The Quack Doctor

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!

From The Oakland Tribune 22 February 1925

If you think a chlorine bomb sounds more like something from the battlefield than the medicine cabinet, then you’d be right about the origins of this 1920s remedy. The product, and a brief trend among physicians for treating colds with chlorine, arose from experiments made by the US Chemical Warfare Service after the First World War.

Thomas Faith, in his article ‘“As Is Proper in Republican Form of Government”: Selling Chemical Warfare to Americans in the 1920s’ (Federal History, 2010) places these experiments in the context of a public relations campaign to improve the CWS’s unsurprisingly poor image. The Service needed to contribute positively to life in peacetime, and what better way to appeal to the public than to announce a cure for the common cold?

While the influenza pandemic was claiming millions of lives, doctors at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, noticed that flu was less common among workers in the chlorine gas manufacturing plant than elsewhere. Intrigued by this anecdotal evidence, Lieutenant Colonel Edward B Vedder and Captain Harold P. Sawyer of the Army Medical Corps spent a year experimenting with chlorine gas on patients with ordinary colds. Reporting their findings in March 1925, Vedder revealed that of 440 cases, 261 were ‘cured’ and 149 were ‘improved’ by the treatment. Such an improvement might have been vague and unquantifiable, but the researchers also sent out questionnaires to physicians using the treatment. They got an overall favourable response, and took that as proof that it worked.

Finding a cold cure might be impressive enough, but Vedder and Sawyer had gone a step further and claimed to cure the cold of the President of the United States. In May 1924, Calvin Coolidge spent 45 minutes in a sealed chamber, breathing in a low concentration of chlorine gas. By the next day, his cold had become so bad that he had to cancel his official engagements, but after two more treatments he was well again. A cold getting better after three days? Who would have thought it?

In 1925 the University of Minnesota demonstrated via a controlled experiment that patients with colds recovered in the same amount of time with or without chlorine, but by then the idea had entered the commercial world and sufferers were being exhorted to ‘Bomb the first sneeze’ with Kilacold.

Kilacold Chlorine Bomb. Photo via Worthpoint.com

The Kilacold chlorine bomb was a teardrop-shaped glass ampoule containing 0.35g of chlorine gas. The patient had to break the end off to allow the gas to permeate the air of a closed room and, according to the advertising, their cold would disappear within an hour. The treatment was also promoted for flu, whooping cough, croup, bronchitis and for diphtheria carriers, but was not recommended for people with asthma. The bombs cost 29c each at Walgreens in 1925.

A few years later, 11 cartons of the bombs were seized at Portland, Oregon, and condemned as misbranded because the packaging stated that the contents were ‘Absolutely harmless’ and ‘positively not poisonous in any way to the human system.’

Although a 1927 Kilacold advert spoke of chlorine as an agent of death and destruction in war, it continued by using a rather tasteless statement to assure punters that the medical form was different.

‘Chlorine bombs are safe and sane,’ the advertising asserted. ‘Thousands of doctors declare the late war worthwhile because it gave the world the chlorine treatment.’

While I’m researching my posts, I find a lot of interesting ads that I put to one side to blog about one day.

But sometimes it turns out that I can’t discover much about them, or they’re so famous that there’s not a lot I can add to the info already available online, or they’re similar to something I’ve written about before. These ads just sit in my files and don’t see the light of day.

So I’ve decided to post a few of them over the next couple of weeks. If you’re the world expert on these products, have family anecdotes about them, or just feel like speculating on what they might have contained, do post a comment.

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Advertisements for Crossthwaite & Co’s Occult Lozenges began to appear in British newspapers in early 1837 and the product was available until at least the 1880s. This ad is from The Weekly Chronicle on 19 April 1840.

Source: The Liverpool Mercury, 30 December 1851

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Phlegm is generally white, greyish, or of a yellow colour, with streaks of black; its consistency varies from the limpidity of water to the thickness of jelly.

This vivid description is from Parisian chemist Paul Gage’s Treatise on the Effect and Disorders produced by Phlegm in the Human Frame – the pamphlet referred to in the advert above. The 16-page essay is elegantly written and, rather than trumpeting the medicine’s properties in the exaggerated fashion typical of quacks, Gage uses more sophisticated tactics to persuade the reader of its efficacy.

