History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morses Indian Root Pills | Page 2

1895 lists approximately 1,500. The
great majority of these factories were much smaller than Comstock;

one suspects, in fact, that most of them were no more than backroom
enterprises conducted by untrained, but ambitious, druggists who, with
parttime help, mixed up some mysterious concoctions and contrived
imaginative advertising schemes. A few of these businesses were
considerably larger than Comstock.
However, the Comstock company would seem to be typical of the more
strongly established patent-medicine manufacturers, and therefore a
closer examination of this particular enterprise should also illuminate
its entire industry.
*The Origin of the Business*
The Indian Root Pill business was carried on during most of its
existence by two members of the Comstock family--father and son--and
because of unusual longevity, this control by two generations extended
for over a century. The plant was also located in Morristown for
approximately ninety years. The Indian Root Pills, however, were not
actually originated by the Comstock family, nor were they discovered
in Morristown. Rather, the business had its genesis in New York City,
at a time when the city still consisted primarily of two-or three-story
buildings and did not extend beyond the present 42nd Street.
According to an affidavit written in 1851--and much of the history of
the business is derived from documents prepared in connection with
numerous lawsuits--the founder of the Comstock drug venture was
Edwin Comstock, sometime in or before 1833. Edwin, along with the
numerous other brothers who will shortly enter the picture, was a son
of Samuel Comstock, of Butternuts, Otsego County, New York.
Samuel, a fifth-generation descendant of William Comstock, one of the
pioneer settlers of New London, Connecticut, and ancestor of most of
the Comstocks in America, was born in East Lyme, Connecticut, a few
years before the Revolution, but sometime after the birth of Edwin in
1794 he moved to Otsego County, New York.
Edwin, in 1828, moved to Batavia, New York, where his son, William
Henry Comstock, was born on August 1, 1830. Within four or five
years, however, Edwin repaired to New York City, where he
established the extensive drug and medicine business that was to be
carried on by members of his family for over a century. Just why
Edwin performed this brief sojourn in Batavia, or where he made his
initial entry into the drug trade, is not clear, although the rapid growth

of his firm in New York City suggests that he had had previous
experience in that field. It is a plausible surmise that he may have
worked in Batavia in the drug store of Dr. Levant B. Cotes, which was
destroyed in the village-wide fire of April 19, 1833; the termination of
Edwin's career in Batavia might have been associated either with that
disaster or with the death of his wife in 1831.
The Comstocks also obviously had some medical tradition in their
family. Samuel's younger brother, John Lee Comstock, was trained as a
physician and served in that capacity during the War of 1812--although
he was to gain greater prominence as a historian and natural
philosopher. All five of Samuel's sons participated at least briefly in the
drug trade, while two of them also had careers as medical doctors. A
cousin of Edwin, Thomas Griswold Comstock (born 1829), also
became a prominent homeopathic physician and gynecologist in St.
Louis.[1] It might also be significant that the original home of the
Comstock family, in Connecticut, was within a few miles of the scene
of the discovery of the first patent medicine in America--Lee's "Bilious
Pills"--by Dr. Samuel Lee (1744-1805), of Windham, sometime prior to
1796.[2] This medicine enjoyed such a rapid success that it was soon
being widely imitated, and the Comstocks could not have been unaware
of its popularity.
So it seems almost certain that Edwin was no longer a novice when he
established his own drug business in New York City. Between 1833
and 1837 he employed his brother, Lucius S. Comstock (born in 1806),
as a clerk, and for the next fifteen years Lucius will figure very
conspicuously in this story. He not merely appended the designation
"M.D." to his name and claimed membership in the Medical Society of
the City of New York, but also described himself as a
Counsellor-at-Law.
Edwin, the founder of the business, did not live long to enjoy its
prosperity--or perhaps we should say that he was fortunate enough to
pass away before it experienced its most severe vicissitudes and trials.
After Edwin's death in 1837, Lucius continued the business in
partnership with another brother, Albert Lee, under the style of
Comstock & Co. Two more brothers, John Carlton (born 1819) and
George Wells (born 1820), were employed as clerks.
[Footnote 1: _National Cyclopedia of American Biography_, VII: 280.]

[Footnote 2: The Comstock brothers' grandmother, Esther Lee, was
apparently unrelated to Dr. Samuel