formula vs patent medicine

formula

noun
  • A formulation; a prescription; a mixture or solution made in a prescribed manner; the identity and quantities of ingredients of such a mixture. 

  • Any mathematical rule expressed symbolically. 

  • A symbolic expression of the structure of a compound. 

  • A formal statement of doctrine. 

  • A syntactic expression of a proposition, built up from quantifiers, logical connectives, variables, relation and operation symbols, and, depending on the type of logic, possibly other operators such as modal, temporal, deontic or epistemic ones. 

  • A plan or method for dealing with a problem or for achieving a result. 

patent medicine

noun
  • Any medicine with a proprietary formula which can be bought without a prescription, irrespective of whether it is protected by a patent. 

  • A medicine that is protected by a patent. 

How often have the words formula and patent medicine occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )