The Quack Doctor

From the Pittsburgh Dispatch, 2 Jan 1890

Alexander Wilford Hall wasn’t trying to flog a potion or contraption. His secret to health and longevity was something that people could do for themselves, for their whole lives, at very low cost. That is, if they really had the stomach for it.

On sending in a stamp, the enquirer would receive information about a booklet detailing the mysterious method. At a steep $4, this publication must really be something special, and according to a laudatory biography of Hall in Jay Henry Mowbray’s 1898 book Representative Men of New York, it sold 500,000 copies in the US, England and Australia. Purchasers were asked to agree to a ‘Pledge of Honor’ (or Honour, depending which country you were in) not to divulge the secret to anyone but their own family, although doctors were allowed to recommend it to patients.

The pamphlet reveals that the secret was a process that has enjoyed a resurgence in more recent times:

Disease depends upon the absorption of poisonous materials from the colon and rectum. Wash this out thoroughly with hot water once or twice a day and disease is robbed of its power, death of its terror and the doctor of his occupation. Use a large quantity of water, one or two gallons; retain it for as long as possible and that which is not absorbed can finally be expelled, taking with it accumulations which have a tendency to create diseases.

A sceptical correspondent to The Medical World, Dr Massie, colourfully paraphrased this as ‘Use lots of water (a gallon or two), retain it as long as possible, and then “Let her go, Gallagher!”’

Dr Massie also said:

I don’t know anything about Hall’s right to use the prefix ‘Dr.’, but suspect it is merely a trap to get some unwary M.D. to send for the June number of his alleged scientific journal, and be by it further deceived to send $4.00 for his alleged “Hygienic Method”

Massie needn’t have feared, however – Hall had a PhD from Lebanon Valley College, PA, and was Doctor of Laws from the University of Florida – therefore doubly entitled to be called ‘Doctor’. If people thought this meant he had a medical qualification, well, so be it!

After an inauspicious start as a mule-driver on the Erie Canal towpath, Hall worked hard to gain an education and became a writer and editor, producing his own journal, the Microcosm, and several works of philosophy. It was in the Microcosm that he announced the discovery of ‘this treatment for the cure of almost every known form of disease,’ and invited people to send $4 for the pamphlet. Although the secrecy and high cost aroused the suspicions of doctors like Massie, other physicians approved. Dr J H Etheridge of Chicago, for example, reported in rather graphic detail in the Medical Standard on his success with the treatment. In the case of one patient who had been a ‘poor breakfaster’ for years, ‘the discharges from her bowels were simply enormous’.

Etheridge might not have seen the Hygienic Treatment as quackery, but there was a danger of the method being promoted by amateur enthusiasts.

In 1889, 20-year-old George Harger, a student at the Rome Free Academy in New York, bought Hall’s pamphlet and was convinced it held the key to health. Whenever any of his fellow students were ill, he advised them to give up on conventional medicine and try the hygienic cure. His persistence, added to the fact that he was a staunch prohibitionist, didn’t do a lot for this young chap’s popularity. When he persuaded a seriously ill 16-year-old boy to adopt the hygienic treatment, enough was enough. The insufferable but unfortunate Harger was set upon by a mob of 15 other students and any remaining contents of his colon were promptly kicked out of him.

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TAPE WORM

Removed ALIVE IN TWO HOURS with HEAD or no charge. (No Fee in Advance.) No fasting. Have cured over 2,000 people of Tape worms with this harmless infallible specific, 50 per cent of which were doctoring for various other diseases, thereby eking out a miserable existence as thousands are doing. (Also cured two persons of LIZARDS.) Send stamp for circular.
Dr J. G. SHIPLEY
Montezuma, Iowa, Tape Worm Specialist of over twenty years’ experience.

Source: The Burlington Hawkeye, Iowa, 9 July 1895

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Tapeworm specialists advertised widely in late 19th-century American newspapers— Wait, what?… LIZARDS?

I wondered if ‘lizards’ was a colloquial term for some variety of parasite, but it seems Dr Shipley wasn’t the only one claiming to remove actual lizards from people’s innards. In 1900, Dr H D Rucker advertised that his medicine, ‘Korak Wonder’, had caused one Mrs E. J. Welker to expel a lizard ‘well formed and having four legs and feet.’

