History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morses Indian Root Pills | Page 8

with other advertising innovations. The
patent-medicine business, however, represented merely one of his
wide-ranging interests; he was also a co-owner of vessels plying the
Great Lakes, a publisher, and a dabbler in such occult arts as
Mesmerism, Phrenology, and Morse's theory of the electric telegraph.
In 1855 he appeared as the proprietor of the _Daily Republic_, and it
was perhaps his growing involvement in publishing that led him to turn
his drug business over to Moore.
While we know this much about Moore's antecedents, a very
considerable mystery remains. If Moore was the proprietor of his own
apparently prosperous drug and medicine business in Buffalo in 1854,
with White as one of his clerks, how did it happen that in the following
year White represented himself to the Comstocks as the sole owner of
Dr. Morse's (Moore's) Indian Root Pills? And Moore, although he
initially disputed this claim, left his own business in Buffalo and
ultimately joined White and the Comstocks, not even in the capacity of
a partner, but merely as an employee.
These events would seem, however, to date the origin of the Indian
Root Pills fairly closely. Moore was already manufacturing them in
Buffalo prior to White's initial agreement with the Comstocks, but as he
did not mention them by name in his Commercial Advertiser
announcement in 1854, it is a fair presumption that the pills were new
at this time. But they must have caught on very rapidly to induce the
Comstocks to enter a partnership with White, under his name, when he
contributed only the Indian Root Pills but no cash or other tangible
assets.
[Illustration: FIGURE 7.--Wrapper for Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills,
A.J. White & Co., sole proprietor.]
[Illustration: FIGURE 8.--Indian Root Pill labels: _a_, original used by

Moore, the originator of the pills; _b_, initial label used by A.J. White
& Co. under Comstock ownership, 1855-1857; _c_, revised label
adopted by Comstocks in June 1857 after Moore changed the color of
his label to blue; _d_, label adopted by Moore and White for selling in
competition with the Comstocks, 1859. Obviously printed from the
same plate as _c_, but with an additional signature just above the
Indian on horseback; _e_, new label adopted by the Comstocks after
the departure of Moore and White; _f_, label used in the final years of
the business; _g_, label, in Spanish, used in final years for export trade
to Latin America.]
While manufacturing the pills in Buffalo, Moore had been packaging
them under a yellow label bearing a pictorial representation of the
British coat-of-arms, flanked on one side by an Indian and on the other
by a figure probably supposed to represent a merchant or a sea captain.
The labels also described Moore as the proprietor, "without whose
signature none can be genuine." And after the formation of A.J. White
& Co. and the purported transfer of Dr. Morse's pills to it, Moore still
continued to sell the same medicine and to denounce the
White-Comstock product as spurious. The latter was packaged under a
white label showing an Indian warrior riding horseback and was signed
"A.J. White & Co." While the color was shortly changed to blue and
the name of the proprietor several times amended through the ensuing
vicissitudes, the label otherwise remained substantially unchanged for
as long as the pills continued to be manufactured, or for over 100 years.
The nuisance of Moore's independent manufacture of the pills was
temporarily eliminated when, on June 21, 1858, Moore was hired by
A.J. White & Co.[5] and abandoned competition with them. The
Comstocks, in employing him, insisted upon a formal, written
agreement whereunder Moore agreed to discontinue any manufacture
or sale of the pills and to assign all rights and title therein, together with
any related engravings, cuts, or designs, to A.J. White & Co. As
previously stated, the two Comstock brothers, Judson, and White had
offered either to sell the Indian Root Pill business in its entirety to
Moore, or to buy it from him. Moore's employment by A.J. White &
Co. presumably followed his election not to purchase and operate the
business himself.
So far so good. The Comstocks' claim to the Indian Root Pills through

the 75 percent controlled A.J. White & Co. now seemed absolutely
secure and the disparagement of their products at an end. But new
dissension must have occurred, for on New Year's Day of 1859,
without prior notice, Moore and White absented themselves from the
Comstock office, taking with them as many of the books, accounts,
records, and other assets of A.J. White & Co. as they could carry.
Forthwith they established a business of their own, also under the name
of A.J. White & Co., at 10 Courtlandt Street, where they resumed the
manufacture and distribution of Dr. Morse's Indian