The following speech appeared in a comic 18th-century booklet called The Harangues or Speeches of Several Famous Mountebanks in Town or Country, which makes fun of high-profile medical salesmen by attributing to them wild claims about their remedies. Later editions (under the title The Harangues, or Speeches, of Several Celebrated Quack Doctors in Town and Country) included extra content such as Dr Rock’s speech, some satirical recipes for common ailments, and quack-related songs.

Henry Morley’s Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair (1859) refers to this ‘little undated book‘ as having appeared in around 1690. The earliest edition on ECCO is stated to be 1725, though the digitised title page has the date 1746 handwritten on it. Whatever the original date, it was popular enough to be reprinted several times during the first half of the 18^th century, and for components of it to be published separately as broadsides.

The speech could have some basis in fact – it is always possible someone took notes when Mr Jones was speaking at York – but it’s unlikely they would have been able to get it verbatim in the midst of an entertained audience, and even less likely that it wouldn’t get embellished for the purposes of humour. In January 1859, however, The Lancet took it literally, quoting a large proportion of the speech (as printed in Morley’s book) to show the similarities between the mountebanks of old and the spiritualists and homeopaths of their own day.

In contrast to the ‘quasi-scientific jargon‘ of modern quackery, ‘It gives a mental refreshment to turn to the laughable orations of the more honest mountebanks of bygone days.‘ Unfortunately, The Lancet missed out on a laugh – Morley had left out the bit about ‘bum-peeping.’

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The Harangue, or Quack Speech of T. JONES, at York.

 

Gentlemen and Ladies,

YOU that have a Mind to preserve your own and your Families Health, may here, at the Expence of a Two-penny Piece, furnish yourselves with a Packet, which contains several Things of great Use, and wonderful Operation in human Bodies against all Distempers whatsoever.

Gentlemen, Because I present myself among you, I would not have you to think, I am any Upstart Glister-pipe Bum-peeping Apothecary; no, Gentlemen, I am no such person: I am a regular Physician, and have travelled most Kingdoms in the World, purely to do my Country good. I am not a Person, that takes Delight, as a great many do, to fill your Ears with hard Words, in telling you the Nature of Turpet Mineral,Mercurii Dulcis, Balsamum Capiviet, Astringents, Laxations, Harboundations, Circulations, Vibrations, Salivations, Excoriations, Scaldations, or Urinations. These Quacks may fitly be called Solimites, because they prescribe only one Sort of Physick for all Distempers, that is, a Vomit.

If a Man has bruized his Elbow, Take a Vomit, says the Doctor. If he has any Corns; Take a Vomit. If he has torn his Coat; Take a Vomit. For the Jaundice, Fevers, Flax, Gripes, Gout, Stone, Pox, nay, even the Distempers, that only my Friend, the famous Dr. Tuff, whom you all know, as the Hocognicles, Marthambles, the Moon-Paul, and the Strong-Fives, A Vomit tantum. Gentlemen, these Impostors value killing a Man, no more than I value drawing an old Stump of a Tooth, which has long troubled any of you; so that, I say, they are a Pack of Tag-Rag, Asifœtida, Glister-Pipe Doctors. Now, Gentlemen, having given you a short Account of this spurious Race, I shall present you with my Cordial Pills, being the Tincture of the Sun, having Dominion from the same Light, giving Relief and Comfort to all Mankind: They cause all Complexions to laugh or smile, in the very taking them; they presently cure all Dizziness, Swimming, Dulness in the Head, and Scurvy.

In the next Place, I recommend to you my incomparable Balsam, which heals all Sores, Cuts, Ulcers, new and old. ‘Tis good for Burns, Scalds, Swellings, Bruizes, Strains, Aches, Weakness in the Joints and Limbs, &c. it cures the King’s-Evil, sore Breasts, and scald Heads; and it is taken inwardly for a Cough, Consumption, short Breath, Weakness of the Back, or any inward Hurt.

The next unparalell’d Medicine contain’d in this my Packet, is an admirable Electuary, celebrated throughout all England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick upon Tweed. It cures all curable Diseases, by very easy and gentle purging; it causes an Appetite, helps all Distempers in the Eyes, Face, swell’d Lips; and opens the Stoppage of the Liver and Spleen, &c.

The next I present you with, is my Specifick, which certainly cures all Agues in a Minute.

The next is my red Plaister, which radically cures the most inveterate Rheumatism and Gout in a few Days Time.

