e span of horses, before a beautiful coach,
stood before the door, out of which alighted a noble and
elegant-looking man. In a moment's time he entered the room, and
embraced the hand of his dear father and mother. She clasped her
arms around his neck and fainted away.

The Doctor, surprised to see his father so nearly gone, immediately
went to his coach, taking therefrom various plants and roots, which
he had learned from the Red Men of the forest as being good for all
diseases, and gave them to his father, and in about two hours
afterwards he was much relieved.... Two days afterwards he was much
better, and the third day he could walk about the room ...and now
we behold him a strong, active man, and in the bloom of health, and
at the age of ninety-five able to ride in one day thirty-five
miles, in order to spend his birthday with this celebrated Doctor,
his son.

The foregoing event was supposed to have occurred some years before
1847, as the elder Mr. Morse's ninety-fifth birthday referred to was
celebrated on November 20, 1847, when he was still hale and hearty. The
old gentleman was also said to be enormously wealthy, "with an income of
about five hundred thousand dollars annually, and the owner of a number
of fine, elegant ships, which sailed in different directions to every
part of the world." Dr. Morse, who was the first man to establish that
all diseases arise from the impurity of the blood, subsequently
discarded his regular practice of medicine and, as a boon to mankind,
devoted his entire energy to the manufacture of Dr. Morse's Indian Root
Pills.

[Illustration: FIGURE 6.-"A Short History of Dr. Morse's Father." A copy
was inserted in every box of the pills.]

This story, which was first disseminated as early as the late 1850s, was
an entire fabrication. Throughout the patent-medicine era it was the
common practice to ascribe an Indian, or at least some geographically
remote, origin to all of these nostrums and panaceas. In the words of
James Harvey Young, in his book on the Social History of Patent
Medicines:[4]

From the 1820's onward the Indian strode nobly through the American
patent-medicine wilderness. Hiawatha helped a hair restorative and
Pocahontas blessed a bitters. Dr. Fall spent twelve years with the
Creeks to discover why no Indian had ever perished of consumption.
Edwin Eastman found a blood sy