ent-medicine almanac was so
common that one could walk into any drug store and pick up three or four
of them. Credit for the origination of the free patent-medicine almanac
has been ascribed to Cyrenius C. Bristol, founder of the firm which
Moore later took over and therefore an indirect predecessor of the
Indian Root Pills. Whether or not this is strictly accurate, it is known
that Bristol's Sarsaparilla Almanac was being printed as early as 1843
and by 1848 had expanded into an edition of 64 pages.

[Illustration: FIGURE 18.--German circular for Judson's Mountain Herb
Pills.]

The Comstocks were almost as early. The first date they printed almanacs
is not known, but by 1853 it was a regular practice, for the order book
of that year shows that large batches of almanacs, frequently 500
copies, were routinely enclosed with every substantial order. Over their
entire history it is quite reasonable that somewhere in the vicinity of
one billion almanacs must have been distributed by the Comstock Company
and its predecessors. As a matter of fact, back in the 1850s there was
not merely a Comstock but also a Judson almanac. One version of the
latter was the "Rescue of Tula," which recounted Dr. Cunard's rescue of
the Aztec princess and his reward in the form of the secret of the
Mountain Herb Pills. In the 1880s, Morse's Indian Root Pill almanac was
a 34-page pamphlet, about two thirds filled with advertising and
testimonials--including the familiar story of the illness of Dr. Morse's
father and the dramatic return of his son with the life-saving
herbs--but also containing calendars, astronomical data, and some homely
good advice. Odd corners were filled with jokes, of which the following
was a typical specimen:

"Pa," said a lad to his father, "I have often read of people poor
but honest; why don't they sometimes say, 'rich but honest'"?

"Tut, tut, my son, nobody would believe them," answered the father.

Before 1900 the detailed story of the discovery of Dr. Morse's pills was
abridged to a brief summary, and during the 1920s this tale was
abandoned altogether, although until the end the principal ingredients
were still identified as natural herbs and roots used as a remedy by the
Indians. In more recent years the character and purpose of Dr. Morse's
pills also changed substantially. As recently as 1918, years after the
passage of the Federal Food and Drug Act of 1906, they were still being
recommended as