dian Root Pills, the printing press was just as important a
contributor as the pill-mixing machine.

*The Final Years*

When William Henry Comstock, Sr., moved the Indian Root Pill business to
Morristown, in 1867, he was--at age 37--at least approaching middle
life. Yet he was still to remain alive, healthy, and in direct charge of
the medicine business for more than half a century longer. And the
golden era of the patent-medicine business may be said to have coincided
very closely with Mr. Comstock's active career--from about 1848 to 1919.

[Footnote 12: However, additional items were manufactured by the Dr.
Howard Medicine Co., affiliated with the Comstock factory in Brockville.
Also, during World War II the company accepted an Army contract for the
manufacture and packaging of foot powder.]

[Illustration: FIGURE 24.--In its final years the Comstock factory
discontinued most of its old remedies and concentrated upon the three
most successful: Comstock's Dead Shot Worm Pellets, Comstock's N. & B.
Liniment, and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills.]

While no schedule of sales, net income, or financial results are
available, the fragmentary records make it obvious that the business
continued to flourish beyond World War I, and long after the passage of
the first Food and Drug Act--in 1906. The almanacs were still printed as
recently as 1938; while the labels and other advertising matter
abandoned their ornate nineteenth-century style and assumed a distinctly
modern aspect--to the extent of introducing comic-style picture stories,
featuring the small boy who lacked energy to make the little league
baseball team (he had worms), and the girl who lacked male admirers
because of pimples on her face (she suffered from irregular
elimination). Sales volume of the Morristown factory, however,
apparently did reach a peak early in the present century--perhaps around
1910--and began a more rapid decline during the 1920s. During this same
period the geographical character of the market shifted significantly;
as domestic orders dropped off, a very substantial foreign business,
particularly in Latin America, sprang up. While this did not compensate
fully for the loss of domestic sales, it did provide a heavy volume that
undoubtedly prolonged the life of the Indian Root Pill factory by
several decades.

William Henry Comstock, Sr., who first came to Brockville in 1860, at a
time when the struggle with White for the control of the pil