[Illustration:  FIGURE 18.—­German circular for Judson’s Mountain Herb Pills.]

The Comstocks were almost as early.  The first date they printed almanacs is not known, but by 1853 it was a regular practice, for the order book of that year shows that large batches of almanacs, frequently 500 copies, were routinely enclosed with every substantial order.  Over their entire history it is quite reasonable that somewhere in the vicinity of one billion almanacs must have been distributed by the Comstock Company and its predecessors.  As a matter of fact, back in the 1850s there was not merely a Comstock but also a Judson almanac.  One version of the latter was the “Rescue of Tula,” which recounted Dr. Cunard’s rescue of the Aztec princess and his reward in the form of the secret of the Mountain Herb Pills.  In the 1880s, Morse’s Indian Root Pill almanac was a 34-page pamphlet, about two thirds filled with advertising and testimonials—­including the familiar story of the illness of Dr. Morse’s father and the dramatic return of his son with the life-saving herbs—­but also containing calendars, astronomical data, and some homely good advice.  Odd corners were filled with jokes, of which the following was a typical specimen: 

     “Pa,” said a lad to his father, “I have often read of people poor
     but honest; why don’t they sometimes say, ‘rich but honest’”?

     “Tut, tut, my son, nobody would believe them,” answered the father.

Before 1900 the detailed story of the discovery of Dr. Morse’s pills was abridged to a brief summary, and during the 1920s this tale was abandoned altogether, although until the end the principal ingredients were still identified as natural herbs and roots used as a remedy by the Indians.  In more recent years the character and purpose of Dr. Morse’s pills also changed substantially.  As recently as 1918, years after the passage of the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906, they were still being recommended as a cure for: 

Biliousness
Dyspepsia
Constipation
Sick Headache
Scrofula
Kidney Disease
Liver Complaint
Jaundice
Piles
Dysentery
Colds
Boils
Malarial Fever
Flatulency
Foul Breath
Eczema
Gravel
Worms
Female Complaints
Rheumatism
Neuralgia
La Grippe
Palpitation
Nervousness

Further, two entire pages were taken in the almanac to explain how, on the authority of “the celebrated Prof.  La Roche of Paris,” appendicitis could be cured by the pills without resort to the surgeon’s knife.

Besides the almanacs, almost every known form of advertising in the preradio era was employed.  Announcements were inserted in newspapers—­apparently mostly rural newspapers—­all over the country; the two remedies pushed most intensively were the Indian Root Pills and Judson’s Mountain Herb Worm Tea.  The latter always bore a true likeness of Tezuco, the Aztec chief who had originally conferred the secret of the medicine upon Dr. Cunard.  Besides the Mountain Herb Worm Tea, there were also Mountain Herb Pills; it is not clear how the pills differed from the tea, but they were recommended primarily as a remedy for