The Quack Doctor

‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ quoted the preface to the 1886 book Lays of the Colleges, being a Collection of Songs and Verses by members of the Æsculapian, Medico-Chirurgical, and Other Professional Clubs in Edinburgh. The book collected together humorous song lyrics sung in these medical clubs as part of ‘the relaxation and emancipation for a few hours, at stated periods, of their members from the strain and care and anxiety of professional life.’

Among the most prolific writers was John Smith MD, LLD, FRCS and FRS Edin., who contributed 25 songs to the book. My favourite of his titles is ‘There’s Nae Germs Aboot The Hoose,’ but to remain on the topic of this blog, I here present his song on quackery, which names several famous patent medicines of the late Victorian period. Should anyone wish to have a go at singing it, the tune is ‘Jim the Carter Lad.’

QUACK, QUACK, QUACKERY

THIS song refers to Quackery; a thing that’s not so bad,
Since nowhere else so many perfect cures are to be had,
Each one from every malady will make you quite secure,
And should it fail, another’s quite prepared to work the cure.
For nervousness, or listlessness, or bloodlessness, combined
With any other somethingness, a remedy you’ll find.
Which cures your gout, removes your corns, your whiskers helps to grow
Sets up your liver, oils your joints, and makes your juices flow.
Quack! quack! keep it up, there’s no disease so bad,
But fifty perfect cures for it can any day be had.

For such as have hysteria and flatulently belch,
What pill is there that can compare with those of Widow Welch;
Or should your skins be pimply or your stomachs be at fault.
There’s Mr Eno tells you that the remedy’s Fruit Salt.
If suffering from headaches or from pains about your spine.
Against such dispensations now you need not long repine,
Sensations of such nasty kind will never more be felt
If you will only wear a proper sized Magnetic Belt.
Quack! quack! keep it up, &c.

From warts, vertigo, sneezing, hiccup, trembling of the nerves,
A Pulvermacher chain, you’ll find, effectually preserves;
While if into your head you feel your blood inclined to roam.
It’s checked at once by using an Electric Small-tooth Comb.
Suppose that from your cranium the hairs begin to drop,
Or that your locks get snowy in a way you’d like to stop.
Macassar Oil, or Mrs Allan, famous o’er the world,
Will clothe your scalp with auburn crops, got up and nicely curled.
Quack! quack! keep it up, &c.

Specific balsams for bronchitis or a common cold
Are found in Powell’s Aniseed and Horehound, we are told ;
While, should your dental apparatus be on the decline,
No end of grinders you may save by using Floriline.
Should corpulence your figure jeopardise, no matter what
Your size may be, a remedy you’ll find in Anti-fat ;
While there’s old Jacob Townsend, ready from your blood to prove
That his Sarsaparilla every poison will remove.
Quack! quack! keep it up, &c.

Perhaps you are afflicted with dyspepsia or bile,
Then what you need is plainly Norton’s Pills of Camomile ;
While, if you wish to take a ride to Khiva, you will find
A box of Cockle’s keep you clear in body and in mind.
And lastly, should tuberculosis of you get a hold.
You know that by the highest testimonials we are told
How any one, at any time, its ravages may foil.
While in the liver of the cod we find De Jongh’s Brown Oil.
Quack! quack! keep it up, &c.

You’ve Holloway with pills and ointment, Lamplough with saline ;
You’ve Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, and all kinds of chlorodyne;
You’ve antiseptic soap; in fact, there’s not the slightest doubt
The way to live’s to swallow every new cure that comes out.
The doctors think for sep’rate ills a sep’rate cure’s required,
But they’d soon change their mind were they by quackery inspired ;
For here, though cures be many, yet the system that’s disclosed
Is, each one singly cures all ills however much opposed.
Quack! quack! keep it up, &c.

Valentine's Meat-Juice, The Medical World May 1914

The Quack Doctor is not a hearts and flowers kind of person, so was interested to learn of a dark side to this product’s history.

Brought into production in Richmond, VA, in 1871, Valentine’s Meat-Juice became popular with orthodox physicians and was advertised in professional publications, including the British Medical Journal. Its inventor, Mann S. Valentine, told of its origins in his A Brief History of the Production of Valentine’s Meat Juice, together with Testimonials of the Medical Profession (1874).

A family member (not identified in the booklet but thought to be his wife, Anna Maria Grey Valentine), was in great danger from ‘a severe and protracted derangement of the organs of digestion.’ She could not take normal food, yet none of the available invalid preparations could sustain her. She needed a safe, digestible and nutritious substance to keep her from starvation.

