The drama presents a suspenseful story involving two small, nearly identical bottles: one filled with a much-needed liquid medicine; the other, with a topical antiseptic solution that is a deadly poison if taken internally.

After the bottles accidentally get switched, a young woman in a desperate race against time tries repeatedly to telephone her seven-year-old daughter Alice to prevent the girl from giving her sick grandmother the poison.

[7][b]The screenplay for this short is credited to D. W. Griffith, who also directed the picture at Biograph's main studio, which in 1909 was located inside a large renovated brownstone mansion in New York City, in Manhattan, at 11 East 14th Street.

According to Jesionowski, the editing that Griffith employed in this short thriller redefined the need for actual extended physical space to represent distance on screen:[The film] is already a significant variation on the race to the rescue, because instead of rushing home, the mother stays in place, deciding to call the little girl and warn her not to administer the poison.

[15] Biograph's policy of not identifying cast or crew extended as well to both Arvidson and Griffith, neither of whom received a screen credit, any specific recognition in advertisements for the film, nor was mentioned in any other publicity for The Medicine Bottle.

After their release on March 29, 1909, The Medicine Bottle and its split-reel companion Jones and His New Neighbors circulated to theaters throughout the United States and continued to be promoted for weeks in film-industry publications and then advertised in city and small-town newspapers well into 1910.

Alfred Gleason, a reviewer for Variety and a founding member of the popular New York trade paper's editorial staff, was particularly impressed with the pace and "unique" structure of The Medicine Bottle.

A writer that month for the newspaper The Brunswick News in Georgia was highly complimentary of The Medicine Bottle, but, unlike Alfred Greason, he evidently did not even see the film before providing readers with his brief assessment of the production.

Possibly confusing the thriller with Jones and His New Neighbors, the reviewer in the October 7 issue of The Brunswick News confidently declares, "'The Medicine Bottle' is another comedy drama full of fun", adding "If this picture does not make you laugh nothing will.

"[19] Three months later—over 4,100 miles from Brunswick and nearly a year after the release of The Medicine Bottle and its split-reel companion—copies of the shorts finally arrived in the United States territory of Alaska, in the port town of Skagway.

[20] Five additional motion pictures were promoted as well on the same bill, with the main feature being footage of the heavyweight championship fight between boxers Jack Johnson and Stanley Ketchel, a bout that had occurred three months earlier in Colma, California before a crowd of 10,000 spectators.

[3][f] Submitted by Biograph to the United States government in 1909, shortly before the film's release, the roll is part of the original documentation required by federal authorities for motion-picture companies to obtain copyright protection for their productions.