Phlegm, Gage believed, was implicated in virtually all diseases – the sheer amount of the stuff was evidence for this. He estimated that if all the phlegm in the human body were collected together, the quantity would ‘surpass the weight of all other evacuations.’ Medical men might argue over this, but they were too inclined to follow fashions in diagnosis and put their own opinions above the welfare of their patients. Gage uses the common quack ploy of discrediting the medical profession, politely accusing them of disagreeing amongst themselves, observing only what they wished to observe and ignoring ancient systems of medicine.

At the time of the Treatise’s publication in English (1851), disorders of the blood were the ‘in thing’ and according to Gage, doctors did not look much beyond blood-letting as a treatment. Drawing of bad blood, however, was useless as it would simply be replaced by more bad blood if the cause – that is, the phlegm – were not removed.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ appealed Gage, ‘overcome the principle before attempting to overcome the symptom.’

At the other end of the spectrum was the ‘enlightened medical man who has at heart the love of his suffering fellow creatures’ – i.e. Monsieur Gage himself. He pre-empts criticism by pointing out the medical establishment’s tendency to write off any new method as quackery in order to protect their own interests.

It was easy to tell if you were suffering from phlegm: the ‘abundant expectoration of clear and slimy mucus’ was a bit of a giveaway. Other symptoms, however, included dry skin, belching, pale lips, hoarseness and poor digestion. Women and children were the greatest sufferers but phlegm affected everybody – particularly those of weak constitution, sorrowful and melancholy temperament and a sedentary lifestyle.

The Antiphlegmatic Elixir was a laxative, which seems odd for a condition now associated with the respiratory tract, but to Gage phlegm was just as much of a problem in the digestive system. In children, for example, it could generate and nourish intestinal worms. When treated with the Elixir (in conjunction with a decoction of male fern – a standard vermifuge!), the creatures would come out surrounded by masses of the stuff.

As well as worms and the more likely coughs, colds and asthma, the Elixir would cure apoplexy, scrofula, gout, dropsy, palpitations, skin conditions and ‘diseases of women.’

The Treatise contains a list of successful cases, but in a departure from the common quack practice of printing testimonials in the patients’ own words, Gage sets his out in the third person, like the case histories in reputable medical books.

One featured patient was a 28-year-old lady with five children, who had numerous crevices in her right breast and a white swelling on her right elbow. Until the age of 25 she had thrown up large quantities of viscous matter every morning, and when her mother mentioned this to the attending physician, he prescribed the Antiphlegmatic Elixir. After five months the lady was cured.

By writing of a reputable doctor prescribing the Elixir, and giving a lengthy recovery period rather than a miraculous instant cure, Gage subtly dissociated himself from quackery and presented his ideas as equal in status with (but more enlightened than) medical orthodoxy. He appealed to the educated reader with a sense of responsibility for their own health, and in doing so trousered a similarly upmarket 4s. 6d. per bottle.

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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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Source: The Sporting Times, 28 January 1899.

Although this product isn’t solely medical, its advertising did claim that it could prevent chills, colds, rheumatism and lumbago, and alleviate toothache, neuralgia and sciatica.

Whether or not it could effectively combat these ailments is doubtful, but it nevertheless sounds like a useful gadget for the depths of winter.

The 12th Earl of Dundonald patented the Instra warmer in 1896, and soon developed a whole range of products under the motto ‘Warmth is Life’. The standard version was the pocket warmer, a slim contraption available in embossed German silver at 12s 6d or without the decoration for 7s 6d. Plebs need not miss out as there was a tin alternative at a bargain 3s 6d.

The Instra came with refills that you had to light with a match and place into the outer casing. They had to be put in non-burning end first, which sounds tricky. I don’t know what the fuel was, but the makers claimed it was lightweight and slow-burning. A single cartridge weighed only one seventh of an ounce and would give out heat for three to four hours. Surrounding the cartridge were layers of gauze padding to stop sparks getting through. The device could then be used in various ways:

To be warm, put in side pocket; to be warmer, hook up just behind and below the hip bone underneath the coat; if very chill, hook up on one or other side of the back bone between the shoulders; for railway travelling, get the anklet strap; to air a damp bed quickly, put a chair in the bed and the Instra inside.

