[27] Frank L. Mott, _American journalism_, New York, 1941, pp. 9-10.
[28] _Boston News-Letter_, Boston, February 9, 1708.
Patent-medicine advertising in the _News-Letter_ prior to 1750 was infrequent. Apothecary Zabdiel Boylston, who a decade later was to earn a role of esteem in medical history by introducing the inoculation for smallpox, announced in 1711 that he would sell "the true Lockyers Pills."[29] This was an unpatented remedy first concocted half a century earlier by a "licensed physitian" in London. The next year Boylston repeated this appeal,[30] and in the same advertisement listed other wares of the same type. He had two varieties, Golden and Plain, of the Spirit of Scurvy-Grass; he had "The Bitter Stomach Drops," worm potions for children; and a wonderful multipurpose nostrum, "the Royal Honey Water, an Excellent Perfume, good against Deafness, and to Make Hair grow...." The antecedents of this regal liquid are unknown. Boylston also announced for sale "The Best [Daffy's] Elixir Salutis in Bottles, or by the Ounce." This is a provocative listing. It may mean merely that the apothecary would break a bottle to sell a dose of the Elixir, which was often the custom. But it also may suggest that Boylston was making the Elixir himself, or was having it prepared by a journeyman. This latter interpretation would place Boylston well at the head of a long parade of American imitators of the old English patent medicines.
Other such shipments of the packaged English remedies may have come to New England on the latest ships from London during the next several decades, but they got scant play in the advertising columns of the small 4-page _Boston News-Letter_. Another reference to "Doctor Anthony Daffey's Original Elixer Salutis" occurs in 1720.[31] Ten years later, Stoughton's Drops were announced for sale "by Public Vendue," along with feather beds, looking glasses, and leather breeches.[32] Nearly a decade more was to pass before Bateman's Pectoral Drops showed up in the midst of another general list, including cheese, and shoes, and stays.[33] Not until 1748 did an advertisement appear in which several of the old English nostrums rubbed shoulders with each other.[34] Then Silvester Gardiner, at the Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar, asserted that "by appointment of the Patentee" he was enabled to sell "Genuine British Oyl, _Bateman's_ Pectoral Drops, and _Hooper's_ Female Pills, and the True _Lockyer's_ Pills."