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Miles Laboratories was founded as the Dr. Miles Medical Company in Elkhart, Indiana, in 1884 by Dr. Franklin Lawrence Miles, a specialist in the treatment of eye and ear disorders, with an interest in the connection of the nervous system to overall health. The company is known for inventing products such as Alka-Selzer and One-A-Day vitamins.
Miles operated as an independent firm from 1884 until 1979 and as a wholly owned subsidiary of Bayer AG from 1979 until 1995. At the company's peak in the 1960s and 1970s, it employed 3,300 people and produced more than two dozen products.
In 1995, it was consolidated into the parent corporation.
By 1890, the sales success of his patent medicine tonic, "Dr. Miles Restorative Nervine," in treating "nervous" ailments led him to develop a mail order medicine business. Miles also published Medical News, from 1884—a thinly disguised marketing vehicle for Nervine, now referenced as advertorials. Nervine remained on the market as a "calmative" until the late 1960s; Miles' bromide sedative syrup is considered "a precursor to modern tranquilizers."
The company was at the heart of the 1911 antitrust Supreme Court case Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons Co. After John D. Park & Sons Co. profited off of Dr. Miles' advertising while selling his products at rock bottom prices, the Supreme Court ruled that resale price maintenance, a form of vertical restraint, is illegal per se.