The pocket warmer was only one part of the range – there was also an Instra Chest Stove to wear strapped to one’s bosom. Supposedly contoured to the shape of the chest, in pictures it looks decidedly uncomfortable, and not very accommodating for ladies of Rubenesque stature.

For cyclists, however, the Instra range was a boon. The pocket warmers could be strapped to the ankles on chilly days, and Instra Bicycle Handles were the ideal way of keeping the rider’s hands warm. For equestrians there was the Instra Horse Stove, a large rectangular warmer costing over a pound. It’s not clear whether this was for the horse’s or the rider’s benefit, but it looks like it could be worn on the rider’s back and would certainly prevent slouching.

Happy customers testified to the Instra’s usefulness. Mrs Stone from the Isle of Wight said:

Thanks for the Instra warmer, which I place in my muff and thus save my fingers from being half frozen.

while The Rev E.R. Burroughs commented on the product’s versatility:

I am much pleased with the pocket ‘Instra.’ Another use to which it can be put is that of drying clothes in a drawer, and airing them if they are likely to be damp.

All in all, an admirable product that would of great service in 21st-century winters. The health and safety concerns of carrying lit fuel in one’s clothing are put to rest by the advertising pamphlet:

To show their safety, INSTRAs have been habitually carried in the same pocket mixed up with gunpowder cartridges.

Lord Dundonald (right) also invented the Constra bicycle saddle, a design that departed from the solid bone-shaking norm and consisted of leather straps stretched over a frame. This met with a mixed reception – Cycling magazine was dismissive, while The Nursing Record and Hospital World approved, saying that:

There is no tendency to jerk off, as with some saddles, and there is no injurious vibration when riding over rough roads.

They did admit they hadn’t actually tried it though.

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BARRETT’S Mandrake EMBROCATION
CURES {HEADACHE! EARACHE! TOOTHACHE!} INSTANTLY.
Unequalled for Sprains, Bruises, Overstraining of the Muscles, Cramp, Rheumatism, Sciatica, Lumbago, Gout, Neuralgia, Chilblains, Bronchitis. To be had retail of all Chemists, 1s. 1½d., 2s. 9d., and 4s. 6d., postage 3d. extra ; or direct from the Sole Proprietor, JOSHUA BARRETT, 21, Beresford Road, Highbury New Park, London, N. London Wholesale Agents—Messrs. Newberry and Sons, Barclay and Sons, Limited, and all wholesale houses. SPECIAL NOTICE.—For the convenience of those at a distance from Chemists, J.B. Will send Three Bottles, post free, on receipt of 8s. 4½d., stamps or P.O.
To Mr. Joshua Barrett.—Dear Sir,—About twelve months ago, I, in playing football, had the misfortune to break a large muscle of my leg, which prevented my being able to walk, much more to play again. I may say that I have been under no less than three doctors, all of whom have failed to cure me. I was recommended by a fellow athlete to try your MANDRAKE EMBROCATION, and, I am pleased to say, with good result. I am now playing and running again as if nothing had happened. I shall have exceedingly great pleasure in recommending same to my numerous friends. If you like to make use of this, by all means do so.—Yours faithfully, H. G. THOMPSON, Captain, Kent Rovers Football Club, Kent County, and Sydenham Athletic Association.

Source: The Sportsman, 30 March 1889

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Go to a country show, craft fair or exhibition, and chances are you’ll see at least one stall flogging health products that ‘can help with’ whatever happens to be wrong with you.

In the 1880s and 90s, Joshua Barrett used the same method to sell his Mandrake Embrocation and subsidiary products such as Mandrake Liver Powders and Mandrake Tonic. He also seems to have entered the Embrocation for the competitions prevalent at such shows, winning medals and diplomas of honour.

Barrett didn’t advertise much in newspapers, preferring to meet punters in person and give out handbills and free samples. This independence from the press meant that he didn’t need to be based in London, and in the 1890s he relocated to Snaith in Yorkshire – a sensible move bearing in mind he had previously travelled as far afield as Edinburgh to exhibit his product.

The advert above pre-dates the 1889-1890 Russian flu pandemic, and as you can see it makes no mention of influenza. Once outbreaks reached the UK, however, the Embrocation suddenly became ‘Scientifically Proved and Practically Demonstrated’ as a cure. The handbills explained why flu had never been mentioned before:

This remedy has only just been discovered, and the following directions are not with the Thousands of Bottles now in the hands of the appreciative public.

