Cream-colored box with red and black lettering for Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription bottle. Dr. Ray Vaughn Pierce was the nation's leading seller of mail-order patent medicines. Trained as a doctor, he created his first medicine, "Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription," in 1867. Dr. Pierce said of his Favorite Prescription: "It makes weak women strong and sick women well." The medicine claimed to cure nervousness, backache, headache, sleeplessness, mental anxiety, and despondency. And no wonder – before 1890, this medicine was said to contain mostly alcohol and opium tincture.