1964
Radio Script #610
Little Talks #610, April 12, 1964
When Larry’s Drug Store recently moved from the east side of Main Street to its new location on the west side, I had an opportunity to examine some of the old prescription books that had once belonged to the old store in the Phoenix Block, kept by Waterville’s mid-nineteenth century pharmacist, William Dyer. Twelve years ago, when Bob Dexter operated that drug store in the Phoenix Block, he let me examine the store’s very earliest prescriptions, and on the occasion of the store’s hundredth anniversary I talked about Prescription No. 1 and others during the first year of William Dyer’s tenancy of the old Phoenix Block in 1850. I did not find that first book of pasted prescriptions among the big collection discarded at Larry’s. I hope Bob Dexter or someone else preserved it, for it is an important historical document.
At Larry’s I did find an early book in which the first prescription is No. 390. It furnished me with somewhat of a puzzle. In the book are pasted printed prescription slips of two different apothecaries, J.H. Plaisted and Company, and William Dyer. The Maine Business Directory of 1852 lists both as having drug stores in Waterville in that year. There is no way of telling the year when Prescription No. 390 was written, because at that time prescriptions were not dated. but because one prescription pasted in this old book is covered by a letter from a physician that does carry a date, we can deduce that No. 390 was written in 1852. The dated prescription is No. 896 and was issued on January 22, 1857.
Now comes another puzzle. The man who wrote the letter to Apothecary Plaisted was a man whose name appears on a number of these prescriptions, Dr. J. H. North. The chapter on Medicine in the Waterville Centennial History mentions no such physician. It does tell us about Dr. J.F. Noyes, a name fairly close to J.H. North. But there can be no doubt about the signature. because it occurs clearly at least a dozen times. It is definitely J.H. North, and he was certainly practicing medicine in Waterville in 1852.
Dr. North’s letter to Plaisted in January, 1857 said: “Dear Plaisted: Send me by bearer 1 quart Spirits Nitre, 4 ounces Red Bark, t ounce of sulphur quinine, and the following prescription.” That prescription was made up of designated quantities of hydrocyanic acid, syrup of ipecac, tincture of blood root, syrup of wild cherry, and morphine. Under his signature Dr. North had written: “One quart of best Old Holland gin.”
As I have previously pointed out on this program, drug prescriptions 100 years ago were not always signed by a physician. In fact in this particular book, in which prescriptions are pasted, five to a page for more than a hundred pages, they are more often unsigned. Some are on printed slips supplied by the druggist, but by far the larger number are on loose pieces of paper of various sizes, colors and texture. Some of the more common drugs called for in the prescriptions were potassium iodide, arsenic, quinine, chloroform, ipecac. gum arabic, digitalis, gentian root, spirits of ammonia. camphor, tincture of aconite and nux vomica. Many of the prescriptions called for alcohol and often they told how many pills or powders were to be made.
Prohibition was new in Maine in 1852, and I suspect more than one imbiber used the device of a prescription to get his liquor, especially since those prescriptions could be made up by the druggist himself without a physi~ian’s signature. So in this old book we find prescription after prescription calling for nothing except liquor. Here is the way some of them read: “Quart Best Port wine, Best old Port, one pint Brandy, one quart Madeira wine. 2 qt. West Indies Rum, 1 quart New England Run.” In the whole book there is no mention of whiskey.
In 1857, for some reason. the Waterville pharmacies were filling prescriptions issued by a Dr. Goodspeed. The blanks furnished him by C.A. and J.D. White, druggists in Gardiner, are the only printed slips in the book that carry the date, the name of the doctor and the name of the patient. On April 28, 1857 Dr. Goodspeed issued a prescription for James Hill. On May 7 he gave one to Mrs. Hooper, and gave her another on May 22.
It seems that this book, ending with Prescription No. 1241, ran through the year 1857. In that case the number of prescriptions made up in the old Dyer store during eight full years averaged only a little more than 150 a year. Quite different from the volume of business now done over the prescription counter in any Waterville drug store.
Many records of the old Dyer drug store have now been lost forever. It would be interesting to know something more about William Dyer’s business in 1852. What was in his stock except drugs? What patent medicines had then come on the market? Did he sell tobacco and cigars? We think not, because Waterville then had three cigar makers, and at least one large tobacco store that featured imported briar pipes. Did Dyer sell toilet articles? We doubt it, because there were very few such articles for sale anywhere in 1852. There were no cosmetics, no nail polishes, no hair preparations. About the only article of that kind then advertised was eau de cologne. Dyer probably sold no candy. There were two fruit and confectionary stores within 100 feet of him on Main Street. How a man could get a living by putting up 150 prescriptions a year is inconceivable. Surely William Dyer must have sold something else.