To ward off the early symptoms of flu, one had to

…take a piece of sponge the size of an egg, damp with the Embrocation, and hold it to the open mouth, inhale steadily, then close the mouth, swallow the fumes, and return them through the nostrils: repeat often.

Although an egg-sized piece of sponge was adequate, there was also a special inhaler available – a simple glass tube to hold an embrocation-soaked piece of wadding, and it was cheap at only a shilling. In the more advanced stages of influenza, Barrett also advised rubbing the oil on all achey parts of the body.

The most unusual thing about the Mandrake Embrocation is the absolutely terrifying trademarked logo. This grotesque coalition of man and anatid does not inspire much confidence in the product, but it is certainly eye-catching – and rather appropriate too, as the Russian flu pandemic was an avian strain originating in ducks. The man’s head is supposed to be a likeness of Joshua Barrett himself.

For me, growing up in the 1980s, asthma was a convenient way of getting out of P.E. I can imagine, however, how disabling the condition must have been before modern drugs like salbutamol. Anything that claimed to relieve asthma would have been worth trying – but Dr Tucker’s remedy carried with it the danger of addiction.

Pall Mall Gazette, 10 March 1900

This advert for Tucker’s Asthma Specific is fairly unassuming compared with the big pictorial ads in fashion at the time, but it was well-positioned on the front page of London’s Pall Mall Gazette. The product originated in Mount Gilead, Ohio, where Dr Nathan Tucker started The Asthma Specific Company in 1889. (The title ‘Dr’ was genuine.)

Early 20th-century analyses had varying results, but most agreed that the Specific contained cocaine and atropine. While the company emphasised that the amount of cocaine in each inhalation was tiny, the Journal of the American Medical Association didn’t approve:

When one considers the prevalence of the cocain habit and demoralizing and brutalizing effect that this habit has on its victims, the viciousness of the indiscriminate sale of a preparation of this sort becomes evident.

They were particularly concerned about the method of taking the medicine – it was vaporised and inhaled into the nose:

It is only necessary to call attention to those cocain habitués, known as “coke-sniffers” to realise the enormous harm that can be done by the taking of cocain in this way.

An inhaler plus an initial supply of the liquid cost $12.50 in the US and 3 guineas in Britain and you can see Nathan Tucker demonstrating the inhaler below. The company operated by mail order – punters had to fill in a questionnaire and would receive a diagnosis and prescription by post. This was a marginally better bet for American patients than British ones – at least Nathan Tucker and his nephew William Briscoe Robinson were qualified doctors. In the UK, the business was run by Tucker’s brother, Augustus Quackenbush Tucker (no, seriously!) who had no medical qualifications and later claimed he didn’t even know what was in the medicine.

There were thousands of happy customers, but for some the outcome wasn’t much fun.

In 1908 the Specific was implicated in the death of a British patient – 36-year-old Margaret Weston from Slough. She had been using the inhaler for two years and the doctor who attended just before her death noted symptoms of cocaine poisoning. The American Medical Association, in Nostrums and Quackery, implied that the Specific killed her, but in their quack-busting enthusiasm, didn’t mention that the inquest found she had also had a cocaine injection for dental work. At about the same time, Augustus Tucker was fined £5 plus £5 5s costs for selling the preparation without marking it ‘Poison’, and for not including an address on the packaging.

Nathan Tucker retired in 1910 and William Robinson took over the business, but got into trouble five years later when a court ruled that under the Harrison Narcotic Act, it was illegal for the company to prescribe its product by mail. Robinson somehow managed to get round this and continued the mail-order system, with his son Dr Gerard Briscoe Robinson later joining him. Tucker’s Asthma Specific was around until 1959, when G B Robinson died in a plane crash and the company’s assets were sold off.

