Competition already had begun when Godfrey's Cordial appeared in the record in a London newspaper advertisement during December 1721. John Fisher of Hertfordshire, "Physician and Chymist," claimed to have gotten the true formula from its originator, the late Dr. Thomas Godfrey of the same county. But there is an alternate explanation. Perhaps the Cordial had its origin in the apothecary shop established about 1660 by Ambroise (Hanckowitz) Godfrey in Southampton Street, London.[2] According to a handbill issued during the late 17th century, Ambroise Godfrey prepared "Good Cordials as Royal English Drops." [2] "How the patent medicine industry came into its own," _American Druggist_, October 1933, vol. 88, pp. 84-87, 232, 234, 236, 238. [Illustration: Figure 2.--ANTHONY DAFFY EXTOLLED THE VIRTUES OF HIS ELIXIR SALUTIS in this pamphlet, published in London in 1673. (_Courtesy, British Museum._)] With respect to his rivals, the 18th-century Hertfordshire vendor of the Cordial warned in the _Weekly Journal_ (London), December 23, 1721: "I do advise all Persons, for their own Safety, not to meddle with the said Cordial prepared by illiterate and ignorant Persons, as Bakers, Malsters, [sic] and Goldsmiths, that shall pretend to make it, it being beyond their reach; so that by their Covetousness and Pretensions, many Men, Women, and especially Infants, may fall as Victims, whose Slain may exceed Herod's Cruelty...." In 1726 King George I granted a patent for the making and selling of Dr. Bateman's Pectoral Drops. The patent was given not to a doctor, but to a business man named Benjamin Okell. In the words of the patent,[3] Okell is lauded for having "found out and brought to Perfection, a new Chymicall Preparacion and Medicine..., working chiefly by Moderate Sweat and Urine, exceeding all other Medicines yet found out for the Rheumatism, which is highly useful under the Afflictions of the Stone, Gravell, Pains, Agues, and Hysterias...." What the chemicals constituting his remedy were, the patentee did not vouchsafe to reveal. [3] Benjamin Okell, "Pectoral drops for rheumatism, gravel, etc.," British patent 483, March 31, 1726.