The advertising of patent medicines began at the same time as newspapers first became available and read in the new phenomena of coffee houses. 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. Read’s Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer was a London newspaper from 1730 – 1761. The advertisements displayed are all historical medicines available during the 18th century.