The Quack Doctor

Doctors’ handwriting has long had a poor reputation, and I was amused to find this specimen, sent in to The Chemist and Druggist by an appalled pharmacist in June 1874.

The Chemist and Druggist 15 June 1874

A couple of months later, the magazine reported that the Scientific American had reproduced the prescription, commenting that it:

might indicate the vagaries of Planchette [i.e. spirit writing] or the tracks of a spider whose legs had been dipped in ink.

The annoyance to the dispenser was bad enough, but the Scientific American also pointed out the potential danger to the patient of an incorrectly compounded medicine, and urged druggists to make a point of returning illegible prescriptions to their perpetrator.

However, Alexander Cleghorn, a chemist from Cupar in Fife, had already tried this to no avail. He had to admit defeat in deciphering the following, but promised the patient he would write to the doctor for clarification.

Prescription sent in by Alexander Cleghorn, The Chemist and Druggist 15 August 1874

One can only imagine the force of the facepalm when he was ‘favoured with an elucidation of which the following is a facsimile’:

The prescriber clarifies what he meant. The Chemist and Druggist 15 August 1874

In honour of UK Census Day, here’s one way in which phrenology proved of great help in 1891:

Source: The Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 11 April 1891

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A huge thank you to everyone who has read, recommended and retweeted The Quack Doctor during 2010!

Picture: An 1880s promotional image for Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup.

Above: Christmas at the Middlesex Hospital, Illustrated London News, 3 January 1874

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On Christmas Day 1898, one of the house surgeons at the London Hospital dressed as Father Christmas and did the rounds of the wards, accompanied by a medical student togged up as Pierrot and pushing a trolley full of presents for the patients. The children received toys and sweets, and adults received practical gifts such as items of clothing. All 702 patients also got a Christmas card, and those well enough to have a good appetite sat down to a turkey and roast beef dinner followed by a huge plum pudding that arrived flaming with brandy. For patients (or inmates as they were known) whose home lives were characterised by drudgery and often downright squalour, there were worse places to spend Christmas than in one of London’s large hospitals.

Some late-Victorian newspapers had a tradition of reporting on hospital festivities, and while newspaper stories inevitably have their own agenda – in this case wanting to provide a heart-warming tale for their readers (and probably sucking up to the great and the good on the hospital committees) – they do give an insight into the dedication of the hospital staff and the extent of the charitable giving that brought some Christmas cheer to sick and impoverished people.

Westminster Hospital patients were in for an early start when the staff started carol singing at 6am and then held a worship service at 6.30. The patients went on to receive a variety of gifts including warm garments, purses and workboxes, and in the afternoon the male patients were allowed to light up pipes – an indulgence normally against hospital rules. Allowing the men to smoke on Christmas afternoon was a popular hospital tradition – at St Mary’s, Paddington, for example, a pipe and tobacco was the standard gift for the chaps.

The same year, the Middlesex Hospital had a huge Christmas tree, flowers sent by a local philanthropist, and toys for the younger patients courtesy of the Duchess of York. The Morning Post stated that: ‘Under the supervision of Miss Thorold, the lady superintendent, the 300 patients enjoyed a thoroughly festive Christmas day‘ – under such supervision, I suspect they enjoyed it whether they liked it or not.

Decoration of the hospital wards usually fell to the nurses, sometimes with the help of medical students. Evergreen branches and greetings with letters cut out of cotton wool made the wards festive. Some hospitals did not allow evergreens in case they harboured germs, but most had at least one Christmas tree, and St George’s had a gigantic tree in every ward, lit with electric lights. St George’s was known for its classy decorations, and in 1897 The Morning Post explained this by saying ‘St George’s is an aristocrat among hospitals, and is noted for doing all things well.‘

At St Bart’s that year, 19st of beef and 700lb of plum pudding were just enough to give all the patients a hearty meal, while the custom at Guy’s Hospital was for the medical and nursing staff to have their Christmas lunch with the patients.

On Christmas afternoon, most hospitals (except those specialising in infectious diseases) allowed patients to invite visitors for tea, and this was particularly important for those in the children’s wards, who could spend the afternoon with their parents. Entertainment was often provided, ranging from impromptu songs by the more musical among the nurses and students, to fully fledged amateur dramatics involving the physicians and surgeons. At St Thomas’s and St Mary’s in 1899, the staff had pianos put into each ward for a good old sing-along.

Christmas in hospital is never going to be wonderful, but these Victorian nurses, ward sisters, students, physicians and surgeons did everything they could to make it a happy occasion for their patients. Let’s be thankful for them and for their modern equivalents who are on duty right now, caring for people who are ill or injured.

