PERRY DAVIS & SON, RHODE ISLAND S FAVORITE DRUG DEALERS

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1 & SON, RHODE ISLAND S FAVORITE DRUG DEALERS Again and again in historical work the issue known as presentist judgmentalism raises its ugly head. To what extent are we allowed to judge the conduct of our ancestors by present standards, and to what extent are we proscribed from judging their conduct by present standards? The case of the Reverend Perry Davis might be an interesting venue in which to explore this topic. If this Baptist were doing today in Providence what he had been doing during the 19th Century, we d lock him up at the ACF and throw away the key. He d be being denounced in the ProJo as a dope lord if not as a corrupter of our young people. However, in his own era he had considered himself entitled to brag about Christian exploits! 1791 July 7, Thursday: Perry Davis was born in Dartmouth, Massachusetts to Edmund Davis and Sarah Davis. He was the eldest of their three children and would during his adolescence suffer an accident and become crippled.

2 1795 The family of origin of Perry Davis relocated from Dartmouth to Westport within Massachusetts The USA began to fill its opium need primarily from the region east of Smyrna in Turkey. In this or the following year, Perry Davis of Westport, Massachusetts, at the age of 14, seriously injured one of his hips by falling through a raft upon which he was at work. The record asserts that by this accident he was not only made a cripple for life but rendered peculiarly liable to colds, followed by fevers and kindred diseases, to many of which he would become a prey in succeeding years. From sickness he would suffer greatly and would be brought down with fevers, which had their regular run on 24 different occasions. With physicians, however, he was abundantly blessed of the regular scientific stamp, and by them has submitted 64 times to the use of the lancet, not to mention other accompanying remedies administered for his diseases. (Eventually Mr. Davis would find surcease for his bodily pain in a vegetable concoction he would develop, of opiates in ethanol.) 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

3 1806 By this point, at the age of 15, the crippled Perry Davis was apprenticed to a cordwainer October 8, Friday: By the Treaty of Ried, Bavaria left the Confederation of the Rhine and joined the Allies against France. Perry Davis got married with Ruth Davol, daughter of Pardon Davol and Priscilla Davol, a member of the same Baptist church and kindred in spirit, as may be inferred from the fact, that on the evening of their wedding day, both bride and groom attended and actively participated in the exercises of a meeting for prayer and conference, held at the residence of one of the deacons of the church. Together they not only travelled the path of the life which now is, but that also of the life which is to come, along which, as the sequel shows, the happiest of their kind whom gentle stars unite, they pleasantly journeyed, sharers in each others sorrow, and mutual helpers of each others joy. For a period of nearly thirty years their course of life seemed, in one view, to flow in rugged channels, with whirls and eddies. Clouds of sorrow thickened around them. Adverse winds impeded their progress. The multiplied anxieties of sickness, destitution and pinching want, at times legion-like darkened their pathway; and bowed down by weight of woe, with the man of ancient times, they could look up to the eternal throne, and cry out to Him who sits thereon, All thy waves and thy billows have gone over us. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 3

4 1838 On the other side of the globe, the new viceroy in Canton, China was destroying the illegal opium imports of the British East India Company, a total of 2,640,000 pounds of suspicious vegetable substances, and in consequence Britain was going on the warpath, seizing Hong Kong, forcing trade concessions, and garnering much loot. Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, the governor was William Sprague II and Perry Davis was removing from Westport, Massachusetts to Pawtucket and then to Taunton, Massachusetts while engaged in the development of his invention, of a mill for grinding grain. In Taunton he would fall ill and would study the effects of certain drugs upon the human system, and he would experiment in the various uses of these drugs, mostly ethanol and opiates, until he became able to concoct a dose capable of curing his own maladies. This Mr. Davis would later vend the following story: I told my wife that she could not expect to have me with her much longer. A cold settled on my lungs. A hard cough ensued, with pains in my side. My stomach soon became sore, my digestive organs became weak, consequently my appetite failed; my kidneys had become affected. The canker in my mouth became troublesome... I searched the globe in my mind s eye for a cure during my illness and selected the choicest gums and healing herbs. These were carefully compounded creating a medicine to soothe the nerves and a balm to heal the body. I commenced using my new discovered medicine with no hope other than handing me gently to the grave. 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

