ds were recovered, remains in fair condition and may yet be
renovated for some further use. The lower (pill-mixing) building, after
standing derelict and at the point of collapse for many years, was
finally torn down in 1971. The hotel, a large water tank behind the
factory, and the combination depot and customs house have all vanished
from the scene. The shed where the Comstocks kept their yacht has been
maintained and still shelters several boats, but the ferry slip just
below the factory steps is now abandoned, and no longer do vessels ply
back and forth across the river to connect Morristown and Brockville.
The railroad only survived the passing of the factory by a year or two
and is now memorialized by no more than a line of decaying ties. The
main highway leading westward from Ogdensburg toward the Thousand
Islands area has been straightened and rerouted to avoid Morristown, so
that now only the straying or misguided traveler will enter the village.
If he does enter he will find a pleasant community, scenically located
on a small bay of the St. Lawrence River, commanding an enticing view of
the Canadian shore, and rising in several stages above the lower level,
where the factory once stood; but it is a somnolent village. No longer
do river packet steamers call at the sagging pier, no longer do trains
thread their way between the factory buildings and chug to a halt at the
adjacent station. No longer do hope-giving pills and elixirs, or
almanacs and circulars in the millions, pour out of Morristown destined
for country drugstores and lonely farmhouses over half a continent. Only
memories persist around the empty ferry slip, the vanished railroad
station, and the abandoned factory buildings--for so many years the home
of the distinguished Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills.

*Bibliography*

The principal source of information for this history of the Comstock
medicine business comprises the records, letters, documents, and
advertising matter found in the abandoned pill-factory building at
Morristown, New York. Supplemental information was obtained from
biographies, local and county histories, old city directories,
genealogies, back files of newspapers, and materials from the office of
the St. Lawrence County Historian, at the courthouse, Canton, New York.

Two standard histories of the patent-medicine era in America are:

Holbrook, Stewart H. _Golden Age of Quackery._ New York City: Macmillan
Co. 1959.

Young, J.