Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/90

80 centuries the manufacture of "secret" preparations increased enormously, and "choice receipts" were sold for large sums. Thus, the English Government paid one thousand pounds to one Johanna Stevens for her mysterious specific for the stone, which turned out to be calcined snail-shells.

Indeed, the sale of nostrums in England had now grown to he a most flourishing and profitable business. To such proportion did the trade grow that at last the Crown stepped in and demanded a duty and a restriction upon prepared drugs.

The two statutes which originated and regulated the right of compounding preparations of medicines were passed in 1783. The first act granted to his Majesty "a stamp duty upon all licenses to be taken by certain persons uttering and vending medicines, and certain stamp duties on all medicines sold under such licenses, or under authority of his Majesty's letters patent, except such as had served a regular apprenticeship to any surgeon or apothecary as chemist and druggist."

Two years later, by act, 25 George III, chap. 22, other and more liberal conditions and privileges were granted, as follows: "Any person whatsoever who has, or claims to have, any secret art or sole right of compounding preparations of drugs, and advertising and recommending the same as specifics for the cure or relief of any complaint or malady, shall affix a Government stamp to the vials, vessels, or inclosures containing them."

Any one who violated the statute or who defrauded the state of the stamp duty was adjudged a felon. In the strong words of the statute, such a person "shall suffer death, as in case of felony, without benefit of clergy."

These statutes remained on the books, with little alteration or amendment, for nearly a hundred years. In 1868 the Pharmacy act was passed "to regulate the sale of poisons for the safety of the public." But section sixteen expressly says that "nothing heretofore contained shall extend to or interfere with the making or dealings in patent medicines." In 1875 another act was passed to the effect that, "a uniform duty of five shillings be payable throughout Great Britain."

The general patent acts of the United States were passed in 1790. They follow, in many respects, the old English legislation on the subject. The sole right of compounding medicines was allowed under the phrase, "composition of matter." What may be patented? The law says, "any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter." See the result. To take a noteworthy example: a patent was denied to the discoverers of the anæsthetic powers of chloroform and ether, but quacks, with their nostrums, could take out patents. In 1874 a law was passed abrogating the practice of copyrighting labels for patent