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This Cut illustrates the manner of Using
DR. PIERCE’S
Fountain Nasal Injector
or
DOUCHE.
This instrument is specially designed for the perfect application of
DR. SAGE’S CATARRH REMEDY.
It is the only form of instrument yet invented with which fluid medicine can be carried high up and perfectly applied to all parts of the affected nasal passage, and the chambers or cavities communicating therewith, in which sores and ulcers frequently exist, and from which the catarrhal discharge generally proceeds. The want of success in treating Catarrh heretofore has arisen largely from the impossibility of applying remedies to these cavities and chambers by any of the ordinary methods. This obstacle in the way of effecting cures is entirely overcome by the invention of the Douche. In using this instrument, the Fluid is carried by its own weight, (no snuffing, forcing or pumping being required,) up one nostril in a full gently flowing stream to the highest portion of the nasal passages, passes into and thoroughly cleanses all the tubes and chambers connected therewith, and flows out of the opposite nostril. Its use is pleasant, and so simple that a child can understand it. Full and explicit directions accompany each instrument. When used with this instrument, Dr. Sage’s Catarrh Remedy cures recent attacks of “Cold in the Head” by a few applications.
Symptoms of Catarrh. Frequent head-ache, discharge falling into throat, sometimes profuse, watery, thick mucus, purulent, offensive, &c. In others a dryness, dry, watery, weak or inflamed eyes, stopping up or obstruction of nasal passages, ringing in ears, deafness, hawking and coughing to clear throat, ulcerations, scabs from ulcers, voice altered, nasal twang, offensive breath, impaired or total deprivation of sense of smell and taste, dizziness, mental depression, loss of appetite, indigestion, enlarged tonsils, tickling cough, &c. Only a few of these symptoms are likely to be present in any case at one time.
Dr. Sage’s Catarrh Remedy, when used with Dr. Pierce’s Nasal Douche, and accompanied with the constitutional treatment which is recommended in the pamphlet that wraps each bottle of the Remedy, is a perfect specific for this loathsome disease, and the proprietor offers, in good faith, $500 reward for a case he can not cure. The Remedy is mild and pleasant to use, containing no strong or caustic drugs or poisons. The Catarrh Remedy is sold at 50 cents, Douche at 60 cents, by all Druggists, or either will be mailed by proprietor on receipt of 60 cents. R. V. PIERCE, M.D., Sole Proprietor. BUFFALO, N.Y.

Source: The Indiana Progress 25 April 1872

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We’ve met Dr Ray Vaughn Pierce before as the promoter of the Pleasant Pellets. A big-business quack, he sold enormous quantities of his remedies, which included the Golden Discovery, the Extract of Smart Weed and the Vaginal Tablets.

For the treatment of catarrh, Pierce recommended Dr Sage’s Catarrh Remedy in conjunction with the Nasal Injector. Strangely enough, the business address for Dr Sage’s remedy was exactly the same as that for Pierce’s other products – the World Medical Association in Buffalo, NY.

An 1890s ad for the Catarrh Remedy included the following picture:

The ad continues:

“That’s what I call making glad the waist places,” said Smithson, as he put his arm around a lady’s waist. But Lilly won’t care much for this show of affection if Smithson doesn’t get rid of that disagreeable catarrh of his.

The waste/waist joke wasn’t very original, but I sympathise with both Lilly and her bunged-up beau.

Instructions for using the Nasal Douche appear in Pierce’s popular book, The People’s Common Sense Medical Adviser.

Before using the Catarrh Remedy, you had to clear out the nasal passages by taking one quart of soft water, dissolving two large tablespoons of salt into it, then heating it to body temperature – in other words ‘until it gives a pleasant, mild warmth to the inserted finger.’

The douche reservoir had to be elevated just above your head, then you would take the tube and put the nozzle into one nostril, up which the pressure would make the fluid flow in a ‘gentle stream.’

According to the book,

The douche should not be employed unless both nostrils are open and the flow is free. If the head is ‘stopped up,’ snuff up the warm liquid from the hand occasionally, until the passages are open and you can breathe freely through both nostrils.

In which case, one might be forgiven for wondering what’s the problem! If, however, you got this far, it was time to introduce Dr Sage’s Catarrh Remedy to the mixture. Once you were used to the Injector, you could put the reservoir on a higher shelf to create a stronger flow. The procedure should be carried out at least twice a day but preferably no more than three times. For anyone nervous about squirting liquid up their nostrils, reassurance was available:

Let no one entertain any feeling of timidity on commencing the use of this instrument, as its operation is perfectly simple and harmless, and, with the fluids which we recommend, is never attended with any strangling, choking, pain, or other disagreeable sensations.

If you didn’t use up all the liquid in the reservoir, you could pour it back into the bottle – but the book recommended that if the liquid had passed through the nasal cavity, it would contain the germs of the disease and therefore should not be used a second time.