Tapeworm specialists had a variety of techniques and potions, but Charles Oleson, M.D, in Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine, describes a common method used by irregular practitioners. Oleson, though cataloguing the formulae of dodgy remedies, was not afraid to stand up for those he believed would work. This was one of which he heartily approved.

The patient must fast for a day, taking only a saline cathartic to empty the bowels. The next morning, he or she would take a teaspoon of the essential oil of male fern (whose Latin name, Dryopteris filix-mas, is one of the few things I remember from A-level biology) in a cup of warm milk. Milk was supposed to be ‘an article of food in which the tape-worm greatly delights.’

After this, the patient had to lie down for a few hours, keeping a slice of lemon handy in case of nausea, and then take a dose of castor oil, turpentine and croton oil – the latter being toxic and a rather drastic purgative. The spectacular effects of this mixture can be imagined. If you put a piece of mosquito netting over your chamber pot, ‘the worm itself can be easily retained for further examination,’ or for keeping as a pet or whatever.

Some tapeworm specialists did medicine shows in the street, and for this they needed to impress the punters by displaying preserved worms of enormous length. The Decatur Review (Illinois) in 1903 printed an anecdote about a worm doctor called Joe Bowen, who had given up a successful career as an auctioneer in order to go into the lucrative worm business. When he started out he did not have any specimens to display, and as the newspaper said:

If these tapeworm specialists haven’t something to show and scare the people, there is no use for them to set up.

Mr Bowen found an inventive solution:

He borrowed a crimping machine then he went to the slaughterhouse and gathered a lot of entrails. In a few hours after that, Joe had the finest exhibit of tapeworms that ever went on the street.

The exhibit did the trick and Bowen earned a fortune.

Less successful in the fight against tapeworms was an invention from earlier in the 19^th century — Alpheus Myers’ Tapeworm Trap.

This small metal capsule, about ¾ of an inch long and half an inch in diameter, was patented in 1854. It had a hole in one end and, inside, a sprung trap. The patient had to insert some bait – when making fun of the invention, newspaper reporters suggested cheese, but in fact the patent says any nutritious substance will do. The brave sufferer, having fasted for a couple of days to get the worm hungry, had to swallow the trap, keeping a string dangling out between their teeth. The peckish parasite was supposed to lunge for the bait and get its head stuck, after which all you had to do was pull the whole length of worm out through your mouth. It was important that the trap wasn’t too vicious:

… care should be taken that spring g, is only strong enough to hold the worm, and not strong enough to cause his head to be cut off.

The invention was about as effective and popular as you might expect – i.e. not very. Whether it would also work on lizards, I don’t know.

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Source: The Mills County Tribune, Iowa, 12 March 1914

Some secret remedies remain secret for centuries. Not Mayr’s Wonderful Stomach Remedy. Within about a year of it becoming famous, a Chicago newspaper was describing its promoter as a ‘comical quack’ and ‘one of the most entertaining medical fakers in Chicago.’

The Stomach Remedy was inspired by the methods of the itinerant con-artists who worked the small towns of the US in the late 1800s. In the early 20^th century, similar products began appearing in the advertising columns, and druggist George H Mayr was quick to get in on the act. Described by the A.M.A. as ‘the fake gallstone trick,’ his method provided patients with immediate, visible results so convincing that the testimonials flooded in.

Mayr was evangelical about his medicine’s properties:

I have watched sick people for years and have reached out my hand to thousands in the great depth of the Valley of Despair and brought them into the light of life and happiness. I want you, and each one suffering, to know the full joys of living with every part of your system in beautiful accord and absolute perfect harmony.

His remedy comprised a bottle of medicine and two sachets of powders. The patient had to take the first powder at about 3pm, then the whole contents of the bottle before bed, then the second powder in the morning. All going to plan, there should be spectacular results:

When the bowels operate, use a vessel and note the poisonous secretions removed by this remedy, in some cases dark green or yellow lumps varying in size from a fine bead to an olive – in severe cases even larger. In other cases quantities of thick tenacious slime or mucous.

Mayr claimed that it was an old French remedy, used for generations to ‘relieve all stomach ailments and keep the bowels free from foul, poisonous matter.’ France, he said, was ‘the nation without stomach troubles.’

Whatever the state of our Gallic friends’ alimentary canals, Mayr’s medicine bottle contained nothing more interesting than olive oil. The powders were flavoured with licorice but other than that, analyses varied. One said they were mainly Rochelle salt (potassium sodium tartrate) while another suggested that one sachet contained Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) and the second a sodium phosphate.

Either way, the patient would expel greenish waxy globules that looked a bit like stones. The A.M.A.’s report concluded that these were a mixture of fatty acids and soap caused by the alkaline intestinal fluids operating on the oil.  Anyone taking the remedy and cheerfully rummaging through their subsequent excretions would get the same result, regardless of whether or not they had anything wrong with them.

Stones expelled by a patient using Mayr's Remedy. Pictured in Nostrums and Quackery, A.M.A, 1921

Mayr’s dodginess extended to his advertising methods too. In 1918, the New York Tribune revealed that he sent round a list of instructions to editors, giving them advertising copy like this…

………… SOLDIER UNDER FIRE
“We have had several brushes with the enemy since reaching the trenches here, which I am sure I would not have reached had it not been for Mayr’s Wonderful Stomach Remedy. It has entirely cured me of indigestion and awful gas in my stomach. Army food now digests as good as mother’s used to.”

The newspaper was supposed to fill in the blank in the headline with the name of its own town, to present the imaginary soldier as a local lad. The Tribune was quick to take the moral high ground against the papers that accepted this form of advertising, saying rather self-righteously:

But the publisher who cooperates with the quack by deliberately printing what he knows to be a lie is guilty of unspeakable treachery to those who believe what they read in his paper.

Mayr wasn’t the only one to use this advertising ploy, and not the only one promoting the oils-and-salts method. A hundred years later, a similar process called the liver cleanse or liver flush is still going strong. The difference is that now we have the internet, where people can (and do) post pictures of their poo to show off the wonderful things therein. A link to such biological delights is not necessary on a history site, but you’re big enough and ugly enough to do a bit of Googling if you desperately want to know.

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Having formerly Published an Advertisement of an Excellent Remedy, Called Aqua Antitorminalis, which has been Experienced to be an Infallible Cure for that Reigning Distemper, called The Griping of the Guts, which several Persons have made use of, with great Success at this Season, wherein it Appears by the London Bills of Mortality, that this Disease does extreamly Rage, we thought good again to Recommend it to the Publick, as the most Useful and Necessary Physick that they can keep by them at all times, especially for prevention, if taken in time. It is prepared by a Person who has Administered the same these Twenty Years with great Success. The Use thereof is Safe, the Cure Certain, and the Directions Easie. It my be Administered to Infants within the Moneth by five Drops at a time in a little Ale or Beer: And to those of three or four Years, by three Spoonfuls in Beer or Ale: And grown Persons may securely take four Spoonfuls alone without mixture. And one Bottle thereof will most Effectually Cure the said Distemper in both Sexes, and all Ages, if timely taken: as also all Shiverings and Feverish Symptoms, which generally attend the Griping of the Guts: It likewise certainly Cureth the Wind Cholick. And is to be Sold at 1s. 6d. a Bottle, By Mr. Ben. Harris, at the Statiiners Arms under the Piazza in Cornhill, with Printed Bills of Directions.

Source: Domestick Intelligence or News both from City and Country 12 Sept 1679

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In the late 1990s, a person who shall remain nameless described to me their stomach bug symptoms thus:

There’s shit coming out my arse like it was Niagara Falls.

So it was for the unfortunates who needed the above medicine. ‘Griping of the guts’ sounds a rather colourful way of describing a simple tummy-ache, but advertiser Benjamin Harris’s assertion that it ‘does extreamly Rage’ was no exaggeration – the condition could be deadly.

In the year of this advert, griping in the guts appeared in London’s Bills of Mortality as the cause of 2996 deaths. Most of those would have been infants. The diagnosis covered a variety of gastrointestinal diseases, but bacterial infections – particularly E. coli – are the main suspects.

The Bills list dysentery separately as ‘Bloody flux, scowring and flux’ (61 deaths) but there was no doubt some overlap between the categories. Yet more digestive problems appear as ‘vomiting’ (27) and ‘worms’ (38), while the term ‘convulsion’ – responsible for no fewer than 2837 deaths – probably encompassed cases of infant diarrhoea.

Griping in the guts was therefore a good bet for advertisers of proprietary medicines in the late 17th century. Worried parents were the ideal market, and there was the added bonus that many adult sufferers would recover naturally from a bout of the shits, thus making the remedies seem effective.

Should one find oneself ‘troubled with a looseness’, however, there were plenty of alternatives to buying an advertised medicine.

M. Flament, in The art of preserving and restoring health (1697), advised a pleasant-enough draught of almond oil, rose-water and sugar, followed two hours later by some broth and a new-laid egg. Less appealingly, these should be accompanied by bloodletting and a daily clyster of barley, bran, two raw egg yolks and sugar.

Robert Boyle recommended the following, which sounds like a brilliant snack whether or not you were ill:

Into a quarter of a pint of brandy, put a toast of bread whilst very hot ; and as soon as it is thoroughly drenched, let the patient take it out, and eat it hot: and this may be repeated, if there be need, two or three times a day.

Dutch physician Paul Barbette, meanwhile, gave a long list of remedies, the most unusual being:

Burn live Crafishes in an earthen Pipkin well-closed, until they be so burnt as to be reduced to powder; of which give to the Patient mornings and evenings a Thimble-full or two in a convenient Liquor.

And:

Take of Mummy, a little Mastick, Bol-Armeniack, Sanguis Draconia, mix them together, and make a powder of them, and take of it in a convenient Liquor, the weight of a dram, once or twice a day.

‘Mummy’ meant… well, mummy. Not as in the person who gave birth to you, but as in ‘The Curse of...’

Powdered mummy was in use in European medicine from the 12th century, resulting in the destruction of thousands of ancient Egyptian corpses. The practice was not without its critics – in the 16th century, Michel de Montaigne and Ambroise Paré (and probably lots of less illustrious people) expressed their disapproval. Pare’s objections were on the grounds that mummy medicine didn’t work, rather than that it was creepy.

There was, of course, a finite supply, and by Barbette’s time there were no guarantees that what you were getting was from a genuine mummy. At the seedier end of the business, counterfeiters used whatever corpses they could get hold of.

Mummy was more often used to treat bruising than for stomach bugs, so let us return to the alimentary canal and finish with a 1703 case described by William Salmon. In Collectanea medica, the country physician: or, a choice collection of physick: fitted for vulgar use, he detailed various cases of dysentery that he cured in different ways, including this particularly satisfied patient:

One who had a Bloody Flux, with a pain in his Belly, had used many things, but all in vain: At length he sat over the fumes of a decoction of Beans, and took it in by straining, and thrusting forth his Fundament: He found nothing which did him more good.

The Hull Packet, 1 November 1803

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What is any self-respecting quack to do in the face of criticism?  

The answer in 1804 was exactly the same as it is now – turn nasty and threaten to sue the arse off everyone.  

The name ‘Ching’s Worm Lozenges’ might suggest that this will be an icky-parasite post, but in a way I wish it were. Instead, this story is incredibly sad.  

There were two kinds of lozenge – yellow and brown – that had to be taken at different times of day. Both contained white panacea of mercury. The travelling sales agents, however, were under strict instructions to assure customers that ‘not a single particle’ of mercury was in them.  

On 4 December 1803, a little boy called Thomas Clayton, aged 3, was given the Lozenges, followed three days later by a repeat dose. He went into a high state of salivation – one of the symptoms of mercury poisoning. His parents sent for medical help, but to no avail.  

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…the mouth ulcerated, the Teeth dropped out, the Hands contracted, and a Complaint was made, of a pricking Pain in them and the Feet, the Body became flushed and spotted, and at last Black, Convulsions succeeded, attended with a slight delirium; and a Mortification destroyed the Face, which proceeding to the Brain, put a period (after indescribable Torments) to the life of the little sufferer, on Sunday, the 1st instant, Twenty-Eight Days after he had taken the Poisonous Lozenges.  

The coroner’s verdict was ‘Poisoned by Ching’s Worm Lozenges’ and the above description is from a handbill written by the child’s father, also called Thomas Clayton. Clayton was a printer and bookseller, so was able to produce loads of these leaflets and personally deliver them all around his local neighbourhood in Kingston-upon-Hull. In them, he noted that the main Hull papers (the Packet and the Advertiser) had ignored both the death and the coroner’s verdict – probably because they received so much advertising revenue from Ching’s.  

John Ching himself had died in about 1800. The business was ostensibly carried on by his widow, but really came under the control of a dodgy cove called Mr Butler.  

Signing himself R. Ching, Butler responded with a broadside of his own, attacking the grieving father and threatening to prosecute him for publishing the case. He called Clayton’s words ‘malicious invective,’ ‘AN INFAMOUS ASSERTION and ABOMINABLE FALSEHOOD,’ and said he had ‘FLAGRANTLY LIBELLED TRUTH.’ These handbills were printed by Robert Peck of the Hull Packet – who, like many newspaper printers, was a vendor of patent remedies and was firmly on Butler’s side.  