The last, and most useful Medicine prepared throughout the whole World, is this, my Pulvis Catharticus: Its Virtues are such, it will, equally with the Unicorn’s Horn, expel the rankest Poison; ’tis a perfect, safe, and speedy Cure, for all Venereal Maladies, of what Degree soever, and fortifies the Heart against all Fainting.

I do assure you, Country Folk, these Medicines are as good as any Physician can make, or Patient take; their Virtues are too well known, to say any more; so I shall leave you to experience them. And so I wish you Health and Happiness.

You may come to my Lodgings, at the Barber’s Pole and Stone Gate, at Home, from Seven to Eleven.

I wrote recently on the new Royalty Free Fiction blog about how a handwritten note in a historical source inspired me to write my novel, Kill-Grief. The note was what started me thinking about how many interesting lives (and lives are all interesting, aren’t they?) have passed by without leaving anything for the future to know them by.

While I’m researching my blog posts, I sometimes find similar snapshots of an individual’s life or death, that make me wonder who they were, how they faced the experiences that came their way and how other people related to them. In other words, what was their story?

This obituary, reproduced in several newspapers in 1783, is one such snippet. I haven’t been able to find out anything else about Thomas Poxton, but he managed to get his name in the papers for posterity – which is more than most of us will ever do.

From the Morning Post 18 August 1803

It must be at least a couple of months since we last heard from our old friend Ascaris lumbricoides, so it’s time he made another appearance on The Quack Doctor together with a few of his helminthic chums.

I’m putting together a talk about the career of John Gardner, a former soldier and picture-framer who became a medicine vendor and Methodist preacher in the 1780s. Gardner’s best-known nostrum was a vermifuge, relieving his patients of some spectacular parasites that he collected and preserved in his museums at Long-Acre and Shoreditch.

Last week I went to the Wellcome Library to have a look at a broadside (c. 1822) advertising Gardner’s collections, and its cheerfully disgusting exuberance was a joy to read. These specimens had the job of persuading new patients that their symptoms resulted from something equally revolting, and judging by the advertising, this would have worked a treat.

My useless attempt at taking a sneaky picture when no one was looking. The line under the address says 'Dr. G. aged 70 and without enemies - God has done much for him.'

Early 19th-century anti-quackery publications portrayed Gardner as a hypocrite whose conspicuously pious attitude was just a front for charlatanry. The specimens, they claimed, had not passed through any human sphincters but were made by Gardner himself out of everyday substances. His tapeworms were chicken guts and his roundworms vermicelli, while ordinary insects and lizards played the part of the other strange beasts.

Gardner’s shop displayed the sign ‘The Universal Remedy Under God,’ but a critic in the 1820s accused him of holding ‘a poisonous nostrum in one hand, and the Holy Bible in the other,’ and his Methodism perhaps provided him with a get-out clause for patients who weren’t cured. A correspondent to the Medical Adviser in March 1824 described a butcher going to complain that the worm remedy had made him worse. It transpired that the butcher worked on Sundays and didn’t go to church, so Gardner allegedly told him:

God help you, it is an affliction of the Lord for your wickedness. I can do nothing for you, it would be impious to attempt relieving you; good day, I am sorry for you, young man.

(The butcher replied ‘So am I: good day, doctor.’)

John Gardner at the age of 74.

There is another side to Gardner’s religion, however – he was the founder of the Stranger’s Friend Society for the relief of the poor in 1785. By his own account in The Grain of Mustard Seed (1829), he got the idea while visiting a destitute fistula patient in a garret. Gardner began to put by a penny a week to help those less fortunate, and encouraged his neighbours to do the same. The society grew, inspiring similar organisations across the country.

Back to the worms, however. The following is a small selection of the exhibits detailed in Gardner’s broadside. A. lumbricoides is here referred to as Teres – Gardner tended to use the term ‘ascarids’ for threadworms instead.

Worms, from 1 inch to 130 in length, some with 150 suckers; others in the form of caterpillars; another species like woodlice, 12 feet to each; a wolf of the stomach, expelled from a lady at Hoxton, who had nearly fallen victim to its ravages!!

One animal, with ears like a mouse, from a gentleman. Another with 4 horns, 6 legs, and 12 feet, which lived 9 days, from a child of 9 years; a Tape Worm, its edges like the teeth of a saw; a Stomach Worm by a lady’s mouth, 7 inches long, in the act of emitting its young; male and female Teres, one emitting her young, were preying in the vitals of a gentleman five years, who could find no relief in Paris, nor Edinburgh!!!

