Dr. Carter: Pharmacist and Physician

When it was a small town, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Dr. John Samuel Carter, a graduate of Scotland’s University of Edinburgh, was engaged in the practice of medicine in Erie, after serving in the Union Army’s medical Corps during the Civil War. He was the proprietor of a pharmacy, at 21 North Park Row, while maintaining his physician office within the building next door, where he would see his patients. Like nearly all general practitioners of his time, he had his favorite prescriptions, which he had found effective, and which he prescribed when the occasion required it — Dr. Carter was one of the first Doctors in the country to hold a pharmacological patent. Many of his patients suffered from the results of imprudent eating and the accompanying disarrangement of the working of the alimentary canal: which was polite society’s description of constipation, the common national ailment at the time.

Carter's Little Liver Pills was the Doctor’s creation and prescription for constipation, a laxative that predated other forms of bisacodyl that would be available later. For these sufferers he prescribed, a simple formula composed of efficacious vegetable drugs, and directed that it should be prepared in the form of pills. The patients then would leave the doctor's office into the adjoining pharmacy, where the clerk in charge filled the prescriptions in the old-fashioned way, rolling the pills by hand. Gradually the fame of Dr. Carter's remedy became widespread. People who had obtained relief recommended the treatment to their friends, who came to the drugstore and asked for some of Dr. Carter's little liver pills. Hence the origin of this famous remedy’s name, which was given by its users.

Carter's Little Liver Pills were first advertised by a sign placed in Dr. John Samuel Carter's pharmacy window, which displayed the now famous Black Crow trademark. The pills' popularity soon spread beyond the capacity of the pharmacy's back room; and by 1859, the building housing the pharmacy was expanded to a four-floor plant to produce the liver pills. In 1880 Brent Good & Company, manufacturers of proprietary medicines, purchased the rights of Carter's Little Liver Pills from Dr. Carter, and subsequently the Carter Medicine Company was founded, with Mr. Brent Good as its head. Although Dr. Carter also had developed other products, it was the sales of the liver pills that led New York businessman Brent Good to suggest a merger that created a nationwide business. Carter Medicine Company in its first year of business spent a third of its revenues on advertising, and along with all the other start-up expenses, moved the business to New York. Dr. John Samuel Carter died in 1884, and his son, Samuel Carter, took over his position with the newly founded company; Erie’s relationship and connection to the original business faded into history.

Among Dr. Carter’s other creations was Carter’s Smart Weed. It was a tincture of a plant named Smartweed, which despite modern rumors have absolutely nothing to do with marijuana, the plant is also known by the name Bloodwort. The plant is a Stimulant and a diuretic, and in combination with tonics and gum myrrh, it was said to have cured epilepsy. It was more commonly used to treat dysentery, gout, sore mouths, colds and coughs, and when mixed with wheat bran, bowel complaints. It also was used a general antiseptic.

Like most Doctors and Druggist of his time, he most likely had many more creations, but his original Carter's Little Liver Pills still remains his most well known, and in its time, the mostly widely used drug ever created, sold to millions of people throughout America and the world.