5 1841 Perry Davis removed from Taunton to Fall River within Massachusetts, and began to distil his Pain Killer patent medicine out of opiates in ethanol in his family residence, assisted by his wife and daughter. That this was a supremely dangerous thing to do seems not to have occurred to any of them! Here s a Richard Pryor joke, after his accident while freebasing: When you re on fire and running down the street, people will get out of your way. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 5

6 1843 July 3, Monday: His business burned out in Fall River with severe injury to himself, Perry Davis would need to relocate to Providence, Rhode Island. One day a large can of alcohol caught fire, and the sudden flame of the burning liquid in its rapid ascent to the ceiling enveloped Mr. Davis, burning his body to the bone. Mrs. Davis and his daughter, Mrs. S. Dennis were left powerless in their attempts to rescue the sufferer, and rushed to the street for aid. When help arrived the flesh on his arms hung in shreds, the thick fleshy portions on his hands falling off. His face was one solid burnt sore, and his kidneys were so injured that he passed nothing but blood for nearly two days. The family pleaded for a physician, but Mr. Davis was inexorable and said if his medicine could not save him he would go with it. The Pain Killer was used as directed. The sufferings of the patient were terrible. Noone thought he could survive, and the second night following it was supposed he was dying, but he finally passed off into a quiet sleep, and from that time began to gain. In four weeks from that time he drove a wagon to Apponaug. The first Pain Killer taken to Boston Mr. Davis carried in a basket on his arm, walking there and back. He called on the druggists, but they shrugged their shoulders and said they could not sell it without the assistance of advertising and that they made mixtures equally as good themselves. After canvassing the city with but little success, and at last discouraged, he went among the crowd upon the street and to each poor, sick, lame person he met handed a bottle of Pain Killer. This done he returned home more discouraged than ever. In the meantime his medicine at home grew more popular every day and soon afterward the cholera made its appearance in the United States and Pain Killer was suddenly brought into general notice by the astonishing cures of this dreadful disease which it effected. Orders now began to come in to such an extent that Mr. Davis had to cast aside his pestle and mortar and 6 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

7 commence the manufacture of Pain Killer upon a larger scale. It was now found that each bottle given away in Boston and elsewhere, had created a demand for many more; the sale increased from day to day, while everybody who used this wonderful compound was either writing or telling his friends of its powers in relieving pain and suffering. It was soon after its discovery that Perry Davis Pain Killer was introduced into a factory at Providence, and the employees there found a cure for all those little ills and numberless hurts of accidents which factory hands are constantly subject to. In various ways the medicine became advertised until now it is used by every people on the Globe and known elsewhere. The North American Indians prize it above gold. The miners of South Africa and Brazil have christened it the Miner s Friend, while the natives of India and other warm climates find it a sure antidote against the bite of the most poisonous reptiles. The Hudson Bay Company, whose business reaches out through all the vast territory between Alaska and the coast of Labrador, are among the largest dealers of this article. Late Summer: Perry Davis mixed up a batch of his patent vegetable painkiller consisting of opiates in ethanol to sell at the annual Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry fair in Pawtuxet. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 7

8 1844 The historian George Bancroft, from his summer cottage Roseclyffe at Newport (see following screen), weighed into Rhode Island s Dorr War on the side of Governor Thomas Wilson Dorr. BANCROFT AND DORR The Reverend John Stetson Barry began to serve the Universalist congregation of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. At the foot of Meeting Street at the corner of Town Street, the Friends put what had been their 2d meetinghouse in Providence (Moshasuck), Rhode Island on heavy sledges and had it tugged (by a team of horses, we are told, although perhaps it was oxen) over snow down Town Street, then up Wickenden Street on Fox Point, and then uphill to 77 Hope Street, where it became a 2-family residence. Thus its century-and-a-quarter old foundation was cleared, to hold up the west half of a new larger meetinghouse (the east half of this 3d structure would be on top of a crawl space). This 3d meeting house would last us 112 years, until the city of Providence needed a central site for a proposed new Fire Station. Another site would be available to the city, but a brick building on it would be more expensive to clear and its location between North Main Street and Canal Street would 8 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

