After 1800 medicinal compounds are only rarely patented. Of those known to the present generation, Ford’s Balsam of Horehound appears in 1816, Savory’s Seidlitz Powders were protected in 1815, Ridge’s Food, 1862, and Page Woodcock’s Wind Pills, 1852. A patent was taken in 1853 by Sir James Murray for aerating cod-liver oil with carbonic acid gas, and William Brockedon’s patent for compressing drugs and blacklead, which has borne fruit a thousandfold in these later days, was granted in 1843. ANDERSON’S SCOTS PILLS. These pills acquired extraordinary popularity, particularly in Scotland and France, and to some extent in other countries, including England. Either these pills or Singleton’s Eye Ointment is the proprietary remedy still sold in this country with the longest history. It is claimed that the ointment was invented some forty years earlier than the pills, but it must be admitted that the records of the latter, especially in their early days, are more exactly authenticated. [Illustration: PATRICK ANDERSON, M.D.] Dr. Patrick Anderson was a Scotch physician of considerable reputation in London in the Stuart period. He is described on some of his books as Physician to Charles I. In 1635 he published a treatise entitled as follows:--“Grana Angelica; hoc est pilularum hujus nominis insignis utilitas; quibus etiam accesserunt alia quaedam pancula de durioris alvi incommodis propter materiam cognitionem, ac vice supplementi in fine adjuncta.” He stated that he had obtained the formula for these pills in Venice. After his death they were sold in Edinburgh by his daughter Miss Katherine Anderson, and she by a deed registered in the Commissary Court books of Edinburgh, the 16th December, 1686, declared that she had communicated the secret to Thomas Weir, surgeon, in Edinburgh, “and to no other person.”