Dr. Alvin Chase

Dr. Alvin Chase collected recipes for household remedies and published them as Dr. Chase's Recipes; or, Information for Everybody. His hugely popular books, which sold all over the world, were printed in his large steam printing house at Main and Miller along with a newspaper, the Peninsular Courier. Wealthy and successful by 1869, he became worried about his own health, so he sold everything—business, patents, even his horse and buggy—to publisher Rice Beal, a fellow Republican and Methodist. Finding himself still healthy but poor, Chase then tried to continue publishing his books, but Beal successfully sued to prevent him from doing so.