Through experimentation, Valentine worked out a process of rendering all the goodness of raw meat into a highly condensed form. Unlike other meat extracts, which were manufactured through boiling or roasting, his product resulted from mechanical compression and low heat, retaining all the protein of the raw flesh.

The standard dose was from half a teaspoon to two teaspoons diluted in water and taken by mouth, but some physicians preferred an even less romantic means of administration, and introduced it per rectum. An enema described in The Philadelphia Medical Journal in 1900 comprised one egg, one tablespoon of Valentine’s Meat-Juice, 4oz sterilised milk, ½oz. brandy, ½ tsp. salt, and 5oz of sterilised water. Two ounces of this mixture was to be administered every two hours ‘as high up in the large bowel as possible.’

Although it is difficult to tell the size of the bottle from this picture, it was tiny – only about 3″ tall yet said to contain the juice from 4lb of beef. In 1909, the American Medical Association reported that the product did not contain any coagulable protein and was effectively no different from the average ‘meat extract’ produced with the use of heat.

It was, however, through no fault of the manufacturer that Valentine’s Meat-Juice became embroiled in one of the most sensational murder cases of the 19^th century. In 1889 a little bottle, laced with a solution of arsenic, formed part of the evidence in the trial of Florence Maybrick, who subsequently spent fifteen years in prison for the murder of her husband. The case is notorious enough that you don’t need me to go into it here, so I’ll finish by wishing you a happy (or at the very least, murder-free) Valentine’s Day.

.

.

Cover of the first instalment of Bleak House, March 1852

Between March 1852 and September 1853, monthly instalments of Bleak House tempted readers with their eyecatching illustrated covers and affordable price of one shilling.

Within these covers, the ‘Bleak House Advertiser’ promoted commercial products, from new publications to false teeth and from wigs to bedsteads. Inserted in part fourteen, however, after chapters 43 to 46, was an 8-page advertisement containing a narrative creation of its own.

Ali Ahmed’s Treasures of the Desert were a set of three remedies whose proprietor created an aura of eastern mystique to present them as traditional and natural alternatives to harsh western medicine. The range comprised the Sphairopeptic Pill for liver and digestive complaints, the Pectoral Antiphthisis Pill to fight off colds, asthma and consumption, and the Antiseptic Malagma – a plaster for use on ulcers, wounds and gangrene. With a month to wait until the next instalment of Bleak House, readers probably went back to the advertising inserts as stop-gap reading material, and the advertiser therefore had the opportunity to get them on side by offering more than just a hard sell.

The pamphlet draws the reader in with an unexpectedly up-front reference to quackery:

WHAT! more atrocities in the quack line? More conspiracies against the poor stomach? Such we can easily believe to be the exclamation of the reader as he scans the heading of this paper.

It’s all very well to think that when you’re in fine fettle, however. The pamphlet goes on to remind us that we might suffer health problems in the future and would do well to keep these remedies in mind.

Ali Ahmed Mascueli was supposed to have been a Persian physician, who spent most of his life in Syria and developed the remedies using local herbs. On his deathbed, he confided the recipes to his relatives, who handed them down through the generations until, in the 19^th century, they attracted the attention of  ‘an excellent and philanthropic Englishman’ who saw it as his duty to share them with the world. The pamphlet used a decorative border and examples of calligraphy (described by Bernard Darwin in his 1930 book The Dickens Advertiser as ‘lovely Arabic curly-wiggles’!) to lend an air of exoticism, emphasising the long tradition of eastern medicine from which the remedies had sprung.

Ali Ahmed’s Treasures of the Desert – cover of advertising insert. Image credit: http://www.ibiblio.org/dickens/html/42058.html

After a brief introduction, the pamphlet features a letter from a friend of the proprietor in Damascus, who had introduced the remedies there to the fury of the resident French and Italian doctors. The letter writer becomes a ‘character’ in the pamphlet’s narrative, entertaining the reader with a tale of a doctor so incompetent that he once ordered a large supply of sodium chloride, believing it to be a medicine.

In preference to such ‘scientific’ idiots, the letter-writer lauds ‘the simple native physician,’ whose drugs are ‘the kindest gifts of nature to suffering humanity.’ Unlike the violent substances such as strychnine and morphine prescribed by European doctors, the eastern practitioner’s drugs are ‘simple and pure; the mountainside furnishes him with herbs and roots, and the plains are bountiful in bulbs.’

The notions that a remedy stems from ancient, traditional knowledge, that it is safe and natural, and that narrow-minded orthodox doctors hate it are all, of course, to be found in dubious advertising today.

Punch pointed out that the medicines would probably work if taken as part of the lifestyle enjoyed by Ali Ahmed. Together with a sparse diet, only water to drink, and plenty of horseback exercise, they would no doubt remove ‘the worst congestion of the liver that ever affected alderman.’

