[Illustration: Figure 17. Pharmacy bottles. A. French square shape, c. 1860s-1920s. B. Ball neck panel, c. 1860s-1920s. C. Philadelphia oval shape, c. 1867-1903. Embossed C. F. PANKNIN APOTHECARY CHARLESTON, S. C. D. Blue Whitall Tatum poison bottle, c. 1872-1920. E. Wide-mouthed prescription bottle, possibly for morphine, c. 1860s-1920s.] One of the first of the new shapes was the “French square,” a tall bottle with beveled corners introduced in the early 1860s (Fig. 17). The French square was followed by more elaborate rectangular, round, and oval shapes, many of them adapted with one or more flat sides to accommodate the paper labels or plate-molded lettering with which pharmacists usually marked their wares. The “Philadelphia oval” shown in Figure 17C, plate-molded with the name of an 1867-1902 Charleston pharmacy, was a favorite shape. Despite such advances as Louis Pasteur’s bacteriological discoveries, ideas of medical treatment in the nineteenth century remained primitive by modern standards. Without many of the vaccines and antibiotics now available, people dosed themselves with a wide range of substances which most twentieth century invalids would hold in dim regard. For instance, pharmacists distributed morphine in small bottles such as that shown in Figure 17E. Vegetable extracts that would not now be in anybody’s pharmacopoeia were often sold in panel bottles (Fig. 17B). One of the few restrictions placed on the more dangerous medicaments was packaging. In 1872 the American Medical Association, concerned over accidental poisoning, issued a recommendation that potentially harmful substances be bottled in distinctively colored containers that were also recognizable by touch. One result of this directive was blue quilted poison bottles (Fig. 17D). A specialty of Whitall, Tatum & Co., a major manufacturer of pharmaceutical wares, these bottles were manufactured until about 1920. Other companies continued to produce poison bottles until the 1930s, when it was decided that the bright colors and fanciful shapes were more an attraction than a deterrent to children exploring the medicine cabinet. [Illustration: Figure 18. Patent medicine bottles. A. Maltine bottle, double Philadelphia shape. Embossed THE MALTINE MF’G CO. CHEMISTS NEW YORK, a company name used from 1875 to 1898. B. Bromo-Caffeine bottle, c. 1881-1920s. Embossed KEASBEY & MATTISON CO. AMBLER, PA. C. Horsfords Acid Phosphate bottle, eight-sided. Embossed RUMFORD CHEMICAL WORKS and on base, PATENTED MARCH 10, 1868, c. 1868-1890.]