Thank you to everyone who has read, commented on and retweeted The Quack Doctor over the past year. I wish you all a joyful Christmas and a new year filled with happiness, hope – and especially health.

This is a bit of a lazy post, I know, but I thought I’d share with you some recent search terms that have led people to The Quack Doctor. Some of them are quite an eye-opener and not for the faint-hearted! All spelling and punctuation is exactly as it is on arrival.

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Let’s start with the ever-popular worms:
worm the size of a woman hand
where buy worm medicine in london
hole next to my urethra with worm
Worm like discharge from urethra
worms in the beginning of time?

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Then there are the leeches:
keeping horse leeches
How to hold leeches
does leech appear in dirty houses
why would a doctor put leaches on someone
Women who are leeches

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And frogs:
frog is medicine for piles
frog sweat ointment
frog guts coming out anus

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The nether regions are a perennial favourite too:
st marks anal dilator
anus etching after stooling
Quack negative stool in rectum
how did victorian women go to the toilet
trusses for balls
Dr. Fart key
stallion balls
too much sherbert burning anus

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Who says romance is dead?:
how to make a woman hot for you tablet
stuff that quack doctor uses for love spell to make crazy
old french letters
huge breasts “air pump”
using old electric massager for vibrator
what’s a vibrater for woman
secret pills for men’s cocks
clyster rubber ear sex

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Miscellaneous:
drunk person helping a drunker person
sick looking drunk person that is undressed
www.wife’s pee drinking habit century years before
painful whipped century woman real OR reel OR flogged
were doctors recognized by urine containers in 18th centuary
clio patra kween of egypt
gruesome corset
goat dung potions
characters stamped brain eighteenth century
rapid rubbing of moustache

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Potential political scandal:
the secret out at last corset mr. Brown

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It’s time for a round-up of the latest blog posts on early modern history, and I’m pleased to be hosting the 60th edition of Carnivalesque. If you’re interested in hosting a future history carnival, please visit the site and get in touch with Sharon or Julie.

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Let’s dive in and begin with witchcraft, political machinations and the ‘Scottish play’. Lee Durbin at Marginalia looks at the tempestuous life of Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell, who allegedly asked witches to predict when his cousin, James VI of Scotland, would die.

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If you’re having trouble with the occult, you might need to try an exorcism, but make sure everyone knows what they’re doing. Roy Booth at Early Modern Whale reports on fake exorcisms in 16th-century Lancashire, where a priest’s attempts to fool an audience were thwarted by his clumsy accomplice.

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A more practical side to superstition appears in Emily Brand’s discussion of early modern midwifery, which shows how the folklore and rituals surrounding childbirth could give the mother and her relatives a sense of control. Mary Toft, the famous rabbit-woman of Godalming, features too.

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At the scientific end of the midwifery spectrum were the great anatomists William Hunter and William Smellie, but less well-known is illustrator Jan van Rymsdyk, who did the astonishing anatomical drawings that accompanied their work. Medical photographer Øystein Horgmo at The Sterile Eye tells us about this rather mysterious character.

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Some earlier anatomical art appears in the form of ‘fugitive sheets’, a 16th-century method of layering drawings so that the viewer could lift the flaps and discover the wonders of the human body. The Wellcome Library Blog highlights an early printed reference to these materials.

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While we’re on an anatomical theme, if I may be so bold, I’ll plug my latest podcast here at The Quack Doctor. It gives a tour of Benjamin Rackstrow’s Museum of Anatomy and Curiosities, a macabre collection that occupied 197 Fleet Street during the second half of the 18th Century.

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But this edition of Carnivalesque is not all gruesome stuff! Dainty Ballerina talks about some popular sports of the 17th century – including whole-village football matches and ‘running upon the ice in Scrick-Shooes.’

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Then we have an artistic interlude, with Carlyn Beccia giving a detailed biography of Renaissance portrait-painter Sofonisba Anguissola over at Raucous Royals.

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Lucy Inglis at Georgian London has done a series of podcasts looking at the symbolism in Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress. The link leads to the first one, but be sure to download the whole series of six. Rumour has it we can look forward to The Rake’s Progress soon too.

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Also commenting on the issues of his day was one of the earliest news illustrators, Frans Hogenberg, whose broadsides depicted the major political and military events of the 16th century. Rag Linen shows some examples of his striking work.

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There’s plenty more journalism to be had at Mercurius Politicus, where Nick Poyntz describes the newsbooks of the 1640s, their editors – including ‘Beelzebubbs Ban-dogge’ Henry Walker – and contemporary definitions of news.