A round Worm, 10 inches long, from the mouth of a child, aged 20 months, at the Palace; a Worm, resembling a small snake from the bowels of a man; 44 round Worms, 9 inches each, from a child; a narrow Tape Worm from a young woman’s mouth, 18 feet—she also voided 40 feet downwards, had been afflicted 16 years.

An insect from a young woman’s stomach, of a caterpillar form: it lived 7 weeks in a bottle, and gnawed through two corks!!

Two hundred worms resembling wood-lice, expelled from Mr. A— Hollywell Mount, which had tormented him for many months; a Bamboo Worm, with 4 horns and 12 legs, expelled from a man, whom it had nearly destroyed. Worms from the mouth, nose and ears of Mrs. T.——, and in the milk of the breast of Mrs. P.——, Bishopsgate Road.

Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, 2 August 1857

A deaf person seeking treatment in 1850s London appears to have had plenty of options, judging by these advertisements in Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper. The only problem was, the advertisers all belonged to the same gang – and if you knew what was in their medicine, you would not let it anywhere near your ears.

Multiple ads under different names were a mid-19th-century scam that I’ve written about before. A patient might well try more than one practitioner in their search for a cure – so if one person posed as all those doctors, he could take the same victim’s money time and again.

Patients consulting by post from outside London were a good source of income, but those visiting in person posed more of a risk. The quacks had to keep up with who they’d seen under which alias, otherwise things could go badly wrong…

In 1857, Miss Mary Scattergood visited ‘Surgeon Coulston’ in response to an advert that promised a cure in ten minutes. She soon discovered that this came at the extortionate price of ten guineas, which she could not afford, but she agreed to pay five on the proviso that a hearing apparatus was part of the deal. She expected to undergo some procedure that would have an immediate effect, but Coulston sent her away with a bottle of mixture instead. By the next morning, he told her, she would certainly be cured – though he continued with less certainty by saying ‘Use it again the following night in case you are not.’

The mixture gave Miss Scattergood sore ears and a headache – added to which, she had never got the apparatus she paid for, so she returned to Coulston’s premises. He wasn’t there, and his assistant (who considerably resembled him) said he had gone away for a few days.

Miss Scattergood called again several times but the assistant eventually told her Coulston had gone to Madeira, so she had to wave goodbye to her five guineas and put this one down to experience. It wasn’t until about two years later, when she accompanied a friend to an ear-doctor called Dr Matton (or Dr Watters according to some reports), that she discovered it was the same bloke – and this time she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

Coulston/Matton/Watters’ real name was John Gibson Bennett, and he and his younger brother William were former card-sharpers now running a multiple-ad scheme along with a few other dodgy characters. William recognised Miss Scattergood and made a rapid exit, but she had seen enough. She had the older Bennett summoned to Westminster County Court, and other witnesses came forward to testify that he had conned them too – one man told how Bennett had called him a ‘grey-headed old rascal’ and threatened to throw him down the stairs.

J G Bennett, who ‘wore a moustache, and appeared to be about 40 years old’ denied everything, claiming never to have seen Miss Scattergood in his life. William, who also wore a moustache and was about ten years younger, tried to pin the blame on the non-existent Surgeon Coulston, but the judge ruled in favour of Miss Scattergood – she got back her five guineas and J G Bennett was indicted for perjury.

He didn’t turn up to his hearing at Bow Street Police Court, but some interesting evidence came out. The prosecutor, Mr Bowen May, acted on behalf of a newly formed anti-quackery society called the London Medical Registration Association, which had helped Miss Scattergood bring Bennett to trial. This Association had performed an analysis on Bennett’s mixture and found it to comprise urine and alum. A former porter to the gang told of a ‘place where urine was kept’ and that he had helped to make up the bottles (he was only doing his job, guv).

Then Claude Edwards, the Bennetts’ factotum, described how John and William Bennett both posed as Dr Watters even though there was a real Dr Watters involved too. In one incident, the younger Bennett left Edwards to treat a patient while he went to the pub, only returning to collect the money and saying ‘I think I must let Mr King off for twelve guineas, but if I can drop it into him for more I will.’ Mr King ended up paying more than 30 pounds for what he was told was a traditional remedy discovered by ‘Dr Watters’ in China or Japan.

The Morning Post 1 August 1857. John Nicol Watters was a real person who allowed the Bennetts to use his name. More about Dr Watters another time.

The magistrate issued a warrant for the arrest of both Bennett brothers, but by then their whereabouts ‘appeared somewhat uncertain.’