In the early days, fifty years before Dyer’s time, the apothecaries were the doctors themselves. The first drug store in Waterville was started by Dr. Moses Appleton in 1798. The same was true of some of the later doctors, notably Dr. Samuel Plaisted, who married Mary Jane, daughter of Appleton. But William Dyer was not a physician. He got his living by operating a drug store. It would be interesting to know what he sold in it.
One of the greatest benefactors of our City, of Colby College, of the Good Will Homes and Schools, and of other Maine institutions, was Dr. George G. Averill. During their lifetime Dr. and Mrs. Averill gave away a great deal of money that did, and and is still doing, a lot of good.
Thirty-five years ago a magazine editor tried to get Dr. Averill to write a sketch of his life, which already in 1928 had included his successful management of the Keyes Fibre Company, extensive business interests in California, and the watchful care of an increasing fortune. The way Dr. Averill replied to the editor is typical of the man, who persistently avoided the limelight. It was my privilege not long ago to see that reply that the good doctor wrote in December, 1928. This is what he said: “The story of my life can be of no earthly interest to anyone but myself. I rarely bore people as yet by telling my story, but very shortly I shall reach the age when boring other people is a favorite pastime. However, good or bad, successful or otherwise, my life has certainly been varied. Starting at the time of my father’s death, when I was eight years old, badly handicapped mentally, and still worse financially, I have blundered along just fifty-one years since that date, and I have always been at least one jump ahead of the sheriff.
“I attribute what little success I have had to a wholesome fear of debt. Only once have I been in debt. and that was my last year in medical school. That year I was obliged to borrow $300. if I was to graduate with my class. That made it possible for me to get my M.D. degree when I was 23 years old. The first month I practiced medicine I earned. at the meager fees paid to a country physician in 1892, a total of eighty dollars. and in no single month since have I ever earned less.”
When a majority of Americans think today they must have everything at once — all they can possibly get delivered to them on the installment plan — it might be well for more of us to remember how one of the wealthiest men who ever lived in Waterville felt about debt. For Dr. Averill, the way to financial success was always to spend a little less than one earns. The way to failure and disgrace was to get into debt.
A long time ago I told on this program how Sam and Nettie Burleigh. as young children, started a little paper that eventually grew into a full size weekly, published in Vassalboro and called the Kennebec Valley News. I now want to tell you a little about that paper, and to do so I turn to the issue of April 5, 1892, which carried the following masthead: “Kennebec Valley News. Subscription price one dollar a year. Published Tuesdays by the Kennebec Valley News Co., Vassalboro, Maine, Samuel Burleigh, Editor-in-Chief.”
In that issue Sam presented an interesting editorial that said: “It was our intention when we started the News not to enter into partisan politics. But, when we see men, prominent in state affairs, whose records are without blemish and whose character is above suspicion, made the objects of malignant personal vilification, we believe the time has come to give the News a place in this contest. If harmony among Republicans is really desired, the Combination whose headquarters is located at Augusta can have it any day by calling off their dogs. Gov. Burleigh’s friends have desired a fair and courteous campaign. It is not their fault that they are not getting it. ”
A controversial figure in Maine politics in 1892 was Joseph Manley, the Republican boss of Maine. Sam Burleigh had no use for him, and in another editorial in that same issue of the News he had this to say: “Replicans all over Maine are becoming heartily sick and disgusted at the manner in which Manley is using the organization of the party to further his own political ends. Holding the chairmanship of the Republican State Committee, he has been entrusted with large powers, including the handling of party funds. He is expected to use those powers for the benefit of the party in Maine, not for the political exaltation of Joseph H. Manley. When he endeavors to play the role of party boss, instead of manager, he has outgrown his usefulness.”
Naturally Sam was incensed because he sensed the building of a clandestine plan to prevent his relative, Gov. Burleigh, from winning a seat in Congress. He wrote: “It is reported that the combination against Gov. Burleigh intends to have very early caucuses for the election of delegates in the cities, to attend the convention of the First District in June. In the cities certain powerful interests, especially the rum shops, are anti-Burleigh. They had better remember, however, that votes in our country towns greatly outnumber those in the cities.”
Then Sam Burleigh took this final dig at Joe Manley: “The friends of Manley claim in their press dispatches that he controls the 60 to 70 voters employed at the Insane Hospital. We always supposed that institution was founded to help the unfortunate insane of all the state, not as a recruiting station for a politician that quite possibly ought to be one of its patients.”
Year: 1964