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By Root 2031 0

saw in his inquiry an opportunity to assail their local rivals. The late president of Dublin's college of physicians reported that "under the Name of Your excellent Salt, many pernicious Counterfeits are sold, and a great deal of Mischief done to those who take them." He added that to some unfortunates "they have proved Mortal." Thomas Molyneux, another prominent Dublin physician, concurred. The target of such physicians was none other than the lord mayor of Dublin, one Thomas Quine, who happened to be an apothecary. Quine had apparentlygot Moult's salt from a druggist named Hinde, and given it to such notables as the Duchess of Ormonde. She had been made lastingly ill. Aworse fate befell the bishop of Kilmore, who, a Dublin physician reported, had actually died.21

Third, a patent would increase the use of the substance-in essence, by accrediting it. Physicians would have no reason to condemn it as a nostrum-"that is, a secret in the way of Practice"-because "every one knows what it is, and may purchase it as any other Drug." And this was critically important, because it could be made the basis of an export trade. Merchants once fooled into shipping a suppositious salt would not risk their credit again by accepting more. By imperiling belief in the authenticity of all such preparations, Peter therefore alleged, "Counterfeit Salts made and sold by Interloping Chymists" jeopardized a potentially important contribution to Britain's political economy. If a patent could truly prevent counterfeiting, on the other hand, then it would uphold the kind of trust at a distance that was essential for an international market in a new manufacture. Not onlywould the patent itself protect the substance, but so would the wide dispersal that the patent underwrote. Popular familiarity would in time become the most powerful countermeasure to counterfeits, as patients came to know the taste and effects of the genuine article intimately and would be ready to recognize imitations.22 In a generation, Peter forecast, Grew's salt could become the basis of a huge industry, comparable to that dedicated to conventional salt. He performed a simple calculation, premised on one hundred thousand pounds of salt being made annually in the London area for £io,ooo profit. At present, the Moults alone made ten thousand pounds of salt, and the amounts peddled by other "Chymists" might well amount to as much again (an indication, incidentally, of the large scale of these enterprises). London consumed two thousand pounds, which, using the political arithmetic of William Petty, implied a potential national consumption of twenty to thirty thousand pounds. This would leave a vast surplus, which could be exported, mainly to Britain's colonies and to the Near East, thus supporting the maritime empire of trade. Grew's salt could become a pillar of the new mercantilism. But this could only come about if "the making of Counterfeits be supprest."23 Ultimately, the patent was a device to secure trust at a distance. Empires could be built on it.

This was Peter's major contention, but he also had to prove that Grew himselfwas the proper patentee. He must establish that he "and no other" had been "the Author of this Invention." This was essential because the Moults claimed that his patent impinged on an already-existing craft. The issue was delicate enough that Peter consulted the lord chancellor, Lord Somers, who told him that a patent would be valid as long as the challengers obtained their art illegitimately. Peter therefore had to ratify Grew's priority, in order to allege that he had been pirated by the Moults; the patent might fall if he had not been pirated. To do so he resorted to the Royal Society's register regime. Fortunately, Grew retained allies there, especially Hans Sloane. Sloane showed Peter the journal books. He was able to retrieve detailed records confirming that Grew had showed his salt in 1679, "not privately, or to Incompetent Judges, but publickly, to the Royal Society." Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke endorsed the point, and a "Cloud of Witnesses"