Although the Bennetts had legged it, the law later managed to catch up with other members of the gang. That’s a story for another post, but during one hearing, Edwards confirmed that the brothers’ liquid medicines were mainly urine and that their powders were nothing but sawdust.

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(Note: The court hearings were reported in numerous newspapers and the quotations above are repeated in several sources, but some examples are The Morning Chronicle 10 February 1859 and The Era 6 March 1859)

When Nancy Harborough took her sick child to a local celebrity doctor in 1844, she probably didn’t expect to receive advice worthy of Matthew Hopkins two centuries earlier. As it was, the whole sad episode ended up in court, and as the Hull Packet put it:

The facts of the case speak but little indeed for the boasted ‘march of intellect of the nineteenth century’.

The doctor, Sago Jenkinson, is a shadowy figure who seems to have enjoyed sudden and brief fame in 1840s Hull. He gained a reputation as ‘The French Doctor’, although in a later court case (not the one that concerns us here) he said he was not French and couldn’t even speak the language. He was, he claimed, a Muslim from Constantinople – and this must have gained some credence, for one of the local names for him was ‘Dicky Mahomet’. One anonymous person, however, piped up in court to say that Jenkinson was the son of a woman from Drypool who used to hawk greens in the streets.

An imagined quarrel

Nancy Harborough’s consultation with Jenkinson at the Noah’s Ark in Witham did not result in him sending her home with a dangerous potion. Instead, he (allegedly) told her that the child did not need medicine but would be cured if she did as he suggested. He informed her that she had quarrelled with a neighbour. She did not recall doing anything of the sort so he told her to come back when she remembered.

Jenkinson’s consultations were so packed with people that it was difficult for Mrs Harborough to see him again. But she persevered, and when she next consulted him he asked her to come back in an hour with details of the supposed argument. Presumably preoccupied and frightened about her child’s condition, Mrs Harborough clutched at straws and managed to dredge up a memory about the child bickering with the offspring of one unsuspecting Mrs Sharp.

Drawing blood from a witch

Jenkinson allegedly told Nancy Harborough that Mrs Sharp must have ‘overlooked‘ the child and put an ‘evil hand‘ on it – in other words, ‘witched‘ it. In order to relieve the symptoms, Mrs Harborough must draw blood from the witch with a pin or – better still – a worsted needle.

Nancy Harborough was concerned that if she went ahead, Mrs Sharp might bring the law against her. She did not carry out the proposed assault, but did mention to her neighbours the doctor’s strange advice. When her child sadly died, the neighbours thought something was up. Mrs Sharp, described by the local newspaper as ‘a decent looking woman, about thirty-five‘, found herself ostracised by the community and the subject of unpleasant pranks. She discovered what was going on when a local shopkeeper pointedly said ‘Ah, that poor child is dead; nobody can hurt it now.‘ Mrs Sharp elicited an explanation and went on to instruct her lawyer to threaten Mrs Harborough with prosecution for slander. Mrs Harborough’s best option was to try to bring the ‘doctor’ to court.

Exceedingly dirty in his person

The Hull Packet no doubt wanted to entertain its readers by denigrating the defendant, so its description of Jenkinson must be taken with a pinch of salt, but it is nevertheless quite amusing:

The prisoner, who was exceedingly dirty in his person and linen, and who had on a grey shoddy surtout and a Prussian cap decorated with a rim of gold lace, has an emaciated appearance, and seemed when brought into court to have been indulging in spiritous liquors.

Witchcraft, and such like tomfoolery

While the court did not exactly approve of Jenkinson’s activities, it decided that the case was too silly to continue with. Magistrate Mr Atkinson said it was clear Jenkinson had endeavoured to incite Mrs Harborough to a breach of the peace. He was surprised, however, to discover that anyone still believed in witchcraft these days and ‘blamed the woman for her simplicity, as well as the man for his duplicity.’  Atkinson hoped that the publicity of the case would stop people ‘giving credence to the notions of witchcraft, and such like tomfoolery.’ Sago Jenkinson was discharged and the whole thing blew over.

Nancy Harborough was the only one left suffering – the loss of her child was a tough price to pay for her lack of education and her desperation to find someone who might help her.

Advertisement from The Pomeroy Herald, Iowa, 27 January 1910

Centuries after the figure of the ‘pisse-prophet’ had descended into the realms of quackery and ridicule, a modern kind of urine analyst popped up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In the early 20^th century, scientific urine tests were part of mainstream medical practice, so there was not necessarily anything dodgy about the activities of Antonius W. Van Bysterveld. As it turned out, however, he was every bit as dubious as Dr Cameron of a hundred years before.

