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Legal Instrument

A Royal Commissioner has considerable powers, generally greater even than those of a judge but restricted to the terms of reference of the Commission. The Commission is created by the Head of State (the Sovereign, or his/her representative in the form of a Governor-General or Governor) on the advice of the Government and formally appointed by Letters Patent.

Letters patent are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch or president, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, title, or status to a person or corporation. They are so named from the Latin verb pateo, to lie open, exposed, accessible. The originator's seal was attached pendent from the document, so that it did not have to be broken in order for the document to be read.  They are called "letters" (plural) from their Latin name litterae patentes, used by medieval and later scribes when the documents were written in Latin, in the ancient sense of a collection of letters of the alphabet arranged to be read rather than in the modern sense of an "epistle" or item of correspondence: thus no singular form exists. Letters patent can be used for the creation of corporations or government offices, or for the granting of city status or a coat of arms.

A particular form of letters patent has evolved into the modern patent (referred to as a utility patent or design patent in United States patent law) granting exclusive rights in an invention (or a design in the case of a design patent). Clearly in this case it is essential that the written grant should be in the form of a public document so other inventors can consult it to avoid infringement and also to understand how to "practice" the invention, i.e., put it into practical use.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_patent

In 1843 as a colonial legislature under British rule. Hong Kong's first constitution, in the form of Queen Victoria's Letters Patent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Council_of_Hong_Kong

RUSSELL OPIUM DRUG SMUGGLING PIRATE 


Patent Medicine
 

A patent medicine is a product that is promoted and sold as a medical cure, but that does not provide the promised relief.

Products no longer sold under medicinal claims

Muckraker journalists and other investigators began to publicize instances of death, drug addiction, and other hazards from the compounds. This took some small courage on behalf of the publishing industry that circulated these claims, since the typical newspaper of the period relied heavily on the patent medicines.[citation needed] In 1905, Samuel Hopkins Adams published an exposé entitled "The Great American Fraud" in Collier's Weekly that led to the passage of the first Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.[8] This statute did not ban the alcohol, narcotics, and stimulants in the medicines; it required them to be labeled as such, and curbed some of the more misleading, overstated, or fraudulent claims that appeared on the labels. In 1936 the statute was revised to ban them, and the United States entered a long period of ever more drastic reductions in the medications available unmediated by physicians and prescriptions. Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, who was active in the first half of the 20th century, based much of his career on exposing quacks and driving them out of business.

Some consumer products were once marketed as patent medicines, but have been repurposed and are no longer sold for medicinal purposes. Their original ingredients may have been changed to remove drugs, as was done with Coca-Cola. The compound may also simply be used in a different capacity, as in the case of Angostura Bitters, now associated chiefly with cocktails.

 

Old English Patent Medicines in America