light
upon the patent-medicine industry of the United States during its
heyday.

The Comstock business, of course, was far from unique. Hundreds of
manufacturers of proprietary remedies flourished during the 1880s and
1890s the Druggists' Directory for 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