There are several red flags in Van Bysterveld’s advertising. The 1910 ad above makes the arcane suggestion that his skills work even when the patient ‘tells nothing’. Other ads described his method as ‘a careful and secret process handed down generation after generation and most carefully guarded by the old families of Europe.’ There is some indication in the advertising that the analysis involved dripping chemicals into the urine sample, but beyond that it is kept under wraps. After diagnosis, the doctor would prescribe his own medicines at a cost of $1.25 a week.

Writers from the American Medical Association, in Nostrums and Quackery (1911) rather uncharitably passed comment on Van Bysterveld’s appearance:

Mr. Van B seems, from his picture, to be a man of mediocre intelligence who runs to naturally curled hair and an artificially curled mustache.

Van Bysterveld can’t have been the only fellow ever to have curled his ‘tache for a publicity pic, and however mediocre he might have appeared, he deserves some admiration for the sheer number of scrapes from which he managed to extricate himself.

In February 1903 he was prosecuted and fined for practising medicine without a licence, but went straight back into business with a dodgy but fully qualified medic, G. R. Adkins, who was permitted by law to write prescriptions. Within two months, Dr Adkins was arrested too, for writing a death certificate without ever having seen the deceased. Van Bysterveld bounced back and started seeing patients again, brazenly advertising himself as ‘The Wonder Doctor’ – though, if challenged, he would say that he was a chemist and did not claim to have medical qualifications. In March 1904, however, he discovered that quackery can be as dangerous for the quack as for the patient.

Fifteen-year-old Katie Bass had been consulting him for epilepsy for 3 months, when she alleged that he mistreated her. Although a report in the Chicago Tribune is coy about the details, a letter to Van Bysterveld from her furious father implies that it was a sexual assault:

You have laid the whole being of that pure, good girl, with all its enjoying capacities and angelic virtues, in ruin. You have converted all her life’s joys into sorrow; dressed all nature in mourning; hung her very sun and moon in gloom, and made her say with poor Charlotte Temple, and all others betrayed:

“Thou glorious orb, supremely bright,
Just rising from the sea
To clear all nature with thy light,
What are thy beams to me?”

I am only waiting for next Tuesday to meet you face to face.

John Bass applied for a warrant for Van Bysterveld’s arrest, but the judge refused to issue it unless Katie made a complaint in person. Katie, however, was too ill to go to the court, so Mr Bass took the matter into his own hands. He grabbed his revolver and set off in search of the doctor.

‘I am sorry I did not kill him,’ Bass later announced to the judge. ‘He laughed in my face when I upbraided him, told me she was crazy, and that no judge would believe the word of a lunatic. Then I shot him.’

Van Bysterveld sustained a gunshot wound to his leg but quickly recovered and does not appear to have been found guilty of the alleged assault, for he was soon back advertising his services. In 1906 he was again charged with practising medicine illegally, when a young woman died shortly after having taken medicine prescribed by him. And once again this had little effect on his business. He was still going strong in 1911 when the A.M.A. decided to test him out.

They made a mixture of water, ammonia, pepsin and anilin dye, and got three volunteers to send samples off to Van Bysterveld. Three different diagnoses came back, all consisting of a paragraph of vague analysis that could apply to anyone:

1. Careful examination of the urine shows there is too much acid in the blood, which will cause a rheumatic condition, the back is weak, and you will have a tired nervous feeling most of the time.

2. Careful examination of the urine shows the circulation of the blood to be very poor, the liver is not working properly, which will cause gas in the stomach and bowels and will effect (sic) the heart, you have caught a little cold which has settled in the back and stomach and you will have a nervous feeling.

3. Careful examination of the urine shows you are losing too much albumin in the urine, which will cause the back and kidneys to be weak, and there is a catarrhal condition of the stomach and bowels, and you will have a tired nervous feeling most of the time.

In an even more blatant test, the A.M.A sent in samples consisting of 95% water and 5% sugar. They got back two diagnoses using a mix of statements from the previous ones, and no mention at all of the dangerous glucose levels.

The A.M.A. unreservedly condemned Van Bysterveld’s practice as a ‘fraud and a swindle’ and a ‘picturesque, but vicious humbug’. As for the Wonder Doctor, however, he ignored them and cheerfully carried on treating his patients.

