I am working on an inventory of a drug store museum in Georgia and made an
observation that may be of interest.  The museum houses several thousand
artifacts covering the period from the late 19th century to about 1950, an
interesting period of major change in the pharmaceutical industry.  The
availability of paper labels on medicines and containers full of advertising
makes the artifacts rich in information.  One medicine contained a bottle of
liquid and a glass vial of powder.  The base of the bottle was embossed with
an Owens Illinois logo indicating that the bottle had been manufactured
between 19ll and 1929 (Griffenhagen and Bogard, 1999).  The base of the vial
was embossed "TCW Co." indicating that the vial had been made by the T. C.
Wheaton Glass Manufacturer between 1900 and 1920 (Griffenhagen and Bogard,
1999).  Taken together, one might be tempted to assume that the medicine in
the vial was marketed around 1911-1920.  However, this was a package of
Penicillin G, which didn't become available to the general public until
after World War II.  The package contained an expiration date of November
1953, suggesting that the penicillin was probably sold near that date.
There appears to be a significant gap between the date the bottle was
manufactured and the date it was used for a product.  One can imagine a
number of scenarios to explain the time gap (e.g. reuse of bottles, use of
old bottles, etc.), but the salient point is that it is not safe to rely too
heavily on the bottle manufacturing dates for dating a product.

Allen Vegotsky
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