e--to the extent that either of
these terms has meaning--for it was a recurrent practice for junior
partners and clerks at one drug house to branch off on their own, taking
some of the secrets with them--just as Andrew B. White left Moore and
joined the Comstocks, bringing the Indian Root Pills with him.

In the latter years, under the rules of the Federal Food and Drug Act,
the ingredients were required to be listed on the package; thus we know
that the Indian Root Pills, in the 1930s and 1940s, contained aloes,
mandrake, gamboge, jalap, and cayenne pepper.

_Aloe_ is a tropical plant of which the best known medicinal varieties
come from Socotra and Zanzibar; those received by the Comstock factory
were generally described as Cape (of Good Hope) _Aloe_. The juice
_Aloes_ is extracted from the leaves of this plant and since antiquity
has been regarded as a valuable drug, particularly for its laxative and
vermifuge properties. _Mandrake_ has always been reputed to have
aphrodisiac qualities. _Gamboge_ is a large tree native to Ceylon and
Southeast Asia, which produces a resinous gum, more commonly used by
painters as a coloring material, but also sometimes employed in medicine
as a cathartic. _Jalap_ is a flowering plant which grows only at high
altitudes in Mexico, and its root produces an extract with a powerful
purgative effect. All of these ingredients possessed one especial
feature highly prized by the patent-medicine manufacturers of the
nineteenth century, i.e., they were derived from esoteric plants found
only in geographically remote locations. One does find it rather
remarkable, however, that the native Indian chiefs who confided the
secrets of these remedies to Dr. Morse and Dr. Cunard were so familiar
with drugs originating in Asia and Africa.[11] The Indians may very well
have been acquainted with the properties of jalap, native to this
continent, but the romantic circumstances of its discovery, early in the
last century seem considerably overdrawn, as the medicinal properties of
jalap were generally recognized in England as early as 1600.

Whether the formula for the Indian Root Pills had been constant since
their "discovery"--as all advertising of the company implied--we have no
way of knowing for sure. However, the company's book of trade receipts
for the 1860s shows the recurring purchase of large quantities of these
five drugs, which suggests that the ingredients did remain substantially
unchanged for