I don’t know whether Clayton’s grief and campaigning activities led him to neglect his business or whether he was already in financial trouble, but he was declared bankrupt about a month after his son’s death. Although the newspapers hadn’t reported the poisoning, they were quick to advertise the sale of all the Claytons’ property. In a particular act of despicableness, Robert Peck allegedly turned up at the sale and boasted to Mrs Clayton that her husband would not get away with the libel.  

Clayton wanted to take the precaution of getting a written copy of the coroner’s verdict, but when he went to pick it up, he discovered that the coroner ‘had not time’ to do it. The Deputy Town Clerk was equally unhelpful, but it turned out that Butler was all talk and never went ahead with the prosecution.  

By 1805 Clayton must have managed to get back in business as a printer, because he published An Essay on Quackery, and the dreadful consequences arising from taking advertised medicines; with remarks on their Fatal Effects, with an account of a recent death occasioned by a Quack medicine. The author is anonymous and is usually assumed to be Thomas Clayton himself, but I believe it to be his brother, M. J. Clayton. The 140-page essay appears cobbled together, is understandably emotional, and it reproduces lots of excerpts from other writers, but it also offers a measured, sensible list of recommendations for stamping out quackery by replacing the government’s quack-related income with duties on other activities.  

This government revenue was substantial and goes a long way towards explaining why dangerous medicines were allowed to continue. Each bottle or packet had to carry a stamp – some quacks portrayed this as being a mark of official approval but, like most things in life, it was solely a way for the government to get money. I only have figures for 1839, but at that point the government was making approximately £49,300 per year from stamp duty, advertising duty, licences, patents and paper duty (for the wrappers that many remedies were sold in). It’s an awful lot of money, but the price paid by families like the Claytons was much greater.  

In a letter to the Medical Observer, the Essay author is exaggeratedly humble about his literary talents, but hints at attempts to suppress the book, and confesses himself chagrined at the lack of interest from the medical faculty. He also says that his own two children narrowly escaped the same fate as little Thomas, and so the Essay‘s chilling curse on Butler clearly comes from the heart:  

Dire conscience all thy guilty dreams affright,
With the most solemn horrors of the night.
The screams of infants ever fill thy ears,
And injured heav’n be deaf to all thy prayers.  

Source: The Graphic, Sat 23 August 1879

Laxora was introduced to Britain by its French proprietor, P. Guyot, in 1877, and at once attracted positive attention from the medical press. It sounds a pleasant medicine to take – The Medical Times and Gazette described it thus:

They consist of a core, or centre-part, of compound of manna, cassia-pulp, and other like laxatives, we believe, enclosed in a crystalline chocolate crust; are not at all unpleasant to the taste, and will, we doubt not, be readily taken by children as well as by adults.

Certainly more appealing than the Rectal Dilators or the Aperitive Vase!

In the 18th century, William Buchan (Domestic Medicine), had said that constipation ‘may proceed from drinking rough red wines, or other astringent liquors: too much exercise, especially on horseback,’ but by the mid-19th century many medical writers (particularly in the US) were putting it down to the sufferer not getting into the habit of ‘going to stool’ every day. You had to be regular, and if you weren’t, it was advisable to go anyway, and sit and wait until something happened. Thomas Hawkes Tanner in 1866 estimated that the normal output of a ‘properly fed man’ should be 4 or 5 oz daily. For those with time to kill, Samuel Sheldon Fitch advised:

Let the costive person, exactly at the same time every day, solicit an evacuation, and that most perseveringly for at least one hour, should he not succeed sooner, at the same time leaving off all medicine.

Should the costive person fail at their solicitation, there were numerous remedies to be introduced – by mouth or otherwise. Rhubarb and castor oil were well-known as purgatives, and clysters of castor oil, lukewarm water or, more drastically, tobacco-smoke (as advocated by Thomas Sydenham two centuries earlier) might do the trick. One recipe for a clyster comprised castor oil, turpentine and half a pint of gruel, which I imagine went a long way. If the condition proved stubborn, one US writer said:

When the feces are impacted in the rectum, the assistance of the finger, a scoop, spoon-handle, or some similar instrument, introduced per anum, becomes necessary to break up and discharge the solid mass.