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10 offer inferior access for fire equipment. So we would sell our lot to the City, and erect a 4th-generation brick meetinghouse with a slate roof at the top of College Hill, at the corner of Olney and Morris on Friend Moses Brown s donated property, in about Belatedly recognizing the dangers of freebasing in your home kitchen in the presence of your children, Perry Davis purchased a building on Pond Street in which to mix up his patent vegetable painkiller consisting of opiates and ethanol. It would be asserted that freebie cases of Davis medicine were shipped with every Baptist missionary bound for India and China. (Doesn t that seem a bit like carrying coal to Newcastle? But it is not at all unusual or so I have heard for drug pushers to offer young people free samples in order to get them on the hook.) 1845 Prosper Merimee s novel about CARMEN, a feisty Gypsy girl in an Andalusian cigarette factory. Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft Shelley was invalided by what would eventually be discovered to be a tumor in her brain. John Quincy Adams wrote to the Reverend Samuel H. Cox: In my early youth I was addicted to the use of tobacco in two of its mysteries, smoking and chewing. I was warned by a medical friend of the pernicious operation of this habit upon the stomach and the nerves. Thomas De Quincey s Coleridge and Opium-Eating and Suspiria de Profundis appeared in Blackwood s Magazine. His On Wordsworth s Poetry and Notes on Gilfillan s Gallery of Literary Portraits: Godwin, Foster, Hazlitt, Shelley, Keats (which would run until 1846) appeared in Tait s Magazine. SUSPIRA DE PROFUNDIS Perry Davis s patent vegetable painkiller consisted of opiates and ethanol and as is evident in the globe map on its label originated from that known center of Joy to the World sensory satisfaction, Providence, Rhode Island: 10 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

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12 1850 The Board of Aldermen of Providence, Rhode Island voted to limit Dexter Asylum inmates to 180. Perry Davis s son Edmund Davis joined him in the patent medicine business located at 43 Pond Street. ETHANOL OPIATES 12 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

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14 1853 September: Before the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, the case of Perry Davis vs. George Kendall (as reported in THE AMERICAN LAW REGISTER for , Volume 2, Number 11 for September 1854, pages ). Evidently a drug dealer named Kendall had been manufacturing and vending a compound similar to the Providence drug dealer Davis s Pain-Killer Manufactured by Perry Davis The original inventor, No. 74 High St. under the name J.A. Perry s Vegetable Pain-Killer, in bottles of similar size though of somewhat different shape, thus pirating Mr. Davis s trade-mark under which said compound had become extensively and favorably known. The attorney for the defendant drug dealer Kendall pointed out to the court that there was no copy-right on words of the English language such as Pain-Killer. The Supreme Court held that the whole question in this case was, whether the defendant drug dealer s label was liable to deceive the public, and to lead them to suppose they are purchasing an article manufactured by the plaintiff drug dealer Davis instead of by the defendant drug dealer Kendall. The majority of the court ruled for the plaintiff drug dealer, agreeing that his copy-right had in fact illicitly been infringed and that he would therefore be entitled to legal redress. ETHANOL OPIATES (The past is a foreign country you will instantly notice that our courts no longer proactively protect the entitlements of drug dealers in any such manner.) 14 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

15 November 9, Wednesday: Perry Davis of Providence, Rhode Island was ordained to the Baptist ministry. Since Mr. Davis was a world-class drug dealer specializing in opiates and ethanol, we may be pardoned for turning at this point to an insight about the heartlessness of capitalist society by Karl Marx: Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Karl Marx, CRITIQUE OF HEGEL S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT (February 1844) Excerpt from Thoreau as Storyteller in the Journal by Professor Sandra Harbert Petrulionis: On November 29, 1853, sandwiched in between the Journal s discussion of a rare beetle and a local boy s find of a Native American artifact, Thoreau records a story told to him by local farmer George Minott a tale of a rabid dog which met its demise in Concord many years before. Francis H. Allen included this tale in his 1936 Men of Concord, a compilation of the Journal s character sketches. As a way of leading in to it, Thoreau relates the fact that recently a boy in nearby Lincoln had been fatally bitten by a rabid dog. Thoreau who calls what he s about to write a story justifies the digression as worth telling for it shows how much trouble the passage of one mad dog through the town may produce (Journal V 522). Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 15

