A few years after their initial introduction, Dr. Howard's Blood Builder
Pills somehow became "electric"--this word surrounded by jagged arrows
prominently featured on the outer wrapper--although the character of the
improvement which added this new quality was not explained anywhere. The
literature accompanying these remedies explained that "in the evening of
an active, earnest and successful life, and in order that the public at
large might participate in the benefit of his discoveries," Dr. Howard
graciously imparted to the proprietors the composition, methods of
preparation, and modes of using these medicines. In other words, he was
obviously a public benefactor of the same stamp as Dr. Morse and Dr.
Cunard--although by the final years of the century, the old story about
the long absence from home, the extended travels in remote lands, and
the sudden discovery of some remarkable native remedy would probably
have sounded a trifle implausible.

*Putting the Pills Through*

Given the characteristics of the patent-medicine business, its most
difficult and essential function was selling--or what the Comstocks and
their representatives frequently described in their letters as "putting
the pills through." During the full century within which Dr. Morse's
Indian Root Pills and their companion remedies were distributed widely
over North America and, later, over the entire world, almost every form
of advertising and publicity was utilized. And it is a strong
presumption that the total costs of printing and publicity were much
larger than those of manufacture and packaging.

Initially, the selling was done largely by "travelers" calling directly
upon druggists and merchants, especially those in rural communities. All
of the Comstock brothers, with the exception perhaps of Lucius, seem to
have traveled a large part of their time, covering the country from the
Maritime Provinces to the Mississippi Valley, and from Ontario--or
Canada West--to the Gulf. Their letters to the "home office" show that
they were frequently absent for extended periods, visiting points which
at the very dawn of the railroad era, in the 1840s and 1850s, must have
been remote indeed. In the surviving letters we find occasional
references to lame horses and other vicissitudes of travel, and one can
also imagine the rigors of primitive trains, lake and river steamers,
stagecoaches, and rented carriages, not to mention ill-prepared meals
and dingy hotel