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The Gentleman Administrator reviews Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel Marvel 1602, a re-imagining of Marvel superheroes in a 17th-century setting. But there’s someone missing, and who better than The Gentleman Admin himself to introduce Wolverine to the early modern milieu? (Don’t miss part 2 either).

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Sarah Redmond at LOL Manuscripts! features some advice for dutiful wives, and reminds us that the long ‘s’ is the minuscule letter that just keeps on giving.

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And finally… We might be blogging about history, but the spectres of some historical figures have lately joined the blogosphere too. Sir Joshua Reynolds says exactly what he thinks about Tracey Emin, and D C Read reveals how posterity has treated him with CHILLINGe NEGLECKT.

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Thank you to those who sent in nominations. The next Carnivalesque is an ancient/medieval one, venue to be confirmed, so keep an eye on www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/carnivalesque for details.

I will be hosting the next edition of Carnivalesque on 21 March, so am now inviting nominations of your favourite recent blog posts on any aspect of early modern history.

You can use the Carnivalesque form, or contact me direct. Please nominate specific posts rather than whole blogs, and don’t be modest – I positively encourage you to recommend your own posts as well as other people’s!

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I’m also starting an email newsletter – at least I will if enough people sign up for it. This will go out about once a month and will highlight new additions to The Quack Doctor – especially the lesser-known corners of the site – plus extra history of medicine content, links to useful resources and pretty much anything I think is interesting. If you would like to sign up, please use the form in the sidebar. (This is new and I’ve only tested it a few times so if it doesn’t work, please let me know.)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

A couple of weeks ago a I did a post about McMunn’s Elixir of Opium, and because I had quite a bit of information about it, I intended to do a podcast. Unfortunately I was suffering from the worst cold ever (N.B. every cold I have is the worst cold ever) so I couldn’t speak enough to do the recording. I’ve now been able to finish it (with a bit of help from the dog, who snuffles in the background), so you can listen on the player above, or by clicking here.

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In other news, I’m pleased to announce that The Quack Doctor is a finalist in the Medgadget Awards Best Literary Medical Weblog category. I’m up against some excellent contenders, but if you’d like to vote for me I would of course be delighted. You can see all the different categories and finalists here, or go straight to the poll here. Voting closes on 14 Feb.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Source: Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery (Louisville, KY), July 1855 Click here for Transcript

There are no prizes for guessing what was in this. First formulated in the mid 1830s by Dr John B McMunn (or M’Munn), it became a big hit in the US once a drug company called A B Sands bought the recipe in 1841. The dosage instructions gave plenty of room for manoeuvre:

To a child a month old, or younger, give from half a drop to two drops; to a child 6 months old, from 3 to 10 drops; and to adults from 10 to 60 drops (or even double or treble that much, if the pain and other symptoms be severe and urgent) mixed in two or three teaspoonsful of water, according to the size of the dose. As the administration of every medicine should be governed by its effects, it is proper to begin with the smallest dose, and increase or repeat it at proper intervals until the desired effects are produced.

Although a ‘secret remedy,’ the Elixir was popular with physicians and was advertised a lot in medical journals. One of its selling points was that it was supposedly ‘denarcotised’, and thought to be safer than laudanum. Not all doctors, however, supported it. In 1850, the Western Lancet (Cincinnati) ran an article suggesting that it was inappropriate for the New York Medical Gazette to promote this dubious nostrum. ‘All this,’ they insisted later, ‘was conceived in the kindest feeling to the editor, and with no other motive than to correct what we conceive to be a serious evil to the profession.’

The editor, Dr D Meredith Reese, didn’t take the ‘kindest feeling’ too well. He called the Western Lancet‘s article an ‘unprofessional attack’ and asserted that the Elixir was not a secret remedy – if the Lancet‘s editors didn’t know what was in it, that was down to their ignorance. The Lancet commented:

Now it is exceedingly amusing to hear the declaration made by Dr. Reese, that this article is not a secret remedy, and yet he is unable to give its composition! This is funny indeed…

…Perhaps his system of ethics, like his favorite elixir, is also a secret.

In 1864 the original recipe came to light, showing the process of treating opium with sulphuric ether to remove the narcotine and make the product safe – a nice idea but narcotine doesn’t have narcotic properties anyway, and the medicine certainly was not safe. It was as addictive as any other opium product –  in the early 20th century, for example, George Pettey M.D. related the case of a woman who had taken the Elixir for 31 years, losing 16 newborn babies to the congenital effects.

Another danger – not entirely the Elixir’s fault – was the possibility of mistakes on the prescription. An 1860s physician prescribed the product for a little girl, but instead of elx. of opium, he put exl., and doctors’ handwriting being what it is, the apothecary interpreted it as ext. (extract) of opium – a much stronger preparation that resulted in the child sleeping ‘the sleep which knows no waking.’

A particularly tragic case occurred in Monroe, NY, in 1875. A 17-month-old boy showed symptoms of worms, and ‘By the advice of an old Florida woman, who said it would cause the worms which were supposed to be in the child’s stomach, to have a good sleep‘, the mother gave him 15-20 drops of elixir every hour, sending worms and baby to sleep forever. When his breathing became rapid and rattly, she carried him to the nearest neighbour, a third of a mile away, but it was too late.

The child never moved a muscle from half past 3 till it died, which was about 11 at night, living some 12 hours after the last dose. It is a sad thing to see the child cut down in health as it were, and at an age when all the cares of the parents and affections of its brother and sister were at its very height of enjoyment. The little fellow was at play in the morning as ever and at 11 at night was a corpse.

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Many thanks to R L Ripples of TweetsofOld for the story from the Monroe Gazette and Courier.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Source: The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, 31 December 1892

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I’ve decided to have a go at doing a podcast. It’s about 13 mins long and goes into much more detail than the post below, so if you’ve got time, do have a listen. If for some reason you desperately want to download it, you can do so here by right-clicking on the player thingy.

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The Electric Corset was sold by Cornelius Bennett Harness, proprietor of the Ammoniaphone. His Medical Battery Company’s main product was the ‘electropathic’ belt, which contained zinc and copper plates that were somehow supposed to generate a health-giving current.

The Electric Corset was magnetic rather than electric, because all it had was a magnetised steel busk (the plates at the front that attach together to fasten the corset). Harness was initially a distributor for the famous American invention, Dr Scott’s Electric Corset (which Lidian at The Virtual Dime Museum has blogged about here). By 1891, however, he was selling his own version out of his opulent premises in Oxford Street.

A supposed visitor to this ‘Electropathic and Zander Institute’ described it as follows:

It seemed to me that I was standing in a Temple of silence. Outside was the rush and roar of London life. Inside, all was calm and peaceful. The interior, in its blend of colours and graceful hangings, and its rich carpeting, reminds one of Oriental times. The attendants move so softly and speak so gently. Here and there, young women, in neat print dresses and caps, move gracefully about. You yourself feel hushed and awed, as if some magician were about to appear.

The excerpt is from the Pall Mall Gazette (August 5 1892), and continues in a gushing manner about the numerous diplomas on display in Mr Harness’s consulting room. Although presented as a feature article, the piece turns out to be an advert, and was an attempt to cover up the fact that the company was in trouble.

Earlier that year, a customer named Mr Jeffrey had consulted the company’s hernia specialist (a former salesman of Oriental furniture). He was prescribed an electropathic belt but later consulted a doctor and got fitted with a proper truss. He refused to pay the balance of £3 3s. on the useless belt. In July 1892 the company sued him but lost, and had to give back the £2 2s. he had already paid. Harness had occasionally got into similar situations over the past few years, but this was really the start of a slippery slope for his electropathic empire.

In reporting the case, the Electrical Review described Harness’s activities as ‘one of the grossest cases of misrepresentation of the present day.’

In response, Harness sent a circular to newsagents warning them that he would hold them responsible for these ‘malicious libels’ should they continue to sell the Electrical Review. Many, including W.H. Smith & Co., did stop selling it, so the periodical’s owners took Harness to court and were granted damages of £1000.

In October 1893, the Pall Mall Gazette stopped accepting advertisements from the Medical Battery Company and printed a series of articles headed ‘The Harness “Electropathic” Swindle’, which stated:

The Medical Battery Company has for years past been fattening on a system of fraud and imposture which is absolutely unequalled in the annals of swindling.

Harness himself (pictured below) it described as:

… a man of no pretensions whatever to scientific or medical knowledge, but [is] a common, illiterate and unscrupulous charlatan.’

The articles resulted in a lot of customers demanding their money back. In early November 1893, he and his business associate, Dr James McCully (originally a qualified physician but struck off the Medical Register), were arrested and charged with unlawfully conspiring to defraud.

Dr McCully was found not guilty but the jury couldn’t agree about Harness. The courts ordered that the company be wound up. Almost immediately, Harness tried to resurrect it as the Medical Electrical Institute and was allowed to do so on condition that it was under control of a qualified medic. The creditors and shareholders of the old company unanimously agreed that it should go ahead, and Mr Harness became manager of the new company on a salary of £600 a year.

The trouble was that in spite of considerable advertising, no one would buy the products. Within a few months he went bust. After that, Harness faded into obscurity, dying in 1921 at Christchurch.