A level of occultism, exortericism and mystery was deemed desirable in medicinal advertising of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries, including profound claims about the medicines potency to cure all ailments, hence the origin of the term ‘cure alls’.

The advertising of patent medicines began at the same time as the creation of the public sphere, in which newspapers first became available and read in the new phenomena of coffee houses. In fact the early marketing of early medicines through their ‘letters patent’ (royal approval) fueled the circulation of early papers. Many advertising and sales techniques were pioneered by patent medicine promoters. To keep patent medicines in the early public sphere, they began to use distinctive bottle shapes, and also claim in their advertising that no disease was beyond the cure of their medical formulae.