More unusually, an 1854 book by James Smellie described the action of galvanic apparatus as an aid to getting the bowels moving – the positive electrode was to be placed in the lumbar region, the negative to the rectum. With extreme cases, it was necessary to ‘employ the galvanic friction, and sometimes to draw sparks from individual points.’

The emphasis on being regular makes it debatable whether all supposed sufferers really had a problem. ‘Costiveness’ could be diagnosed – and treated quite aggressively – just on the strength of the patient not having defecated for a couple of days, which is hardly a medical emergency.

Ultimately, however, much constipation advice focused on diet, for prevention as well as cure. Strong coffee, too much white bread, especially that contaminated with alum, and the fashionable habit of over-indulging at one late meal rather than eating little and often, were all thought to contribute to the condition. Thankfully for patients daunted by the more drastic remedies, there was the option of beef tea, figs, prunes and tamarinds, molasses, porridge, and plenty of fresh fruit.

This post departs from the usual because it’s not directly related to an advertised remedy, and no one involved is out to make money from selling cures. While I was researching the Sugar Plums for Worms, however, I came across many interesting stories showing the impact of parasites on individuals’ health, and the heroic efforts those individuals made to cure themselves. A mere two cases are given here – there are many more. I was intending to describe a third, but it was one that made even me feel sick.

In early 1757,  (though the case was not published until 1785 in the Medical Transactions of the College of Physicians, London), Daniel Neal, of Doddlestone in Cheshire, was

…attacked with uncommon pains in his stomach, attended with nausea, vomiting, constipation of the bowels, and an almost total loss of sleep and appetite. Under these circumstances he soon became greatly emaciated, and could neither stand nor walk uprightly ; his belly grew small and hard, and so closely contracted, that the sternum covered the navel in such a manner, it could with difficulty be discovered or felt with the finger; his urine was always milky, and soon deposited a thick white sediment; his excrements were very hard and lumpy, resembling those of sheep, only of a brown color, nor had he ever a stool of that kind without some medicine or other to procure it.

He continued in this state for some years, eventually going to hospital in 1761 and spending seven weeks there before giving up and going home. The following Christmas, he was advised by a neighbour to drink salt and water, so he immediately gave it a try, dissolving two pounds of salt  in two quarts of water and downing the lot in under an hour. The effect was rapid – he threw up ‘about half a pint of small worms, part ascarides, and the rest resembling those worms which are called the botts, and frequently met with in the stomach of horses, only much smaller, and about the size of a grain of wheat.’

More worms made their exit in the other direction but the salt affected the patient with ‘a most troublesome dysuria and strangury.’ Thankfully, this soon abated, and the undefeated Mr Neal repeated his adventure, ‘the effects of which were nearly similar to the former, only, that most of the worms were now burst, and came away with a considerable quantity of slime and mucus.’ ..

Five days after his first go at the treatment, Neal was up and about. He soon recovered completely, though he took the precaution of drinking salt water every so often, just in case.

A few years before Neal’s ordeal, in 1750, a ‘Gentleman at Lyons’ wrote to the Gentleman’s Magazine with an account of how he had rid himself of his tapeworm after years of unsuccessful medical treatment that had parted him only from his money, not from his passenger. Having determined that he would rather ‘die by poison, which I might ignorantly swallow in my search for a remedy, than to languish so long in bed,’  the gentleman set about recklessly eating every herb he could find, but nothing worked. At length, he decided drastic measures were called for.

Convinced that tapeworm (then more commonly called flatworms or broadworms) were oblivious to medicines because their heads were safely buried in the intestinal wall, the gentleman fashioned ‘some small hooks of lead, with 3 points, like an harping iron, and fastened them with a piece of thread to a leaden bullet, in order to swallow them.’..This innovative method

…brought away many pieces of these worms, without producing any ill effects, except that when the worms were entangled in the hook, they made such efforts to disengage themselves, as threw me into great agonies.

After moderate success, the gentleman redesigned the hook, attached it to a piece of thread like a fishing line and swallowed it, keeping hold of the end. His witnessing friends had

…such a compassionate sense of my sufferings and danger that, to avoid the pain of attending the issue of so dangerous an experiment, they chose rather to leave me, than to remain near enough to afford me such assistance as I might need.

Unable to pull the hook back up, he swallowed it, and at length it reappeared at the other end of his digestive system accompanied by a worm described – rather traumatisingly – as being 30 ells long with a head like a cat. Further use of the hooks eventually cured him. He concluded his account with:

The author of this letter has much more to add, both concerning the symptoms of this malady and method of cure, but feared to be tedious; he kindly intimates a readiness to satisfy those whose curiosity or distress may make them desirous of further information.

Source: The General Advertiser, 19 Jan 1748

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I mentioned the Purging Sugar Plumbs for Worms early in the life of this blog, but didn’t include much beyond the ad itself, and I hardly had any readers then anyway, so I think it’s worth revisiting – especially as this advert is so delightfully worded and cheerfully revolting.

At some point in the early 1740s, a Mr Burchell took over the ownership of another remedy, the Anodyne Necklace, which had been on sale for decades as a cure for babies’ teething pain. He built up his business on this and the worm remedy, fending off imitators with some innovative advertising methods – not least the eye-catching newspaper ads showing exactly what might be gnawing at your intestines (the inclusion of the insect thing on the right is an inspired bit of added horror).

One of Burchell’s methods was to entice punters to his premises by giving away free almanacks and pamphlets. In 1750 he was quick to exploit the fear caused by the earth tremors that had shaken London, by publishing:

ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE
Much Worse than the Two Last. When, and What Time to be Expected? With a Surer SAFEGUARD, Against it, than Going Out of Town. And, Why the Last Two EARTHQUAKES happened to be in this one particular Jubilee Year, more than in Any other Year?

The Almanack referred to in the ad above is intriguing – what could it contain that other almanacks left out? Although the content changed each year, a 1750 ad goes into more detail:

In the Month of Lent, is a large LIST of Other Fasters from FLESH CONVERSATION as well as FLESH DIET, Such as MISERS, WORN-OUT Sinners, etc.
The Miser’s CHAST, ’cause he won’t PAY a Wh—re
The Worn-Out’s CHAST, ’cause He can Sin NO MORE
And,  All the Other Months, have also their OWN proper TIMELY Observations, Not to be Met With, in Any of the COMMON ALMANACKS, but Only in THIS One, Which Tells What THEY Don’t.

Fun for all the family, by the sounds of it.

Later in the 18th century, the theme of free stuff continued, with Basil Burchell (who I think was the son of the original proprietor, but I’m not sure) issuing coin-like advertising tokens with the sugar plumbs on one side and the Anodyne Necklace on the other (he used the spelling ‘sugar plumbs’ in his ads too). The tokens usually had a hole in them so they could be worn on a ribbon.

Worm medicines were a good bet for a quack, because although intestinal worms were very common, especially in young children, this didn’t make them any nicer to have than they would be nowadays. The symptoms of untreated worm infestations were bad enough, but this was accompanied by the downright horror of being inhabited by living creatures. J Cook, a correspondent to the London Magazine in 1768, gave a description of the main varieties:

There are three sorts of worms which generally infest the human body. The round ones, the broad ones, and ascarides. Sometimes, but seldom, anomalous ones are discharged, viz. horned, hairy, with four feet, with two heads, with three, and some with four forked tails, etc.

The very thought of what might be in there led some people to go to extraordinary lengths to get rid of them, and I will blog about a couple of examples in my next post.

MR. ELIAS GROVES, of Clapham, attests, that he was afflicted upwards of a Year and half with a most violent windy Disorder, to so great a Degree, that the Wind would roll about, as it were, all over his Body, and occasion him frequently to be discharging it in a surprising Manner out of his Mouth for ten Hours together. This most grievous Complaint wasted him away as if in an Atrophy, and cause a great Sinking of his Spirits: He had the Advice, and followed the Prescriptions of two eminent Physicians, (as he can make it appear) as well as others, without the least Benefit, until he took Dr. Lowther’s Powders and Drops, the joint Use of which in a short Time entirely remov’d his Complaints.
These Powders and Drops (for the great Invention of which his Majesty honoured Dr. Lowther with his Royal Letters Patent, November 1757) are sold in Six Shilling and Three Shilling Parcels, at Brooke’s Warehouse, Fleet-Street, and Dawson’s Warehouse the foot of Westminster-Bridge; at which last place the Doctor may be consulted gratis every Tuesday from Three to Five, and Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, from Ten to One, at Brooke’s.
These Powders and Drops are incontestably proved to be the greatest Specific ever invented for the Cure of every Species of Fits, Nervous and Paralytick Disorders. Sold also by Mr. Marlow, at the Angel and Crown Tavern, Tunbridge-Wells, as the Waters of that Place are known to be very powerful Deobstruents, by their Chalybeat Virtues. These Powders may be taken in them to great Advantage.

Source: The Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer, 8-11 July 1758

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This advert is quite restrained by William Lowther’s standards – he only mentions the King’s Letters Patent once. Elsewhere he drew even more attention to this supposedly great honour, and called the drops the ‘Royal Specific Anodyne Drops.’ Although references to the patent can come across as a bit pompous, Lowther wasn’t alone in using this method of convincing punters that the medicine was respectable. It was common for vendors to do so, and there was no reason why they shouldn’t, although they were perhaps disingenous in implying that the monarch was a personal fan of the product. The king didn’t need to have tried the remedy – patents were granted for all sorts of things, and although the inventor had to provide a written specification of how the medicine was produced, there was no requirement to prove that it worked or even that it was safe.

The ‘Dawson’s Warehouse’ referred to was a carpet warehouse, and in 1757 Dr Lowther’s Tuesday schedule involved hot-footing it over there from Brooke’s in Fleet Street, in time to start his consultations at 2pm. In 1758 he began giving himself an extra hour – perhaps he needed time to grab something to eat on the way.

Although the Powders (patented before the Drops, in June 1755) were also advertised as an anti-epileptic medicine, there was a considerable list of disorders they claimed to help, as related in the London Gazette in June 1757 (spellings and punctuation as in original):

Tremblings, Faintings, Swoonings, Sick Qualms, Reachings, Loathings, lost Appetites, bad Digestion, weak Nerves, Flutterings, Palpitations, Anxieties, confused Thoughts, Lethargies, dull melancholic Dispositions, Vapours, low Spirits, Restlessness, Weariness, Frightful Dreams, Pains in the Head and Stomach, Vertigo’s, Swimings, Giddiness, Dizziness, Dimness, Flushings, the Cramp, Contractions, sudden Catchings, Obstructions, disorders incident to the Fair Sex, and, in fine, the whole train of Fits, Nervous and Paralitic Complaints.

In 1771 Lowther published a pamphlet called A Dissertation on the Dropsy; distinguishing the different species of dropsy, the various causes of the disorder, and the most effectual method of cure. The Monthly Review‘s verdict (shown here in its entirety) was rather dismissive:

This dissertation is full of hard words and cramp phrases, and is written with a view to celebrate the great and unknown virtues of Dr. Lowther’s diuretic drops.

Lowther’s medicine was still well-known enough in the 1780s to warrant it a place in a satirical poem about newspapers, published in The Town and Country Magazine:

Here puffing empirics, in a pompous style
Excite “the passing tribute of a smile”

In Lowther’s far-famed powders you will find
(Forget not those which are prepar’d by Hinde)
Virtues most potent, powerful to cure
The worst diseases men can here endure
Whoe’er on them will, confident, rely
May Death’s dragoons for numerous years defy.

Just a quick post today while I languish on my sickbed without any useful remedies to console me.

Following on from a previous post about the Bile Beans for Biliousness, Jane Ellen, Senior Archivist at the University of Melbourne Archives kindly sent me this image, probably from the 1930s. It looks as though it was in-store advertising and, like other adverts for this product, shows an amusing juxtaposition of radiant beauty and, well… the name Bile Beans. The way the Beans acted to produce such a lovely figure is as unappealing as their title – they ‘ensure[d] that regular elimination so essential to your wellbeing.’

I’ve dug out the text of another advert for Bile Beans – this one (below) is from The Argus, Melbourne, 16 April 1945. (N.B. The original doesn’t have a question mark for the first sentence either.) Aimed squarely at women and pitched more as a food supplement than a medicine, this is a contrast to the product’s early advertising, which targeted both sexes and claimed that the Beans were effective against some quite serious diseases.

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Why shouldn’t you be Radiant & Attractive

THAT inner well-being, the bright eyes, clear complexion and the sparkle that go with it are just a matter of nightly routine – the results which Bile Beans surely bring.
Purely vegetable, Bile Beans–just one or two taken regularly at bedtime, build up good health and good digestion while you sleep. They tone you up, cleanse and regulate the system. They improve your appearance and your outlook on life.
Bright eyes, cheeriness, personal fitness are grand assets these days. They can be yours all through the year if you

Start To-night with Bile Beans

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