16 [5] In classic storytelling fashion, Thoreau begins by establishing the time and setting: It was when he [Minott] was a boy and lived down below the Old Ben Prescott House over the Cellar Hole on what is now Hawthorne s Land. The following excerpts summarize Minott s description of the dog s progress through town: When the dog got to the old Ben Prescott Place... there were a couple of turkies [it] drove them into a corner bit off the head of one... They then raised the cry of mad dog... his [Minott s] mother and Aunt Prescott... coming down the road & he shouted to them to take care of them selves for that dog was mad Minott next saw Harry Hooper coming down the road after his cows... & he shouted to him to look out for the dog was mad but Harry... being short the dog leaped right upon his open breast & made a pass at his throat, but missed it. ( ) [6] the name of Fay dressed in small clothes was waylaid by the dog and bitten twice because he failed to heed Minott s warning that the oncoming dog was mad. Thoreau writes that Fay... well frightened, kicked the dog, seized [it]... held him... fast & called lustily for somebody to come & kill him. Unfortunately, when a man named Lewis rushed out to help, his axe was somewhat dull, and after a worthless blow across the back, the dog trotted along still toward town ( ). [7] The dog proceeded to bite two cows, both of which later died, to grab a goose in the wing and kept on through the town (523). Finally, however, it met its demise at the hands of the story s unlikely hero: The next thing that was heard of him Black Cato... was waked up about midnight... he took a club & went out to see what was the matter Looking over into the pen this dog reared up at him & he knocked him back into it & jumping over mauled him till he thought he was dead & then tossed him out ( ). Unfortunately, Cato discovered the next morning that the dog was in fact not dead and had disappeared. Later that day, he encountered the dog again, but this time having heard the mad dog story he... ran but still the dog came on & once or twice he knocked him aside with a large stone till at length... he gave him a blow which killed him & lest he should run away again he cut off his head & threw both head & body into the river (525). Cato succeeds where esteemed white citizens fail; his heroic act rids the town of danger. [8] From the vantage of our safe hindsight, the story s humor is inseparable from its potential tragedy. Anyone who comes in contact with this dog could, of course, be killed. Nevertheless, Thoreau has a bit of fun at the expense of the townsfolk. Mr. Fay was possibly Grant Fay, a local farmer whose son Addison was a contemporary of Thoreau. As a large and stout old gentleman... dressed in small clothes, twice bitten by the dog largely through his own ineptitude, Fay suffers at Thoreau s hands. Moreover, Thoreau concludes with the information that Fay went home... drank some spirit... went straight over to Dr. Heywoods... &... was doctored 3 weeks. cried like a baby. The Dr cut out the mangled flesh &... Fay... never experienced any further ill effects from the bite (525). 16 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

17 1862 May 12, Monday: The following notice of the funeral of Henry D.Thoreau appeared in the Lowell Daily Citizen & News: The funeral of Henry D. Thoreau, which took place in Concord on Friday, was attended by a large company of citizens of that and neighboring towns, and services are described as unusually impressive. Selections of Scripture were read, and a brief ode, prepared for the occasion by W.E. Channing, was sung, when Mr. Emerson read an address, marked, says the Transcript, by all his felicity of conception and diction an exquisite appreciation of the salient and subtle traits of his friend s genius. The following notice of that funeral appeared in the Boston Post: The funeral of Henry D. Thoreau took place in the meeting house in Concord on Friday and Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a feeling and characteristic address. Men of note from Boston and elsewhere were present. Mr Thoreau was 44 years old. He is said to have been engaged, at the time of his death, on several literary works, some of which were so nearly finished as to enable survivors to publish them. Mr Emerson will doubtless undertake this friendly work. Perry Davis died. His son Edmund Davis would continue dealing drugs at 43 Pond Street, Providence, Rhode Island in the manner which his father had initiated. During the Civil War this patent compound of opiates with ethanol would be marketed as good for man or beast since a horse on painkillers would be able to haul heavy loads until it dropped in its traces and was shot. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 17