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This is a short excerpt from a speech attributed to Dr Richard Rock in a satirical mid-18th-century pamphlet called The harangues, or speeches, of several celebrated quack-doctors, in town and country. Rock, whose Viper Drops have previously appeared on this site, is sometimes referred to as an itinerant quack, but his activities were rooted in his premises at Ludgate Hill. When he went out to promote his products mountebank-style, he remained close to home, becoming a familiar figure in Covent Garden. The image of him on the left is a detail from plate 5 of Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress.

The first edition of Harangues is undated but the exchange with the Basket-woman puts the speech at 1742/43, when gin consumption was at its height and civil disturbance was in the air. Rioters protested against proposals that would repeal the largely ignored prohibition and bring gin consumption under the control of the law i.e. make it profitable for the government.

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Gentlemen,

It is with great Pleasure that I see you all, as soon as I arrive in my Chair, flock round about it: It is a Proof, that as I come to do Publick Good, I have a Publick Esteem. I don’t know, Gentlemen, whether here, in Covent-Garden-Market, ye ever heard of Public Spirit; but there is such a thing talk’d of among Parliament Men.

Basket-Woman. Oh! That is the new Act of Parliament, Doctor, about Spirituous Liquors. Pray, Doctor, will Gin be cheaper, or dearer?

Doctor. Cheaper, cheaper, or at least as cheap, my Dear; you may thank Goody Sandsby for that.—But without Jest; —The Public Spirit I meant was, what we in the City call a Love for our Country, without any private View: They talk of the same Thing at Westminster. It is this Publick Spirit, which brings me here among ye: It is the Good of my Country, which engages me to enter into its Public Service. I come not to impose upon ye; for they, who impose on the People, whether it be in Physic or Politics, are equally Quacks.

Some Fools have indeed, call’d Me a Quack: But what is a Quack? A Cheat. —Now, ye all know, I have dispens’d my Medicines, I have effected Cures, I have attended ye all, in this very Place for several Years, and no one ill Thing has been laid to my Charge. ——Let any other Great Man at Court say as much if he can. —I am always the same be I where I will: When I am at Leicester-House I am the same Man as when here; or if at St. J——s’s, my Packets are the same, my Advice is the same and my Speeches to ye are all to the same Purpose.

Had I any private View, any Ambition, any Desire, but to serve my Country, I could have gratify’d them. I am above such paltry Things, as foolish Dignities, and empty Titles. Let P——rl——t Men accept Places, and desert their Cause; let Commoners do pitiful Actions to become L——ds: But let Dr. ROCK be still Dr. ROCK.

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Source: The Graphic 11 July 1891

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From the moment of his sudden rise to fame in Portsmouth in 1887, Sequah knew how to win friends and influence people. He built up an almost cult-like following by giving the crowds what they wanted – miraculous cures, affordable medicines, and a lot of Wild West-style entertainment.

Handbills and extensive newspaper advertising built up the hype, so that when Sequah arrived in town, a curious crowd would be waiting for him. His painted wagon, brass band and entourage of assistants dressed as cowboys and Indians made for an unusual spectacle, and his displays of speed dentistry would get even cynical audience members cheering.

For all Sequah’s Western get-up and claims about the traditional Native American origin of his recipes, he was a Yorkshireman called William Henry Hartley. About a year after he began his shows, demand for his products – Sequah’s Prairie Flower and Sequah’s Oil – proved so high that he needed to be in two places at once, so Hartley recruited some more ‘Sequahs’ to cover different areas of the country. By late 1890 there were 23 of them, and Sequah grew to be a big-business brand name throughout Britain and Ireland.

Getting the audience on side was a vital part of Sequah’s modus operandi. The entertainment provided by his apparent tooth-drawing expertise was just the prelude to the main part of the show. Rheumatism sufferers would be carried up on stage to undergo a theatrical process of massage with Sequah’s Oil. Afterwards, they walked jauntily away, apparently cured.

It sounds a con, but these patients were not shills – they were local people known to others in the crowd. One example is Michael Casby of Sheffield, who informed Sequah that he had suffered from rheumatism for 16 years. Consultations with numerous doctors had been to no avail so Sequah’s attendants carried him forward for treatment. Soon the pain had gone, and Casby and Sequah danced a jig together.

One audience member, John Roadhouse, was suspicious. He asked around and discovered that Casby was an outdoor labourer on the Duke of Norfolk’s Sheffield estate. He had missed only half a day’s work in the past three months, and his colleagues expressed surprise that he had been carried onto the stage, as they had never known there was anything wrong with him. Casby later tried to explain away his actions by saying he had knee pain. His motivation appears to have been to buy into the hype surrounding Sequah and become part of the performance. For other patients, the collusion with the theatrical atmosphere was probably subconscious – caught up in the excitement, they might exaggerate their condition and play to the audience’s expectations of a cure.

