MO Pharmacist November 2022

Now&Then

Fathers of Patent Medicines

C by BOB PRIDDY Chemical medical treatments for ills and ailments spread from continental Europe to the British Isles in the Seventeenth Century, then to the “colonies” in the eighteenth century. Peter Elmer has written that “The proponents of chemical medicine threatened to overthrow the classical system of Galen, and to destroy in the process the institutional authority claimed by those who practised the learned art of humor al medicine,” the 2,000 year old philosophy that illness is not the result of supernatural causes but an imbalance of the four bodily fluids—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Elmer says Ireland became “a magnet” for medical men after 1660, particularly the College of Physicians in Dublin that named Timothy Byfield as a fellow in 1676. Byfield was the son of ejected Puritan minister Richard Byfield and appeared to have inherited his father’s contrarian sympathies. Richard Byfield was among the hundreds of Cal vinist Puritanministers expelled from their pulpits in 1662 after the Parliament approved the Act of Uniformity that required prayers, administration of sacraments, and other church rites to conform to the practices of the Church of England. Timothy’s wife was the daughter of another ejected minister.

water despite a serious drought. Wicker sampled the water and found it bitter. A salty substance later identified as mag nesium sulfate was around the pond where the water had evaporated. His cattle would bathe in the water although they would not drink it—and he noticed any wounds they had healed faster than they would have healed otherwise. Because Wicker tasted the water, the story goes, he became the first person to experience the medicinal qualities of it. He told others about it. The community is Epsom. The President of the Epsom Salt Council, Jim Hill, has written, “From this discovery, many in England began to travel to Epsom to experience numerous health benefits, particularly the relief from the painful symptoms of gout or for the natural purgative effects of the water.”The waters also became known for their purga tive/laxative effects. Epsom rather quickly became a spa town. The healthful water was not officially known as Epsom Salt until 1695 when physiologist and anatomist Nehemiah Grew gave a name to the “bitter purging salts.” Grew wrote a book, Nature and Use of Salt Contained in Epsom and Such Other Waters . A year later, after more similar springs were discovered throughout the country, he was granted a patent The spring in Epsom. The waters provided numerous health benefits and became known for their purgative/laxative effects.

Byfield became a promoter of the benefits of spas and spa waters after going to London where he also began to develop his own proprietary medicines. Alan Finley Mackintosh of the University of Leeds School of Medicine has written that the sale of “pre-prepared medicines for self-medication” were being sold “pre-packaged, branded and at a fixed price” by the mid-1600s. But it was not uncommon for more than one entrepreneur to produce a medicine with the same name. Nendick’s Pills, for example, were marketed late in the Sev enteenth Century and reappeared late in the Eighteenth. Circumstances such as that led to the patenting of medicines. The history of medicine patenting has roots in a small town southwest of London in 1618 when cowherd Henry Wicker noticed his cows refused to drink from a pool of

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