18 1866 Eighteen-year-old Jack Newton Daniel established a whiskey distillery in Tennessee. The cholera spread to the US from Russia and Europe, killing 50,000 Americans this year, including 2,000 in New-York alone. That city responded to such recurring epidemics, not only of cholera but also of scarlet fever, measles, typhoid fever, typhus, diphtheria, whooping cough, and yellow fever, by creating the 1st municipal board of health. (Refer to Charles E. Rosenberg s THE CHOLERA YEARS: THE UNITED STATES IN 1832, 1849, AND 1866.) Perry Davis & Son opened a branch depot in London for the exclusive sale of their Pain Killer in Great Britain a painkiller consisting of a solution of opiates in ethanol which was alleged to be just the very thing with which to cure this cholera. Extensive agencies also have been opened up in China, India, Japan, Turkey, Australia, Africa, New Zealand and other countries both in the new and old world, until now the manufacture and sale of this medicine exceeds that of any other. Mr. Davis liberality has also contributed largely to the advertisement of this medicine. Missionaries to heathen lands, especially those of the Baptist church, have been furnished medicine free of charge to take with them. This alone has brought the remedy into great notoriety with the natives of heathen lands. When a young man Mr. Davis became converted to God, and from that time till his death lived a consistent Christian life. He was baptized by Elder Job Borden of the First Baptist church in Tiverton, R.I. In church work Mr. Davis was also active. He was very liberal with his money to all classes of society, and was a generous, kind hearted man to the needy and distressed. On the day of his burial the streets about his door were lined with the poor and the needy of the city, who loved him for the many benevolent acts of his life. Although almost in poverty himself till after 50 years of age, he always gave freely and sometimes of all he had to others in distress. His donations to the church were extensive. He first built a chapel on Broad street, used for several years; then the little chapel on Stewart court, then called High Street church; then the Stewart Street church, which cost him $36,000. He himself was an earnest preacher and was 18 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

19 ordained to the ministry November 9th, Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 19

20 W.R. Bowling, M.D. s CHOLERA AS IT APPEARED IN NASHVILLE IN 1849, 1850, 1854 AND Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

21 1867 Edmund Davis relocated the patent medicine manufacturing conducted under the name Perry Davis & Son in Providence, Rhode Island to 78 High Street. ETHANOL OPIATES Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 21

22 1871 Edmund Davis took in Mrs. Sarah D. Dennis as a partner in the patent medicine business conducted under the name Perry Davis & Son. They would relocate the manufacturing facility to 136 High Street, Providence, Rhode Island. ETHANOL OPIATES Losses in the great Chicago fire caused the complete liquidation of the assets of the Washington Providence Insurance Company of Providence. The business would need to be revived through the infusion of new capital. The Yearly Meeting School of the Religious Society of Friends received $17, from the city of Providence for a plot of land that had been cut off from the school grounds by an extension of Thayer Street. This money would be spent on an addition to Alumni Hall October 31, Thursday: Ruth Davol Davis died. The Reverend Omar White Folsom, a Congregationalist licensed to preach in 1871 by the Andover Association, was ordained as colleague pastor with Dr. Leonard Withington at the First Church in Newbury, Massachusetts. 22 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

23 1880 When Edmund Davis died at the age of 57, his son Edmund W. Davis took over the family s patent medicine business conducted under the name Perry Davis & Son at 136 High Street, Providence, Rhode Island. ETHANOL OPIATES Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 23

24 1881 Mrs. Sarah D. Dennis died and Edmund W. Davis took in a new partner in the family s patent medicine business, Horace S. Bloodgood. The company, still called Perry Davis & Son, relocated to 594 Westminster Street in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. ETHANOL OPIATES 24 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

25 1888 In the Canadian case of In re Perry Davis & Son, 58 L.T.N.S. 695; 15 App. Cas. 315, the facts were that in 1877 Perry Davis & Son had registered as proprietors of a trade mark consisting of the words Pain Killer in respect of which they claimed user for forty years prior to registration in connection with a medicine sold by them. On the application of another person for the removal of the name from the Canadian copyright register, the evidence shewed that although the medicine had been spoken of and ordered as Pain Killer, it had not been sold under that name alone the words Perry Davis and Davis had also been used at times in connection therewith. The court ruled therefore that the words Pain Killer were not a proper mark for registration, and removed the words from the Canadian copyright register. ETHANOL OPIATES Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 25

26 1895 Sigmund Freud developed a new treatment that would be the basis of psychoanalysis. No neurosis is possible with a normal sex life, he would opinion, but he would himself give up sex at age 42, and would suffer much of his life from stomach upsets, migraine headaches, and nasal catarrh, for which he prescribe for himself cocaine. When the patent medicine company Perry Davis & Son relocated its operation from Providence to New-York City, Edmund W. Davis stayed behind in Narragansett, Rhode Island. ETHANOL OPIATES 26 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

27 COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this read-only computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace resulting in navigation problems allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC Please contact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. It s all now you see. Yesterday won t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. Remark by character Garin Stevens in William Faulkner s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: October 9, 2013 Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 27

28 ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot Laura (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining. To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button. 28 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

29 Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary writerly process which you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world. First come first serve. There is no charge. Place your requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project 29