Above: Sequah pulls a tooth while his brass band  plays in the background. The bulb on his forehead is an electric light. Cheshire Observer 15 March 1890

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Sequah also insinuated himself into influential people’s good books by giving money to local charities, but there was one group he did not get on with – medical students.

In Edinburgh in 1888, a note travelled round the University’s medical department suggesting a demonstration against Sequah (the original one). At Waverley Market that night, according to the Dundee Courier & Argus, Sequah was ‘greeted by a considerable number of young men with jeers and cries of “Quack.”’ Allegedly, one of them leapt forward and coshed a performer (possibly Sequah himself) with a stick. The assaulted party retaliated and knocked him out, to the delight of the crowd, who began shouting ‘Down with the students!’ The disturbance must have been anticipated, however, because the police were out in force and used ‘energetic measures’ to quell the kerfuffle and haul the students away.

Police involvement was a regular occurrence at Sequah shows, but they were not always so heavy-handed. In 1889 a police sergeant managed to rescue one unfortunate young man when the crowd turned ugly on him. The show included a ‘thanksgiving’, where former patients were invited to testify to the power of Sequah’s treatment, but once the man got up on stage, he said what he really thought about its failure to cure him. On his return to the crowd, he was set upon and had to be pulled back onto the wagon, where the sergeant also scrambled up to protect him until the show was over. Afterwards, a mob followed the wagon as far as the police station, shouting ‘Lynch him!’ Once inside the charge office, the frightened chap managed to escape via a side door, having learnt that upsetting a quack’s loyal followers can be a matter of life and death.

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There is a vast quantity of surviving evidence pertaining to Sequah and his medicine company – enough, in fact, to fill a whole book rather than a blog post, so it’s possible that Sequah will show up again on The Quack Doctor. For further reading, however, I can highly recommend W. Schupbach’s paper, Sequah: An English “American Medicine” Man in 1890, which is available at PubMed Central.

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Source: Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 3 April 1823

Much of the evidence on this one is anecdotal, but the proprietor of the Balm of Zura, Dr A. Lamert, certainly sounds quite a character.

Lamert was the son of a London-based German quack who dabbled in ophthalmology before moving on to selling a Nervous and Rheumatic Balsam and treating venereal disease.

While Lamert senior worked solely from his Spitalfields address, his son branched out, setting up a dispensary in Bristol and travelling the country, announcing in each town’s newspaper that the lucky denizens were to be favoured with a visit. In the first four decades of the 19^th century he went far and wide, taking in Derby, Ipswich, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Falmouth, Exeter, Manchester and plenty of other places in between. While at Ipswich in 1811 he received some anonymous hate-mail with a Bury postmark. His dad advertised in the Bury and Norwich Post offering a 30 guinea reward for identifying the culprit, but the residents of Bury appear to have remained silent.

Lamert Jnr was the ostentatious variety of quack who flaunted his wealth and took every opportunity to publicise his miraculous cures. The Citizen (October 1 1829) described him as:

…a fearfully dashing gentleman, all powder, with a black servant, and drives a beautiful pair of greys. Vive la quackery!

…while the Medical Adviser in 1824 was typically indignant:

All Devonshire, and the next fifty counties, does not produce so arrant a humbugger as this: he is powdered from the occiput to the coccygis,—from one shoulder to the other —from the cape of his coat to the buttons of his waist,—a curricle a-la-Jordan, an eyeglass,—a bamboo, and a copper face. Thus he parades about, all outside, while if you tapped him upon the head it would sound like a drum, —so hollow, so empty, so brainless is the wight.

(‘a-la-Jordan’ refers to the proprietors of the Cordial Balm of Rakasiri.)

One of Lamert’s innovative ways of increasing his fame was to attend the theatre and, during the performance, instruct a servant to call out that he was wanted for some medical emergency.

‘These interruptions,’ grumbled the Medical Adviser, ‘always happen when some interesting part of the play is going on.’

Lamert’s theatrical connections, however, were not confined to sitting in the audience. In his youth he had sung at the Royalty Theatre in Whitechapel, but after being pelted with oranges, he changed his career path and went on to follow in his father’s footsteps as a quack.

His arrogance might have made him capable of drawing attention, but this was often from pranksters rather than admirers. In 1848, (after Lamert’s death) an anti-quackery lecturer called Mr Richardson told of a student going to consult the doctor, pretending to be deaf. Lamert, assuming he would not be heard, ‘made some very free remarks on the character of the student’, who soundly thrashed him and went on his way.