So, just how exotic were these medicines? Cooley’s Cyclopaedia of Practical Receipts, Processes, and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions and Trades, including Medicine, Pharmacy and Domestic Economy (Fourth Edition 1864) gave the ingredients as follows:

The Antiseptic Malagma comprised lead plaster, gum thus (frankincense or, more likely, thickened turpentine), salad oil and beeswax, spread onto calico. The Pectoral Pills were myrrh, squills, ipecacuanha, white soft soap, aniseed oil and treacle, while the Sphairopeptic Pills contained aloes, colocynth pulp, rhubarb, myrrh, scammony, ipecacuanha, cardamom seeds, soft soap, oil of juniper and treacle. The advertising also claims that the pills were ‘silver-gilt in the Oriental style’, a practice traditionally thought to have originated with tenth-century Persian physician Avicenna.

Ali Ahmed, from an advertisement in vol. XV of Bleak House (May 1853) Image credit: http://www.ibiblio.org/dickens/html/42059.html

In celebration of the bicentenary year, The Quack Doctor plans some further posts tenuously related to Charles Dickens, so look out for them on the blog soon. In the meantime, happy 200th birthday, Mr. Dickens!

Anti-Stiff advert from The Chemist and Druggist, 7 June 1890

Anti-Stiff – a name contrary to the philosophy of today’s email spammers – appears to have been a boon to the athletes of the 1890s. It was a muscle rub intended to ward off aches and fatigue during a variety of sporting endeavours, and its promoter claimed that ‘some athletes are so fond of it that they rub it all over them.’

Unlike the messier liquid liniments that served a similar purpose, Anti-Stiff was a semi-solid substance packaged in a tin. U.S. publication the Western Druggist said that the product comprised petrolatum with some essential oils and colouring – so if you imagine a green, lavender-scented version of Vaseline, it was probably pretty much like that. Such a portable and convenient format made it particularly suitable for cyclists, who could carry it with them without the worry of dropping a glass bottle or spilling the product if they stopped to use it en route.

Adverts for Anti-Stiff regularly appeared in Cycling: An Illustrated Weekly, which began publication on 24 January 1891 and soon became a hit for its attractive layout, informative articles, humorous snippets and lively writing style. Right from the first issue, Anti-Stiff had a prominent advertising presence, asking readers:

Can you wonder that you lost that race?
Why, you did not use “Anti-Stiff!”

Testimonials abounded from the top cyclists of the day. C. A. Smith, who held the Brighton Coach Record (whereby cyclists would attempt to beat the times recorded by the old mail coaches between London and Brighton) said he was well rubbed down with Anti-Stiff before setting off on his ride. Cycling pioneer John Keen, who is mentioned in the ad above, also gave an endorsement, writing that he had used every other preparation known, but found none equal to Anti-Stiff.

John Keen, champion racer of penny-farthings in the 1870 and 80s, who went on to manufacture bicycles. Anti-Stiff advertisements refer to him as 'The Champion Bicyclist of the World.'

Although initially aimed at cyclists, Anti-Stiff was for anyone who hoped to exhibit sporting prowess, including footballers, boxers, runners and skaters. Although Victorian footballers did not enjoy the same lifestyle as their 21st-century counterparts, they were nevertheless invited to view Anti-Stiff as one of the finer things in life:

An article of this kind is a real luxury, and when once it is tried by a footballer, he will always keep a tin of Anti-Stiff handy, and carry it about with him as valued as his watch.

Notts County coach Harry Kirk reported that his players considered it ‘grand stuff’.

Detail of Anti-stiff ad, Cycling: An Illustrated Weekly 11 April 1891

Field athlete H. Griffin also recommended Anti-Stiff:

Personally, I can speak in very high terms of it. During 1890 I used it, notably for a stiffened shoulder through “putting the shot,” which it quickly put right “like a shot.”

I see what you did there, Mr Griffin.

The advert at the top is aimed at chemists. As you can see, the proprietor, Joseph Wilson, uses the incentive of free publicity for any chemist who stocks the product. He also appealed to those in the cycle sales and repair trade by offering to print their headed paper free of charge provided he could include a discreet advert. With marketing techniques so focused on what the customer could get out of the deal, it is no surprise that Anti-Stiff soon became well-known enough to get mentions in entertainment magazines such as Punch and Fun.

In May 1891, however, the latter publication didn’t give anyone much fun when it printed an Anti-Stiff joke so dire that it required a cringe-making Bruce Forsyth-style explanation of the punchline:

It should be sold in Turkey, for there there are millions of muscle men (Mussulmen.)