The Quack Doctor

From The Graphic, 15 Feb 1890

There’s often something a bit fishy about patent remedies, but this one appeared before the advent of canned tuna and, for the average non-sea-going punter, the name did not have the piscatorial associations it has now. A company called Fels and Davis began promoting it in 1879, but by the following year Davis had quietly disappeared from the adverts and the business became Fels and Co.

The remedy was promoted as ‘a strictly vegetable compound’, and its trademark suggests that the vegetable in question was a prickly pear species, which produces edible fruit known as tuna. Given that The Strand is not renowned for its supply of cacti, the product wasn’t necessarily made from real tuna fruit, but it’s odd that the advertising doesn’t go all out to create an exotic background story. Instead, the unique selling point was the free dose offered to anyone who called in person at Savoy House.

From The Graphic, 11 Jan 1890

The experiences of one such caller are set out in a testimonial on an 1879 pamphlet, which is a good example of a proprietor portraying an apparently sceptical customer whose eyes are opened to the wonders of the remedy. The customer, a neuralgia sufferer called J Flynn, starts off thinking of Tuna as ‘only another remedy cracked up by quacks’, and goes to Savoy House purely out of curiosity when he happens to be in the area. After receiving his free dose, he is not convinced, so the Tuna representative gives him another, and still nothing happens. Unable to hang about any longer, J Flynn goes on his way, when the inevitable occurs:

But mark! Before I had gone less than a mile the pain entirely left me, and I have not had the slightest symptoms since, and this was after three weeks’ incessant pain, from which I could barely sleep or eat food.

Flynn goes from writing off Tuna as just another quack potion to viewing it as ‘a godsend to mankind,’ and concludes by thanking Fels and Davis for being ‘extremely kind in curing me and not charging me one halfpenny’. The technique of showing the conversion of sceptic to believer is a common one in patent medicine advertising - here, it’s elegantly combined with a reminder to the reader that there’s absolutely nothing to lose from a visit to Savoy House.

Source: The Graphic 11 July 1891

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Last October I blogged about the Magic Foot Drafts, a remedy for rheumatism that required the patient to stick pine-tar-coated oilcloth plasters to the soles of their feet. This was supposed to draw out uric acid through the pores, but as Samuel Hopkins Adams said in The Great American Fraud,

…they might as well be affixed to the barn door, so far as any uric acid extraction is concerned.

A few weeks ago, Linda Riordan, who lives in Ohio, found the blog post while searching for some info about a letter that her late grandma had kept in a shoebox since 1915.

Linda’s grandfather had sent off for a trial pair of Magic Foot Drafts but sensibly decided not to place a further order. By then, however, he was on their mailing list and they weren’t about to let him go. Linda kindly sent me the letter – it’s in beautiful condition and a very entertaining read.

It’s signed by Frederick Dyer, Corresponding Secretary of the Magic Foot Draft Company, and he doesn’t take the softly-softly approach to sales.

Dear Mr. Greene:

If you have written us a letter regarding the Dyer Foot Drafts we sent on your order last week, it has failed to reach our office yet. We were quite disappointed not to get your letter this morning, for you must know we expect you will be prompt to inform us just how your case is progressing.

The letter goes on to explain that the effect of the Drafts will vary according to the severity of the disease and how the plaster is applied – in other words, if it doesn’t work, it’s because your case is a complicated one or you put the plaster on wrong. Chronic cases might require up to 6 applications.

Any effect like this comes by degrees, perhaps slowly at first, but none the less surely if the patient is faithful in the effort and not over-eager to see a miraculous change right away quick.

Once again, an unsatisfactory result is the patient’s fault for being too impatient or giving up too easily.

Dyer then goes on to ask Mr Greene to read ‘every one of the enclosed fifty-odd letters’ from satisfied patients (these testimonials have not survived). The hard sell continues:

Now then, to be fair with yourself and square with us, what do you intend to do? Try to get rid of your misery as others have, or go on suffering the rest of your natural life? There is positively no reason in settling down and saying: “Oh, I believe my case is incurable, for I have tried so many things, etc., etc.”

There was a money-back guarantee if the Drafts didn’t work, but the company probably relied on the patient wanting to believe there was some improvement, or feeling like an idiot and putting the episode down to experience without bothering to claim a refund.

The letter ends:

Unless you have already sent your order we shall expect a letter from you very soon, and there will be no failure to send the treatment just as you instruct, so you will have it and keep your recovery going steadily on day and night until every last twinge of pain has left you.

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A huge thank you to Linda Riordan for sending me this letter.

During the next couple of weeks I’m featuring some of the ads that have slipped through the net – either I can’t find out much about them, or I’ve already written about something similar.

The brief British season of thinking it might be nice to play tennis is now coming to an end. The crumbling tarmac of the courts on the local rec succumbs once more to weeds and the old wooden-framed school racket retreats to the back of the wardrobe.

This remaining enthusiast, however, has the advantage of tip-top health thanks to Gamjee’s Oriental Salve – which, in spite of its name, was mainly advertised in the Western Mail. The ‘white swelling’ referred to in the testimonial was tuberculosis of the joints.

GAMJEE’s ORIENTAL SALVE

(As supplied to the Right Hon, W. E. GLADSTONE)

CURES Burns, Sores, Piles, Rheumatism, Paralysis, Lumbago, Stiff Joints, White Swellings, Wens, Hip Disease, Chest and Lung Complaints, &c., &c.

ELIZABETH BLOOD, 28 Newthorpe-st., Nottingham. I suffered for over three years from white swelling. The doctor’s opinion here was that it would be years of ever I was cured. Whilst on a visit to Swansea I was advised to use Gamjee’s Salve. The change for the better was rapid, and in three weeks I walked up the steps of the Midland Station without assistance, although on my arrival I had to be carried. Four boxes completely cured me.—Certified by GEO. BLOOD, M.R.S.

Hundreds of similar cases have been cured.

GAMJEE’S EAST INDIAN PILLS, or Blood Cleansers, thoroughly Purify the Foulest Blood, Cure Indigestion, Bilious or Liver Complaints, Piles, Gravel, Wind, Restore Tone and Vigour to the most weakly constitution, and are the best in the world for all Female Irregularities. Perfectly Herbal and Tasteless.

Everyone who has tried them says they are the

BEST REMEDIES IN THE WORLD

In Boxes at 7½s., 1s 1½d., 2s.3d., 4s. 6d. From ALL CHEMISTS, or Free for the amount (with special instructions, if required) from the Manufacturer, CHAS. MAGGS, 13, Wind-street, Swansea.

Source: The Western Mail, 27 November 1885

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W. E. Gladstone’s patronage of the product might or might not be true, but it foreshadows his portrayal as a political quack in this 1889 cartoon by Tom Merry. Gladstone as the charlatan is promoting the ‘Infallible Home Rule Ointment.’

Courtesy of Wellcome Images

Source: Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 20 July 1826

In 2003, the Daily Mail ran a story titled: Beeswax is ‘miracle’ cure. The article referred to an 18th/19th-century ointment called The Poor Man’s Friend, a popular remedy for wounds and skin conditions. The reason it hit the 21st-century press was that its inventor’s original secret recipe had come up for auction.

Giles Laurence Roberts, proprietor of the Poor Man’s Friend, didn’t have a great start in life. Born in April 1766 in Bridport, Dorset, he contracted smallpox when he was nine months old. Although he recovered, he then got rickets and was unable to walk until the age of five.

Young Giles, however, pulled through, and by his early teens had developed a keen interest in medical botany, studying Culpeper and formulating his own herbal medicines. He achieved some local fame as a healer, particularly for cases of fever and ague, and was also fascinated by electricity, conducting experiments with a homemade electrical apparatus. Unable to make it work at first, he persevered and eventually managed to give himself an electric shock.

At 18, he went to work for a mechanic, but his master soon died and Roberts expressed a wish to become an apothecary’s apprentice. His family didn’t approve and he ended up in Bristol working for an optician. Sharing his lodgings was a respectable surgeon called Mr Pitt, who encouraged him in his interest in healing and anatomy.

Back home in 1788, Roberts set up shop as a druggist and, although unqualified, began practising as an apothecary. After six years’ successful business, he travelled to London to study Anatomy and Midwifery, attending lectures at Guy’s and St Thomas’s, and only a year later arrived back in Dorset as a fully licensed surgeon, apothecary and accoucheur. Only one thing was missing – the title ‘Doctor.’

King’s College Aberdeen awarded him a medical degree on 20 April 1797 – this appears to have been arranged by his tutors in London, and he did not have to do any further study or pass exams. Aberdeen was well-known for awarding medical qualifications on receipt of cash, so it’s possible that some money changed hands. Dr Roberts’s background of diligent study, however, made him far more deserving of his new title than many of the ‘Doctors’ featured on this site.

His successors describe his physical appearance as follows:

He was short in stature, being only about five feet high, dark complexion, a beautiful black eye, and in his younger days long black hair falling on his shoulders. In his dress, and appearance generally, he was singular and original, bearing mostly the character of a Quaker or Friend.

He began selling his own branded remedies at the end of the 1790s, starting with the Pilulae Antiscrophulae for scrophula and scorbutic eruptions. The Poor Man’s Friend remained a local product until about 1820 when it got an endorsement from an aristocratic patient and sales took off.

During the 1820s, Roberts began publishing a yearly pamphlet called the The annual mentor; or, Cottager’s companion: comprising concise maxims and golden rules for preserving the mind and body in health, and conducive to wealth, long life, and happiness, a Friend to the Poor, and a Companion for the Rich.

It’s no surprise that this free publication was mainly a plug for the Poor Man’s Friend and the Pilulae Antiscrophulae. At 32 pages, however, it contained a lot of other useful information. Short essays gave advice on health issues such as personal hygiene:

If dirty people cannot be removed as a common nuisance, they ought at least to be avoided as infectious. Superior cleanliness sooner attracts our regard than even finery itself, and often gains esteem where the other fails.

and there were lists of Wholesome Counsellings, including:

He that will not sail until all dangers are over, must never put to sea.
An ass was never cut out for a lap-dog
The wise man even when he holds his tongue says more than the fool when he speaks.
Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.

There were also articles on choosing a wife, on the slovenly practice of burning green wood, on how to escape from a fire, and many more aspects of life. Although on the surface this all sounds tediously didactic, the information was presented in an engaging, accessible way that doesn’t come across as too worthy, and it beats Britain’s Got Commercial Breaks for an evening’s entertainment.

Roberts remained in Bridport for the rest of his life, dying in 1834. He left the recipes to Thomas Beach and John Barnicott, who took over the shop – the building is now Grade-II listed and houses a restaurant called Beach & Barnicott.

Roberts was in the middle of compiling the 1835 edition of the Annual Mentor when he died. Beach and Barnicott went ahead with publication, but in a shortened 24-page format. Later editions were reduced to 12 pages, most of which was adverts and testimonials. There were still a few general articles to draw the reader in, but the publication didn’t have the same entertainment value as when Roberts was alive.

The Poor Man’s Friend remained available until the mid-20^th century, but made the news in 2003 when Bridport Museum bought the secret recipe for £480. Its composition, in the words of the Daily Mail, was ‘nothing more than 95% lard and beeswax’. Nothing, that is, except the other 5% - a fragrant but dangerous concoction of mercurous chloride, sugar of lead, mercuric oxide, zinc oxide, bismuth oxide, red pigments and oils of rose, bergamot and lavender.

Above right: Mid 19th-century dispensing pot. Photograph courtesy of the Science Museum, London.

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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Minneapolis Journal, 8 Nov 1901

(Subliminal message – sign up for the newsletter, I beg you—>—>—>—>–>)

The Omega Oil company, which had London and US branches, had its work cut out to get the product noticed among pages of attractive pictorial adverts. But get noticed they did. The constant flow of new designs together with the unique selling point – It’s green – helped create a long-lasting brand. And there really are loads of ad designs. The ones shown here are just examples, but illustrate the theme – real people use this product.

Some ads invited the reader to send off for a ‘thrilling pamphlet’ that told the story of the liniment’s European origins. This story also appeared in some newspapers.

An un-named American businessman, who is presumably the company’s proprietor, Michael Winburn, relates the tale of his holiday in Paris, where his wife falls out of a carriage and breaks her ankle. After weeks of ineffective medical treatment, the couple remove to a quiet village in Switzerland where a local woman says she knows what will help:

…we waited a day, and the next morning the woman came with a queer-looking green oil in a bottle. This she rubbed on my wife’s ankle. In about two hours, my wife said—
‘Why, my foot feels all right now,’ and she stood up and walked.

Minneapolis Journal 20 March 1901

The narrator eventually persuades the woman’s grandfather to sell him the recipe, and on his return to America, has it analysed by a chemist who pronounces it ‘the best preparation he had ever seen in his life for curing pain.’ The secret ingredient proves to be a rare herb that grows only in a certain part of Switzerland.

On his next European travels, our hero comes down with a terrible cold – his wife remembers the bottle of green oil, rubs some on his chest and in two hours he’s fine. Their little girl’s tonsilitis disappears just as quickly. They realise they have a wonder-product on their hands and resolve to bring it to the attention of sufferers everywhere – apparently investing a lot of cash in setting up the business. The investment paid off. This and Winburn’s other company, Cadum Soap,  made him a millionaire.

‘It is no more like other liniments’ says the narrator, ‘than high noon is like midnight.’

Minneapolis Journal 28 Nov 1901

The miraculous little green herb was possibly henbane, but fortunately it was in very small quantities – the main ingredients were chloroform, oil of wintergreen and mineral oil. Oil of wintergreen (methyl salicylate) is still a component of deep-heat liniments today and I imagine that sufferers did feel the benefit of this sweet-smelling emerald liquid. It got on the wrong side of the FDA in 1942, when it was judged misbranded because of the exaggerated claims, but this didn’t kill off the product – it is still available in some countries today. Cadum Soap, meanwhile, went on to become a major French company who are now so very cool, hip and trendy that they even have flash and music on their homepage.

Leeds Mercury 13 June 1900

Winburn died in 1930 and his widow married Edouard Renard, who later became the Governor General of French Equatorial Africa. The couple came to a sticky end when their plane crashed in the Congo jungle in 1935. Mme Renard’s jewel case, with contents estimated at $390,000, disappeared. The bodies lay for days among the wreckage, until the bits that hadn’t been eaten by wild animals were found and shipped back to France.

WHITEHEAD’S
ESSENCE OF MUSTARD.
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CHILBLAINS are prevented from breaking, and their tormenting itching instantly removed, by WHITEHEAD’s ESSENCE of MUSTARD, universally esteemed for its extraordinary efficacy in Rheumatisms, Palsies, Gouty Affections, and Complaints of the Stomach; but where this certain remedy has been unknown or neglected, and the Chilblains have actually suppurated, or broke, Whitehead’s Family Cerate will ease the pain, and very speedily heal them. They are prepared and sold by R. JOHNSTON, Apothecary, 15, Greek-street, Soho, London: the Essence and Pills at 2s. 9d. each;—the Cerate, at 1s. 1½d. They are also sold by the Printer of this Paper, at the HULL PACKET OFFICE, in Scale Lane, Hull, and by every medicine vender in the United Kingdom. The genuine has a black ink stamp, with the name of R. Johnston inserted on it.
The severest Sprains and Bruises are cured by a few applications of the Fluid Essence.

Source: The Hull Packet, 15 April 1806

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I tend to avoid blogging about the most widely advertised remedies because chances are they’ve already been researched by someone else, and there’s no point in a non-academic, sleep-deprived novelist trying to add anything to the sum of knowledge. So I’ve been skimming over the Whitehead’s Essence ads for ages. They crop up so often in early 19th-century newspapers that I became inured to them – probably much like early 19th-century newspaper readers. I now discover that the product inspired a satire too funny to ignore.

Whitehead’s Essence was patented in 1798, but had been been around for a few years by then. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the conditions of obtaining a patent was that the inventor had to file a specification detailing how to make the product. No one, however, would necessarily test out the recipe, so it was possible to get away with vague or nonsensical instructions. The author of the 1805 publication Essays on Quackery encountered this when he planned to use patents to find out the composition of various remedies. An acquaintance advised him not to bother:  ‘Your recipes on specifications in the patent office will assuredly err, for, although I believe each is given in with the solemnity of an oath, it is doubtful whether any one be true.’

Robert Johnston, owner of the Essence of Mustard, submitted a long and complicated process that would be impossible to replicate without losing the will to live. The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal called it ‘a motley group of ingredients,’ and The Medical Observer asked ‘Does not the grant of a patent for such a most absurd and ridiculous recipe, casts (sic) an indelible disgrace on our country?’ Rather than granting Johnston a patent, they said, the government should have ‘granted a warrant for taking him into custody, and inflicted on him some condign punishment.’

The real recipe was much simpler – oil of turpentine with spirit of rosemary and camphor, plus a small quantity of flour of mustard. Turpentine had long been used as a remedy for chilblains, so there wasn’t much new about this product, but it was famous enough to be known in the US within a few years of being established. And that’s where an amusing parody appeared in March 1798.

The article in Philadelphia’s Weekly Magazine is purportedly a letter from a farrier who has just discovered a wonderful remedy – Blackhead’s Essence of Pitchfork. The writer first condemns the medical profession for charging a fortune for ‘words and wind’:

Apply to a physician—what does he do for you? He feels your pulse; tells you, what you knew before, that you are sick ; takes the fee ; and then packs you off to the apothecary. How long will people be gulled by these men!

He then goes on to introduce the Essence of Pitchfork:

It has been universally acknowledged, that pitchforks are very useful and essential, but rather irritating and inconvenient when taken in their natural state.

The Essence would cure everything, including wooden legs and drowning, and was available in two forms, ‘viz. Sharp, powerful steel points, for internal use, and hickory staff for external’  - a reference to Whitehead’s being available as both a topical preparation and as pills. The article concludes with these testimonials, mocking the whole breed of advertisers who used exaggerated stories to try and sell their remedies:

I DO hereby solemnly declare and affirm, that, as I was walking up Arch-street in January last, I slipped, and tumbled to pieces: By a judicious and timely application of Blackhead’s Essence of Pitchfork, the parts were gathered together, without the loss of a single member.
Jedediah Scarramouch
March 14, 1798

HAVING died some time ago, to the great grief of my dear wife, she applied Blackhead’s Essence of Pitchfork, in staff, to my poor corse. Symptoms of returning life soon appeared, and in a few weeks I was all alive.
Count Obadiah.
March, 1798.

I DO hereby certify, that I used to be as thin and poor as a snake, and was subject to being drowned. I purchased some of Blackhead’s Essence of Pitchfork, and, in due season, grew as fat as a pig, and have never been drowned since.
Joban Nincum.
March, 1798.

Source: London Evening Post, December 27, 1755

The Dr Linden of the advert is Diederick Wessel Linden, a physician from Westphalia who came to Britain in 1747 and settled in Flintshire. Better known for his writings about spa waters, and for featuring in an amusingly earthy scene in Smollett’s Humphry Clinker, he deserves a post of his own at some point, so today I’m just going to do a round-up of a few unusual remedies for gout.

The Gout, James Gillray, 1799

Should you be planning to ‘indulge in rich meats and sauces, racy wines, strong beer and cyder, and use but little exercise’ this Christmas, it might be worth keeping some of the following treatments handy:

In 1680, Sir William Temple, Bart, had published his experiments with the ancient Eastern practice of moxibustion (applying a small quantity of mugwort to the skin and setting it alight). This was still in print at the time of the above ad, though more as an historical curiosity than a source of advice:

Upon the first burning, I found the skin shrink all round the place ; and whether the greater pain of the fire had taken away the sense of a smaller or no, I could not tell ; but I thought it less than it was: I burnt it the second time, and upon it observed the skin about it to shrink, and the swelling to flat yet more than at first.

On the third burning, he was able to set his foot down without pain, but tended the burns by applying a clove of garlic and a Diapalma plaster. Temple also recounted some interesting remedies he had heard about on his travels, such as that recommended by Prince Maurice of Nassau:

…to boil a good quantity of horse-dung from a stone horse of the Hermelinne colour, as he called it in French, which is a native white, with a sort of a raw nose, and the same commonly about the eyes : that, when this was well boiled in water, he set his leg in a pail-full of it, as hot as he could well endure it, renewing it as it grew cool for above an hour together ; that, after it, he drew his leg immediately into a warm bed, to continue the perspiration as long as he could, and never failed of being cured.

A surgeon in Lorrain, meanwhile,

had undertaken to cure it by a more extraordinary way than any of these, which was by whipping the naked part with a great rod of nettles till it grew all over blistered;

(An alternative to nettles was holly – is that what’s happening to the Jolly Huntsman in the gallery?)

Origin of the Gout, Henry William Bunbury, 1815 print, courtesy of the National Library of Medicine Image Gallery

In the mid 18th century, one of the free books given away by Mr Burchell of Anodyne Necklace and Sugar Plums for Worms fame intriguingly offered:

‘The Easy Way of Curing the GOUT, by Transplantation: that is, By giving it to some Good-for-Nothing DOG, or CAT, and thereby Freeing the Person from it.’

(Transplantation didn’t mean anything surgical, you just had to get the dog or cat to lie on your feet.)

A poetical correspondent to The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser on Christmas Day 1786, however, put forward a different view. Though beginning with an agonised ‘Hence, loathed Gout! most dreaded fiend to Ease,’ he weighed up the pros and cons of the lifestyle that had led to his condition, and concluded:

But what is life, without or love or wine,
Without the orgies of the mystic bowl?
Let moralists their mental joys define,
But sweeter far the midnight flow of soul.
Gout! Then attack – I’ll brave thy greatest ill,
And fall, like valiant BEVILL, on the topmost hill.

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Wishing you all a very happy and gout-free Christmas!

RHEUMATISM
Cured
Through the Feet
Without Medicine

An external cure so sure that the
makers send it FREE ON APPROVAL.
Try it.
Send your name and address to the makers of Magic Foot Drafts, the great cure for every kind of rheumatism; Chronic or Acute, Muscular, Sciatic, Lumbago, Gout, etc., no matter where located or how severe. You’ll get a pair of the Drafts by return post—prepaid—free on approval.
Magic Foot Drafts are worn without inconvenience, and cure rheumatism in every part of the body by drawing out the poisonous acids in the blood through the great foot pores. You can see that this offer is proof of their merit, for hundreds of thousands of persons answer these advertisements, and only those who are satisfied with the benefit they receive send any money. Write to-day to the Magic Foot Draft Co., 43, Pugh’s Buildings, Pugh’s Place, Golden Square, London. W., for a trial pair, and be cured. A valuable illustrated book on rheumatism also sent free.
CAUTION. Magic Foot Drafts are prepared after the original formula only by us. Note carefully the address.

Source: The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times Sat 7 May 1904

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Magic Foot Drafts originated in Jackson, Michigan in 1902 and quickly became established in London too. In case it’s not clear from the ad, they were large and very sticky plasters that you were supposed to put on the sole of your foot, where they would somehow (by magic, presumably) draw out uric acid through the skin. The plaster was made of oilcloth coated with a mixture of pine tar, cornmeal and poke-root. As Samuel Hopkins Adams said in The Great American Fraud (1905/6):

Of course, they might as well be affixed to the barn door, so far as any uric acid extraction is concerned.

Adams also gave his opinion on why some nostrum vendors allowed punters to take their products on a free trial:

Other concerns send their “remedies” free on trial, among these being the ludicrous “magic foot drafts” referred to above. At first thought it would seem that only a cure would bring profit to the makers. But the fact is that most diseases tend to cure themselves by natural means, and the delighted and deluded patient, ascribing the relief to the “remedy” which really has nothing to do with it, sends on his grateful dollar. Where the money is already paid, most people are too inert to undertake the effort of getting it back.

The British version of the Foot Drafts had different ingredients – powdered white hellebore and stockholm tar.  Nostrums and Quackery (1912) pointed out that the difference ‘bears out what has been stated many times – that the composition of nostrums can never be relied on,’ but to be fair, pokeweed is indigenous to North America but not Britain, so the London branch of the company probably couldn’t get regular supplies.