Source: The Morning Chronicle, 27 August 1803

THE PURE DROPS of LIFE; or, Vegetable Extract, prepared only by T. M. Lucas, V.D.M. Road, near Bath. Sold, by special appointment, at Messrs. H. and W. Humphries, No. 87, Fleet-street; No. 2, Haymarket; Mr. G. Long, No. 13, Great Newport street, Long Acre; Mr. Tabart, 157, New Bond -street; Mr. Palley, Newington Causeway; Mr. Leathwait, Royal Exchange; and by the principal Venders of genuine Medicines in the United Kingdoms; in Bottles at 2s. 9d. 6s. 11s. and 22s. each.—N.B. There is a saving of 1s. on the 11s. and 5s. on the 22s. Bottles
REV. CHARLES GREENLY, TO MR. LUCAS.
James’s-street, Bath, May 4th 1800
Sir—For several months I have been much afflicted with a very great hoarseness; I tried several things for relief, but to no purpose; at last I was prevailed upon to take your Pure Drops of Life; I soon found relief, and I bless God, after taking a few bottles, my hoarseness was entirely removed. I believe your drops to be a very precious cordial. I have recommended them to several, and shall continue to recommend them, and am your affectionate                                                                                                                       CHARLES GREENLY.

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Hoarseness was just one complaint that would supposedly surrender to the Pure Drops of Life. Mr Lucas also advertised them as being efficacious against colds, coughs, liver complaints, cholera morbus (this term could apply to a variety of gastrointestinal afflictions), palpitations, nervous affections, incubus (nightmares), and ‘indispositions of females’. He recommended them to singers and public speakers, saying ‘this Discovery is the greatest ever known, for clearing the voice, strengthening the lungs, and animating the whole frame.’

The ingredients included ‘a great variety of Flowers, Fruits, Seeds, &c.,’ so an endorsement from über-botanist Sir Joseph Banks was just the thing to give the Drops credibility. In a promotional pamphlet, Lucas claimed that he had visited Sir Joseph, who had taken a glass of the remedy and pronounced it an excellent carminative (anti-fart medicine). From this, Lucas concluded that:

If the pure drops of life are approved by the first botanist in the world, what family would be without them?

The key word is, of course, ‘if’. In 1807, a new anti-quackery publication called The Medical Observer wrote to Sir Joseph (after some prompting from a reader) for his version of events. He replied:

I am much too well convinced of the unavoidable necessity of regular medical advice, in the administration of every medicine whatever, to have on any occasion allowed my name to be used as a recommendation of any nostrums or quack medicines.

He had never seen Mr Lucas’s advertisements and the use of his name was unauthorised. The wording doesn’t rule out the possibility that Mr Lucas did encounter Sir Joseph at some point, with the two parties perhaps interpreting the meeting differently, but  Sir Joseph’s view was:

I certainly consider it a crime against the public, to recommend to them, by false pretences, or by deceit of any kind, medicines or any other matters or things.

The Medical Observer also drew attention to the letters V.D.M. after Lucas’s name – a suffix that might have appeared to the unwary to be a medical qualification, but meant Verbi Dei Minister – Minister of the Divine Word. This was a fairly flexible designation that people could adopt to show their dedication to preaching the Gospel, without necessarily having a theology degree or being ordained in the Church of England. It was useful for nonconformist preachers who had a strong commitment to God but nothing much ‘official’ to back it up (er… a bit like how I claim to be a historian just because I research history a lot, I suppose!)

Some of Lucas’s ads refer the reader to an article in the Evangelical Magazine that supported his claims. In fact, this was just another advert that he wrote himself. I don’t know whether Lucas was a genuine preacher but I suspect he was, and probably didn’t see any contradiction between his calling and his rather dubious methods of promoting his invention.

The Medical Observer mentions the wider problem of quacks using fake or irrelevant qualifications to impress the punters. It tells of one such character who, as well as claiming to be an M.D., put E.D.   A.T.W.   D.A.  after his name. Although I wouldn’t put it past the editors to have embellished this story, it’s worth repeating what the letters stood for:
E.D. – Electrical Doctor
A.T.W. – Author of a Treatise on Worms
D.A. – Donor of Advice

There – I think everyone on the planet qualifies as a D.A. Congratulations!

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