Old English Patent Medicines in America

Smithsonian Institution museum-bulletin history, verified by direct fetch of the Project Gutenberg transcription (the underlying print citation -- Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology, Paper 10, United States National Museum Bulletin 218, Smithsonian Institution, 1959, pp. 155-183 -- was cross-checked against independent bibliographic citations of the same bulletin, e.g. a University of Wisconsin pharmacy-history bibliography and a Journal of Economic History citation, both giving the identical bulletin number, paper number, and page range). Directly quoted verbatim on the fetched page: Turlington's own stated reason for the 1754 bottle redesign, 'to prevent the villainy of some persons who, buying up my empty bottles, have basely and wickedly put therein a vile spurious counterfeit sort'; the description of the post-1754 bottle as 'pear-shaped, with sloping shoulders, and molded into the glass in crude raised capitals were the proprietor's name and his claim of the kings royal patent'; the identification of Compound Tincture of Benzoin, U.S.P., as the balsam's modern unofficial pharmacopoeial descendant; and the United States Dispensatory's quoted assessment that the tincture is 'occasionally employed internally as a stimulating expectorant in chronic bronchitis' and has also been 'recommended in chronic dysentery ... but is of doubtful utility.' Also the underlying record for the case's lead media asset, a period-brochure bottle illustration (Wikimedia Commons file BalsomOfLifeBottles.jpg, credited on Commons to this same Gutenberg-hosted text).