The Medical Adviser (who, once they had it in for a quack, didn’t tend to let up), tells the tale of a dissatisfied customer who – not quite literally – gave Lamert a taste of his own medicine. The patient had wasted £5 on the Balm of Zura and received no benefit, so he took the empty bottle along to a tavern where Lamert was regaling the drinkers with a song. When the doctor ‘had occasion to absent himself a short time from the company,’ the joker pissed in the bottle and topped it up with brandy and water. On Lamert’s return he complained to him that his last purchase of Zura had gone sour.

As the doctor tasted the mixture, a couple of the tavern-goers were ‘necessitated to quit the room, to give vent to their risible titillation.’ Then someone pretended to get angry that the sour mixture might be poisonous, so Dr Lamert drank the whole bottle in proof of its safety, to the hilarity of all concerned.

They let him in on the joke and the original prankster ‘prudently decamped’ in the face of his wrath.

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Would you buy a homeopathic remedy from this man?

Source: The Morning Times (Washington D.C.) 13 December 1896

James Monroe Munyon’s pompadour hairstyle was a familiar feature of American newspapers around the turn of the 20^th century. Having tried his hand at teaching, law, social work, publishing and song-writing, he started his Homoeopathic Home Remedy Company in the early 1890s and hit pay dirt.

In 1897, Munyon opened a London head office and a depot in Liverpool. A massive advertising campaign promised free vials of the remedies and challenged the British public to test his new system of curing disease. Perhaps Munyon anticipated lasting fame in the UK, but he couldn’t have predicted what his company would be remembered for.

There was a separate remedy for every disease. To name but a few, there were…

Munyon’s Kidney Cure, which a 1907 analysis showed to be 100% sugar.
Munyon’s Asthma Cure (sugar and alcohol)
Munyon’s Blood Cure (sugar)
Munyon’s Special Liquid Blood Cure (sugar, potassium iodide and corrosive sublimate)
Munyon’s Catarrh Cure (sodium bicarbonate, salt, borax, phenol and gum)
Munyon’s Special Catarrh Cure (sugar)
Munyon’s Grippe Remedy (sugar and arsenic)
Munyon’s Pile Ointment (a farthing’s worth of soft paraffin).

At various times these products were declared misbranded in the US because of the claims that they could cure disease, and Munyon received fines – but he carried on his business regardless. One of the slogans he used in his advertising was:

There is no punishment too great for him who deceives the sick.

While his remedies were coming under scrutiny from the BMJ and the American Medical Association, 60-year-old Munyon was busy marrying his third wife, 24-year-old actress Pauline Neff Metzger. His fortune was not an effective enough remedy for their differences, and they divorced in 1913.

Munyon had bought an island off North Palm Beach, Florida, and opened a resort there in 1903, calling his luxury hotel the Hygeia and attracting wealthy invalids. One of the attractions of the place was the ready supply of Paw Paw Tonic, a cure-all made from papaya. The place burnt down in 1917 and Munyon died a year later of an apoplexy while having lunch at the Poinciana Hotel on the mainland. His obituary in the New York Times quoted him as having said he started out with:

virtually no capital except ambition and a belief in letting folks know about it.

The company continued, and as late as the 1940s, shipments of its products were still being seized by the government and condemned. In 1944, a batch of Paw Paw Tonic was found to contain strychnine.

Above: Munyon’s Catarrh Cure. Photo credit: Michael Till. This was part of an inhaler that would originally have had a stopper with a tube insertion, allowing the patient to snort the remedy.

Munyon’s Homoeopathic Home Remedy Company has a colourful enough history of its own, but is now chiefly remembered for its other claim to fame.

The London office’s first manager was an industrious employee who had spent the past few years as a Consulting Physician in the Philadelphia and then Toronto branches, impressing Munyon with his work ethic and ability to improve sales. Unfortunately, the London manager started having problems with his wife, who was still in the US trying to become a professional singer and openly having affairs.

When she moved to London in 1900, he made some attempt to support her in her music hall career, but the stormy relationship interfered with his work. He left Munyon’s and did the rounds of various other patent medicine companies, including the Sovereign Remedy Company, his own business the Yale Tooth Specialists, and the Aural Clinic, later returning to the advertising department of his original employer.

Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen eventually got the sack from Munyon’s. By then he had taken up with Ethel le Neve, his wife was still giving him trouble, and things kind of went downhill from there.

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