Whatever similarities existed between the canons of regular pharmacy and the composition of patent medicines, there was a decided difference in the methods of marketing. Although patent medicines were often prescription items, they did not have to be. The way they looked on a shelf made them so easily recognizable that even the most loutish illiterate could tell one from another. As the nostrum proprietor did so much to pioneer in advertising psychology, so he also blazed a trail with respect to distinctive packaging. The popularity of the old English remedies, year in and year out, owed much to the fact that though the ingredients inside might vary (unbeknownst to the customer), the shape of the bottle did not. This was the reason proprietors raised such a hue and cry about counterfeiters. The secret of a formula might, if only to a degree, be retained, but simulation of bottle design and printed wrapper was easily accomplished, and to the average customer these externals were the medicine. This fundamental fact was to be recognized by the committee of Philadelphia pharmacists in 1824. "We are aware" the committeemen reported, "that long custom has so strongly associated the idea of the genuineness of the Patent medicines, with particular shapes of the vials that contain them, and with certain printed labels, as to render an alteration in them an affair of difficulty. Many who use these preparations would not purchase British Oil that was put up in a conical vial, nor Turlington's Balsam in a cylindrical one. The stamp of the excise, the king's royal patent, the seal and coat of arms which are to prevent counterfeits, the solemn caution against quacks and imposters, and the certified lists of incredible cures, [all these were printed on the bottle wrappers] have not even now lost their influence." Nor were they for years to come. Thus after 1754 the Turlington Balsam bottle was pear-shaped, with sloping shoulders, and molded into the glass in crude raised capitals were the proprietor's name and his claim of THE KINGS ROYAL PATENT.[53] Turlington during his life had made one modification. He explained it in a broadside, saying that "to prevent the Villainy of some Persons who buying up my empty Bottles, have basely and wickedly put therein a vile spurious Counterfeit-Sort," he had changed the bottle shape. The date molded into the glass on his supply of new genuine bottles was January 26, 1754.[54] This was, perhaps, a very fine point of difference from the perspective of the average customer, and in any case the bottle was hidden under its paper wrapper.