What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

“A Certificate from under her own Hand of the Genuineness of the above Pills.”

Hugh Gaine, the printer of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, and James Rivington, the printer of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, competed to sell subscriptions, to sell advertising, to sell books, to sell stationery, to sell printed blanks, to do job printing orders, … and to sell patent medicines.  In particular, they marketed and sold “KEYSER’s FAMOUS PILLS” for “perfectly eradicating every Degree of a certain Disease.”  Eighteenth-century readers understood that those code words referred to syphilis.

In November 1773, Gaine published a new salvo in the ongoing advertising war over Keyser’s Pills.  He expanded on his earlier advertisements, noting that he now “has in his Hands a Letter from the Widow Keyser, and a Certificate under her own Hand of the Genuineness of the above Pills.”  Furthermore, he declared that “any Person may have the Perusal of [those documents] by applying to him at his Book Store and Printing Office.”  That portion of the advertisement appeared within a decorative border.  Gaine also called attention to his notice with six manicules, one pointing to each letter of “KEYSER.”

Yet he still did not consider that sufficient to attract the attention of prospective customers and convince them to purchase the remedy from him rather than from Rivington or other purveyors.  Gaine’s primary competitor had been publishing advertisements that included descriptions of patients successfully treating that “DISEASE, not to be mentioned in a News-Paper” as well as rheumatism, apoplexies, asthma, and a “WHITE SWELLING.”  Rivington has also supplied William Bradford and Thomas Bradford, printers of the Pennsylvania Journal in Philadelphia, with a letter attesting that he supplied them with Keyser’s Pills imported “immediately from Mr. Keyser himself,” the son of the late doctor, “at Paris.”  That answered claims by Speakman and Carter, “Chemists and Druggists,” that they acquired their supply of Keyser’s Pills from James Cowper, “the only importer in London.”  In his most recent advertisement, Rivington proclaimed that he had “Certificates and Letters of the old Doctor, and Madame W. KEYSER, his Widow, and likewise of their Son, the present Monsieur Keyser, who has many Years prepared all the Pills sold by his Father.”  Like Gaine, Rivington invited the public to examine those documents at his printing office.

That apparently prompted Gaine to expand his advertisement once again.  Instead of merely presenting the option of seeing the letter and certificate he received from Keyser’s widow at his shop, he published transcriptions of both documents in his newspaper notice.  In the letter, Madame Keyser acknowledged her correspondence with Gaine and explained that the certificate “proves that the Polls I now send are of my Composition.”  The certificate was “Sealed with the Seal of my Arms, at Paris.”  Gaine included a representation of the seal to underscore the authenticity of the medicines he peddled.

When it came to advertising the goods and services available at their printing offices, Gaine and Rivington invested a significant amount of time and energy in promoting a particular patent medicine.  Their efforts suggest that Keyser’s Pills accounted for an important revenue stream to supplement their earnings from selling newspapers, advertising, books, stationery, blanks, and job printing.  They also seemed to follow and respond to advertisements placed by each other as well as others who sold the famous patent medicine.