The Quack Doctor

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

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

QUACK, QUACK, QUACKERY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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The following is from a spoof quack handbill published in 1676 as part of a pamphlet called The Character of a quack doctor, or, The Abusive practices of impudent illiterate pretenders to physick exposed. Spelling and punctuation are as originally printed.

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EXIMIO PRAEDICO;
OR
A Thousand Infallible Cures

At the Golden Ball in Fop-Ally next dore to the flying Hedghog in New-Alsasia, Lives the Paraselsus of this age, by name Seignior Doloso Effrontero, Native of Arabia Deserta, natural Son of the wonder-working Chimest Doctor lately deceased at the Devils Arse a Peak in Silesia, and famous throughout Europe, Asia, Afrique and America, from the oriental exaltation of Titan, to his occidental Declination.

Who in pitty to his own dear self and Languishing mortals, has by the earnest prayers and solicitations of divers Princes, Lords, and other honourable Personages, been prevaild with to oblige the World with this notice, that all persons Young or Old, or Deaf or Lame, or Blind or Dumb, may know whither to repair for present Cure, in all Cephalalgia’s, Paralytical Paroxismes, Odontalgia’s, Apoplexia’s, Peripneumonia’s, Empyema’s, Palpitations of the Pericardium, Syncope’s, Nanseitie’s arising either from a Plethory or a Cacochymy, Disenteria’s, Iliacal passions, the Scurvies, Exanthemata; the Hog-Pox, the Hen-Pox, the Small-Pox, the Whores Pox, or the Devils-Pox, the Ascites, Tympanites, or Anasarca, Ichorical effusions, Rhumatismes, Phlegmons, Erysepalus’s Herpes, Impetigo’s, Tentigo’s, Scabs, Scaldheads, Warts, Corns, and all other Diseases, Griefs, Wounds, Fractures, Dislocations, Confusions, Dolors, Aches, Defects, Pains, Distempers and Discrasies of Nature, whether external or Internal, acute or Chronick, Curable or Incurable.

His Medicines are the Quintessence of Pharmapeutical Energy, and the Cures he has done, are above the Art of the whole World.

Imprimis, he has a wonderful, Universal unheard of, never-failing Hypnotical, Cordiacal, Cephalical, Hepatical, Anodynous, Odoriferous, Carminative, Renovative, Styptical, and Coroborating Balsome of Balsomes, (made of Dead mens fat, Rosin and Goose grease,) that infallibly restores lost Maidenheads, raises demolisht Noses, and by its abstersive Cosmetick quality, preserves super-animated Bawds from Wrinkles; he has the true Catharmaphora of Hermes Tresmegistus, an Incomparable spagyrical tincture of the Moons Hornes, the most soveraign  Alexipharmacum in the world against the contagion of Cuckoldry; he has the Pantimagogon of the Triple Kingdome that works seaven several ways, and is seaven years a preparing, being at last exactly compleated, secundum Artem, by Fermentation, Putrifaction, Distillation; Rectification, Cohobation, Circulation, Calimation, sublimation, solution, Precipitation, Coagulation, Filtration, and Quidlibetification, both in Balneo Mariae, the Crusible, and the Fixatory, the Athanor, the Cucurbita, and the Reverberatory, this is Natures Palladium, Healths Magazine, A dram of it is worth a Bushel of March Dust, if any person happen to have his Brains beat out, or his Head Chopt off, two drops seasonably applyed shall recall the Fleeting Spirits, re-inthrone the deposed Archeus, cement the discontinuity of the parts, and in six minutes restore the Lifeless Trunk to its pristin vigour, in all its functions, vital, natural and Animal; he has an excellent Antipudengragrian specifick, (the choicest jewel amongst Venus’s Regalia, which perfectly cures the French Pox with all its noble train of Bubo’s, Gonorrhaea’s and shankers, with as much pleasure as the same can be contracted, so that it would tempt any man of sence to get that modish Disease (if it may be procured for Love or Mony, once a Fortnight, to enjoy the repeated delight of so divertising a Remedy.

Today marks the beginning of World Homeopathy Awareness Week. When homeopathy was introduced to Britain in the 1830s, not everyone was clear on what this new-fangled system was all about. Here’s an explanation from Mr Waggle, a character in Cornelius Webbe’s The Man About Town (1838). Waggle is a well-preserved 45-year-old bachelor who never stops joking, and though his constant stream of puns is potentially wearisome to his companions, he is a good-natured and popular fellow.

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Title page from the 1839 US edition

‘What’s Homoeopathy, Mr. Waggle?’ inquired L of him, an evening or two since: I was sure he would get a satisfactory answer.

‘Why, I should say, the nearest path or best way home,’ was the reply.

‘No, no—now, come, tell me; for here I see,’ taking up the Literary Gazette, ‘among the new books, is “Homoeopathy; a Thesis,” 8vo. 2s. 6d.’

‘A what?’ cried Waggle.

‘A Thesis,’ said L.

‘Erratum— For “Homoeopathy; a Thesis,” read “Homoeopathy; a Thimblerig,”’  said Waggle, shortly and severely.

‘Come, come, that’s one of your old jokes! Do tell me what it is!’ cried L.

‘Well, then, it is a bran-span new German-silver-spoon method of curing disorders by the smallest possible intention of not curing them,’ said Waggle.

‘I don’t understand it now,’ continued his inquiring friend.

‘Well, then, I’ll make it plain to the meanest capacity.’

‘Thank you,’ said L—.

‘Suppose your dwelling-house to be on fire. Very good.’

‘Not so very good!’ cried L.

‘That’s as it happens,’ said the wag. ‘Being on fire, you would probably apply powerful pails of water to put it out, and send off your man for the engines? You would do very wrong. According to the new light, you should let it blaze away, till it is all alight from top to bottom. You should then pick out the very finest-pointed White-chapel needle you can find in your wife’s huswife, and, as coolly as you can, begin poking away with it at the fire till you get tired of poking. When you discover that niggling at it with a needle won’t do, and that it blazes more furiously than ever, send to the nearest oilman’s, and take and divide two barrels of pitch, one of tar, and tallow ad libitum, infinitessimally into the smallest possible pellets, and taking your station over the way, throw one of them occasionally across the street into your house. If it still blazes away, throw two, three, and keep on adding to the number, till your townhouse is fairly burned down, even to the ground. When there is nothing more to burn, the fire, of course, will go out. And that’s Homoeopathy!’

‘I understand it now,’ said L, ‘I never understood it half so well before.’

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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.  

From the Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1766:

CHRISTMAS DAY.

Welcome, thrice welcome Christmas day !
Let’s eat, drink, dance, and sing away:
Old England ne’er had stronger reason
To welcome in this joyful season !
Mark high and low, and all around us
And know the blessings that surround us.
Let ‘em in all their pomp appear;
Sure omens of a happy year !
First, turn your eyes upon the great ;
When did such virtues rule the state ?
The country has their whole attention,
Without a thought of place or pension.
Of parts, and pow’r, no prostitution,
Of liberty, no diminution ;
Sound as a roach our constitution
Which florid grown, by over feeding,
Is now quite cool with frequent bleeding :
Great Lawyers, with our good at heart,
Now every day new doctrines start.
For freedom and for Magna Chart,
Our clergy too, all int’rest scorning,
Are teaching, preaching, night and morning ;
T o keep their flocks secure at home,
And guard them from the wolves of Rome:
So by their zeal, which never ceases.
The growth of popery decreases.
Physicians now cure each disease,
They take great pains, and little fees.
Nothing but learning, parts, and knowledge,
Can give a passport to the college :
No poison’s sold for nerves or vapours,
No quacking nostrums fill the papers—
These are the gifts the great have sent ye,
For all is concord, peace, and plenty.
The poor, as fat as brawn, we meet ,
Eating minc’d pyes along the street
No Harlots to be seen, not one,
Not ev’n the Whore of Babylon !
These times are sung by great and small
‘Tis merry Christmas for us all;
And certain ’tis, by what is past,
That the new year will match the last.

A brief interlude from the usual style of post today, as I’m still attempting to erase the Yankee Rubber Baby from my brain. The following letter was printed in The Monthly Gazette of Health in June 1821. A surgeon, not the most modest fellow in the world, gives an explanation for quackery – it’s all the fault of tightwad patients…

I am in practice as a consulting surgeon, and admire the spirit with which you lash quackery, both regular and irregular; but you must allow me to shew that patients themselves are the cause of Empiricism, as I think I shall convince you and your readers, by the following instances.

I have attained considerable celebrity, and in some particular complaints, can justify my pretensions to a niche in the Temple of Fame, by affording instant and permanent relief. This I feel great pride and pleasure in performing, whenever such cases occur. One, amongst many, was a gentleman, who came from the West Indies on purpose for my advice, called on me in his carriage, was cured on his second visit, and paid me, with abundance of compliments, a fee, which of course I could not look at till he had departed, when I found it was ОNЕ POUND!

Another, a very old gentleman, who was relieved in the same speedy manner, and was equally LIBERAL! but probably, he means to remember me in his will.

I could give you many instances where my conduct has been thus honourable, although I might have kept these patients under my care for months, and then have cured them; yet so inconsiderate, and I will even say dishonourable has been their conduct. I do not mean to assert that I am more honourable than all other professional men, for I hear the same tale from many who have ability to relieve, but who, like me, have thus suffered for their generous behaviour. Men of no principle in the profession will guard against their patients’ parsimony; and those of no ability will of necessity oblige their patients to be visited frequently; but I would wish to ask you and your readers, whether the treatment I have described, and which professional men are often subjected to, does not hold out an incentive to quackery and imposition? I certainly think that a person of fortune, receiving speedy and permanent relief from a distressing complaint, at the hands of a man who has devoted a large portion of his life, and considerable expence, to acquire competent abilities, should offer a reward proportionate to the benefit the patient derives; and if this plan were more generally adopted, empiricism would receive its death-wound. I am, Sirs, Yours, &c.

AN OLD SURGEON.