The growth of the patent medicine industry was encouraged by a number of political, social and economic factors. The expansion of public elementary schools meant that everyone could read newspaper ads that promised (unproved) cures and provided (unreliable) testimonials. The craving for news from the front during the Civil War meant that more Americans read more newspapers, giving patent medicine manufacturers access to more customers. The discovery of cheap wood pulp paper and improvements in the printing process meant that advertising volume could grow by leaps and bounds. Newspapers became filled with ads promising quick, easy, inexpensive and sure cures for diseases both dreadful and mundane.

Among the mundane was "dyspepsia," the 19th century’s most common disease. With symptoms as varied and vague as those advertised for Dr. E. Rowell’s Invigorating Tonic and Family Medicine ("For impure blood, dyspepsia, indigestion, constipation, loss of appetite, biliousness, headache, jaundice, loss of memory, piles, eruptions of the skin, general debility, rheumatism, and all diseases arising from disordered liver, bowels or kidneys"), dyspepsia was the direct result of a poor diet. European visitors to this country universally commented on the American habit of gobbling enormous amounts of starch, salt and fat.