This Article  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

William H. Helfand
Princeton, NJ

JAMA. 1970;212(2):321.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

May I offer a comment on an illustration that appeared in AMAGRAMS (211:184,1970). The lithograph of "Singular Effects of the Universal Vegetable Pills on a Green Grocer" is by C. J. Grant and was done in 1841. It is one of a series of caricatures on Morison's pills and on the inventor, James Morison, known as "The Hygeist." Morison made a fortune from his pills, a potent cathartic containing aloes, jalap, colocynth, gamboge, rhubarb, and myrrh. Poets saluted him, essayists, including Carlyle, devoted chapters to him, limericks referred to him, and songwriters quoted him. One children's limerick went:

There was a young salesman of Leeds Rashly swallowed six packets of seeds When a month came to pass He was covered with grass And he couldn't sit down for the weeds.

The first verse of a song entitled "Morison's Pills," with a very catchy melody, goes:

"... What . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?