Carter's Little Liver Pills

The active ingredient was changed to the laxative bisacodyl when the product was renamed in 1959; the original active ingredients were purported to be 1⁄4 grain (16 mg) of aloe and 0.062 grains (4.0 mg) of podophyllum resin.^[3]

Carter's trademark was a black crow. By 1880 the business was incorporated as Carter Products. The pills were touted to cure headache, constipation, dyspepsia, and biliousness.^[4] In the late 19th century, they were marketed in the UK by the American businessman John Morgan Richards.^[5]

Carter's Little Liver Pills predated the other available forms of bisacodyl and was a very popular and heavily advertised patent medicine up until the 1960s, spawning a common saying (with variants) in the first half of the 20th century: "He/She has more [whatever things] than Carter has Little Liver Pills". In 1951 the Federal Trade Commission required the company to change the name to "Carter's Little Pills", since "liver" in the name was deceptive.^[2]

The senator Robert Byrd, after winning re-election in 2000, is quoted as saying, "West Virginia has always had four friends, God Almighty, Sears Roebuck, Carter's Liver Pills and Robert C. Byrd."^[6]

A Carter's Little Liver Pills ad was featured in Joe Dante's 1968 collage parody film The Movie Orgy.^[7]