he authorized their sale by proprietary manufacturers or was himself rewarded in any way are questions for speculation.  The versatile Dr. Larzetti seems to have experimented both with impotency and deafness, but his ear oil—­a number of specimens of which were still on hand in the abandoned factory—­was identical in every respect with Dr. McNair’s oil, as the labels and directions, aside only from the names of the doctors, were exactly the same for both preparations.  In fact, some careless printer had even made up a batch of circulars headed “Dr. Mc Nair’s Acoustic Oil” but concluding with the admonition, “Ask for Larzetti’s Acoustic Oil and take no other.”  Presumably simple Americans who were distrustful of foreigners would take Mc Nair’s oil, but more sophisticated persons, aware of the accomplishments of doctors in Rome and Vienna, might prefer Larzetti’s preparation.

[Illustration:  FIGURE 23.—­Dr. McNair’s and Dr. Larzetti’s acoustic oil apparently were identical in every respect.  Labels and directions, with the difference only of the doctors’ names, were quite obviously printed from the same type.]

As the century moved along, the Comstock factory at Morristown reduced the number of remedies it manufactured, and concentrated on the ones that were most successful, which included, besides the Indian Root Pills, Judson’s Mountain Herb Pills, Judson’s Worm Tea, Carlton’s Condition Powders, Carlton’s Nerve & Bone Liniment, and Kingsland’s Chlorinated Tablets.  At some undisclosed point, Carlton’s Nerve & Bone Liniment for Horses, originally registered with the Smithsonian Institution on June 30, 1851, ceased to be a medicine for animals and became one for humans.  And sometime around 1920 the Judson name disappeared, the worm medicine thereafter was superseded by Comstock’s Worm Pellets.  Long before this, Judson had been transposed into somewhat of a mythical character—­“old Dr. Judson”—­who had devised the Dead Shot Worm Candy on the basis of seventy years’ medical experience.

During the final years of the Comstock business in Morristown, in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, only three items were manufactured and sold:  the Indian Root Pills, the Dead Shot Worm Pellets and Comstock’s N & B Liniment.[12] The worm pellets had been devised by Mrs. Hill, “an old English nurse of various and extended experience in the foundling hospitals of Great Britain.”

Besides its chemicals and herbs, the Comstock factory was a heavy consumer of pillboxes and bottles.  While the company advertised, in its latter years, that “our pills are packaged in metal containers—­not in cheap wooden boxes,” they were, in fact, packaged for many decades in small oval boxes made of a thin wooden veneer.  These were manufactured by Ira L. Quay of East Berne, New York, at a price of 12c per gross.  The pill factory often must have been a little slow in paying, for Quay was invariably prodding for prompt remittance, as in this letter of December 25, 1868: