Before the Blood Builder pills were taken, all their users were advised to have their bowels thoroughly cleansed by a laxative medicine and, happily, the company also made an excellent preparation for this purpose—­Dr. Howard’s Golden Grains.  While the good doctor was modern enough—­the circular quoted from was printed in the 1890s—­to recognize the importance of the healthy activity of the sexual apparatus, such a suggestion should not be carried too far—­so we find that the pills were also unrivaled for building up systems shattered by debauchery, excesses, self-abuse or disease.  Along with the pills themselves was recommended a somewhat hardy regimen, including fresh air, adequate sleep, avoidance of lascivious thoughts, and bathing the private parts and buttocks twice daily in ice-cold water.

[Illustration:  FIGURE 17.—­Card used in advertising Kingsland’s Chlorinated Tablets.]

A few years after their initial introduction, Dr. Howard’s Blood Builder Pills somehow became “electric”—­this word surrounded by jagged arrows prominently featured on the outer wrapper—­although the character of the improvement which added this new quality was not explained anywhere.  The literature accompanying these remedies explained that “in the evening of an active, earnest and successful life, and in order that the public at large might participate in the benefit of his discoveries,” Dr. Howard graciously imparted to the proprietors the composition, methods of preparation, and modes of using these medicines.  In other words, he was obviously a public benefactor of the same stamp as Dr. Morse and Dr. Cunard—­although by the final years of the century, the old story about the long absence from home, the extended travels in remote lands, and the sudden discovery of some remarkable native remedy would probably have sounded a trifle implausible.

Putting the Pills Through

Given the characteristics of the patent-medicine business, its most difficult and essential function was selling—­or what the Comstocks and their representatives frequently described in their letters as “putting the pills through.”  During the full century within which Dr. Morse’s Indian Root Pills and their companion remedies were distributed widely over North America and, later, over the entire world, almost every form of advertising and publicity was utilized.  And it is a strong presumption that the total costs of printing and publicity were much larger than those of manufacture and packaging.

Initially, the selling was done largely by “travelers” calling directly upon druggists and merchants, especially those in rural communities.  All of the Comstock brothers, with the exception perhaps of Lucius, seem to have traveled a large part of their time, covering the country from the Maritime Provinces to the Mississippi Valley, and from Ontario—­or Canada West—­to the Gulf.  Their letters to the “home office” show that they were frequently absent for extended periods, visiting points which at the very dawn of the railroad era, in the 1840s and 1850s, must have been remote indeed.  In the surviving letters we find occasional references to lame horses and other vicissitudes of travel, and one can also imagine the rigors of primitive trains, lake and river steamers, stagecoaches, and rented carriages, not to mention ill-prepared meals and dingy hotel rooms.