MO Pharmacist August 2022

Now&Then

and real estate in and near Philadelphia,” said the centennial history. He and other early American patent medi cinemakers took advantage of a growing nation as well as the prolific expansion of the newspa per industry and its advertising opportunities. An 1811 advertisement coveringmost of a page in the Charleston Times in Virginia contained testimonials for Dr. Robertson’s Stomachic Elixir of Health, Doctor Robertson’s Vegetable Nervous Cordial, Dr. Robertson’s Celebrated Gout and Rheumatic Drops, Dr. Robertson’s Stomachic Wine Bitters and Dr. Robertson’s Infallible Worm Destroyer. The ad also touted products offered under his own name and others: Dr. Dyott’s An ti-Bilious Pills, Dr. Dyott’s Patent Itch Oint ment, The Vegetable Balm of Iberia and The Restorative Dentifrice. Before long, Dyott had sales agents inmore than a dozen states and offices in New Orle ans, Cincinnati, andNewYork distributing his products as well as patent medicines imported from England. His reach extended as far west as St. Louis. He had three furnaces operating in 1828, added another in 1829 and a fifth in 1833. He called them the Dyottville factories. By the time he turned fifty, Dyott had a quarter-million dollar estate and drove around Philadelphia in a four-hitch English coach with outriders. When glass manufacturers in his region complained to Congress that Dyott had a mo nopoly, Dyott founded a closed temperance society village called Dyottville and claimed that he did not have a monopoly but was work ing, through the village, to improve an indus try rife with drunkenness and other forms of social dysfunction. Dyottville was an attempted utopian com munity that not only was home for his workers but was also a home for those who operated the businesses that served those workers—as Carmita DeSolms Jones wrote—“a butcher shop and bakery; tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, carpenters, farmers, workers of every type ... Fifteen to twenty women were constantly em ployed in the kitchen, laundry and dairy.There was a medical department, an apothecary and surgical shop… ” Dyott encouraged marriage by giving married men homes with separate dormitories for single men and women. In all, there were fifty buildings.The use of alcohol was forbidden—except when the residents of Dyot tville used some of the good doctor’s medicines.

Jones said life was regulated even to when baths could be taken and how many could be taken in a week. Workers were on the job from 7 a.m. to noon with a one-hour break for din ner (we call it “lunch” today) and then back to job from 1-6 p.m., with a half-hour break. The chapel held three services on Sundays.The school, with trained teachers, had 150 students. The apprentices had to spend a certain number of hours in school every day. He decided his town needed a savings in stitution and created the Manual Labor Bank, using his personal assets as collateral. It opened without a state charter on February 2, 1836. But the Panic of 1837 (a depression in today’s terms) wiped him out. His bank and his businesses went belly-up and in 1839, Dyott was convicted of seven counts of fraud and was sentenced to three years in prison. He was pardoned by the governor after a year and a half. When Dyott returned home, he went to work in a store run by his sons selling drugs and anything else on sale in their store. He lived to be ninety years old, dying in 1861. Dyottville by then was gone but the Kensington factory stayed in operation throughout the century. Eventually there was no sign there had been factories or a village there. In 2011-2012, construction on Interstate 95 led to archaeological work that uncovered the foundations of some 19th century businesses including the foundations of some of the glass factory ovens at Dyottville. The Dyott bottles made there and in his other factories are rare and highly-prized today. In 2010, one of the bottles made for America’s Patent Medicine King was sold for more than $100,000.

Bob Priddy covered Missouri politics and government for forty years as the news director of the Missourinet statewide radio network. His most recent book is The Art of the Missouri Capitol, History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone. He is the past President of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

32 Missouri PHARMACIST | Volume 96, Issue II | August 2022