of the old familiar names in 1837,[106] and another druggist in
the same city might present a shorter list in 1844,[107] but such
advertising was largely gratuitous. Since the English patent medicines
had become every druggist's property, people who felt the need of such
dosage would expect every druggist to have them in stock. There was no
more need to adve