such necessary skill and knowledge about any new manufacture as would prevent any perpetuation of the monopoly. It was during the reign of Queen Anne that the law officers began to require that specifications should be filed before letters patent were issued. But the condition was not by any means uniformly or intelligently insisted upon, as will be seen immediately in the case of certain patented medicines.
The term "patent medicines," as now popularly used, means generally secret medicines, and the meaning is therefore in exact contradiction to the expression. Truthfully to declare the composition of many of these proprietary compounds would ruin their sale. Not that the ingredients are often improper or injurious; this rarely occurs; but because the success of these remedies depends in most instances rather on the mystery with which the makers can surround them than on their exceptional merit.
But some old medicines which became popular, including a few the reputation of which lives to this day, were actually patented. The first compound medicine for which a patent was granted under the Act of 1624 was No. 388, and was dated October 22, 1711. It was granted to Timothy Byfield for his sal oleosum volatile, "which by abundant experience hath been found very helpfull and beneficiall as well in uses medicinall as others." No particulars of the ingredients or method of manufacture are given.
Stoughton's "great cordial elixir" comes next, in 1712, and there is nothing more in the proprietary medicine line until 1722, when a patent for Robert Eaton's Styptick medicine appears. In that year a curious patent was granted to George Sinclair for "raising and cultivating the plants which are commonly
