The Quack Doctor

The Daily Advertiser 5 August 1735

As the old saying goes, ‘A night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury,’ and Dr Newman’s Anti-Venereal Pills were just one of a plethora of clap and pox remedies advertised in 18th-century newspapers. The relatively anonymous purchase of a pea-sized bolus offered the customer a level of secrecy, but that was by no means the only reason for preferring an advertised remedy over consulting a doctor at home.

Notable physician and prolific writer Daniel Turner, in Syphilis. A practical dissertation on the venereal disease (1717) describes the standard treatment for the pox – salivation. Turner has a fluid style of writing that imparts elegance to even the most revolting of details, but the horror of the orthodox treatment shines through and sheds some light on the popularity of patent medicines.

In preparation for salivation, the patient should undergo purging medicines or bleeding and, for some, a warm bath was advisable. Women should have the treatment just after menstruation, and the temperate seasons of late spring and early autumn were the best time to carry it out – though of course it was not always possible to wait for the perfect time of year.

Turner recommends a dose of 15 grains of calomel twice a day. Initially the sufferer could expect violent diarrhoea and ‘horrid torture of the bowels,’ which in some cases would be quite sufficient to get rid of both disease and patient permanently, but after a few days came the initial signs of ptyalism – the copious production of saliva from which the treatment gets its name.

…we usually observe the Fauces to inflame, the Inside of their Cheeks to lie tumid, or high and thick, being ready to fall in betwixt the Teeth, upon shutting the Mouth; the Tongue looks white and foul, the Gums also stand out, the Breath stinks, (which is a good Omen of its coming on) and in general the whole Inside of the Mouth appears shining, seems as it were parboiled, lying in Furrows, much after the manner as it does in those who have lately held strong Spirits therein for the Tooth-ach.

By this point the patient wouldn’t be able to eat, but puking up phlegm was a good sign. While the unfortunate person was in this state, there wasn’t much the physician could do other than ‘to encourage your Patient chearfully to go on, and refresh him sometimes with a little mull’d wine.’

Turner’s experience suggested that at the high point (or low point) of the salivation, the patient could be producing up to five pints of saliva a day. This would subside and be resolved (one way or another) in about three weeks to a month.

All this, however, was just for a mild pox – a ‘stubborn and rebellious’ one would also require the patient to rub mercurial ointment into their limbs in front of the fire, and then wrap up in layers of flannel clothing. Along with the mercury, a salivating patient could expect aggressive treatment of the side effects – bleeding, emetics and laxatives were all part of the experience.

So this was the prospect if you consulted a doctor about the pox – not to mention the fact that your spouse and neighbours would find out what you had been up to.

A single, discreet dose from an advertiser seems not so much the preserve of the gullible as the self-preservation of the wary.

Source: The North Wales Chronicle 18 April 1868

In a series of letters to the Medical Circular in the 1860s, Francis Burdett Courtenay, under the pseudonym ‘Detector’, exposed the villainous practices of a breed of quacks preying on men who suspected they had spermatorrhea.

Spermatorrhea (an excessive discharge of semen) was a source of such panic in the mid-19^th century that there were even cases of suicide among those who had convinced themselves – or been led to believe – that they were suffering.

In one of the letters (which he collected into a pamphlet called Revelations of Quacks and Quackery in 1865) Courtenay cites the case of an anxious young man who responded to one of Dr Hammond’s advertisements. The reply asked for two guineas for a ‘self-curative’ belt – he sent the money, but the package he received in return contained only ‘some bottles of medicine and a lotion to rub over the penis and testicles.’ Annoyed that he didn’t get the belt, the patient wrote back, asking where it was.

Hammond responded with a missive calculated to scare his patient half to death. He had looked further into the case (even though he had never actually seen the man) and decided ‘a slight disease of the kidneys’, was causing semen to drain away.

This vital waste is not only capable of causing all the symptoms you detail, but such is the sympathy existing between the generative functions and the brain, that should this drain of the most vital of all your secretions be not immediately arrested, your whole system must suffer very serious derangement, whilst the organs of generation themselves will become vitiated and relapse into a state of utter impotency.

This would result in complete loss of erectile function and lead to ‘withering and wasting of the penis’. In case the lad wasn’t already terrified enough, Hammond predicted that his case would end in insanity. Fortunately, he had sought help just in time!

Hammond again recommended the curative belt (which the patient thought he’d already paid for) and sent a bill for a further 2 guineas. The young man paid up, and while it would be easy to laugh at him throwing good money after bad, there’s no law against being inexperienced and scared that there’s something seriously wrong with you.

The belt arrived, and proved to be an ordinary suspensory bandage, with a band that went round the patient’s waist, holding up a circular string of metal pieces through which one had to place the part in question. This would somehow provide

a continuous current of electricity, which is taken up by the whole system, infusing new life and ‘manly vigour’ into the debilitated or relaxed frame, and affords great support and comfort to the testicles and generative organs.

The patient subsequently consulted Courtenay and was reassured that there was nothing wrong with him.

As well as the belts, Hammond sold ‘Restorative Powders’ and ‘Seminal Replenisher’, which were not only supposed to produce top-quality semen, but also restore ‘brain fluid’, whatever that might be.

In 1869, the more famous electric belt manufacturer, Pulvermacher, tried to gain an injunction against Hammond for using the trademarked slogan ‘Electricity is Life’ – and for bringing the whole electric belt business into disrepute – but failed as it proved difficult to find out exactly who Hammond was.

The following advert, placed right underneath a Dr Hammond ad in the Bristol Mercury, appears to promote a competing specialist in electrical medicine. Percy House and 11 Charlotte Street were, however, the same place, and Henry James was either a sidekick of Hammond’s or quite possibly the same guy. Further aliases later joined the team – there were Dr Walter Jenner, Dr Harrison, Mr Raphey and Mr A Barrows, all at slightly different versions of the same address.  Once patients gave up on the useless treatment from one alias, they would receive through the post a pamphlet extolling the superior virtues of another.

Hammond also employed what Courtenay referred to as ‘the hospital dodge’. His earlier ads proclaimed him to be ‘of the Lock Hospital’ and his letterhead described him as ‘F.A.S., F.S.A., M.R.A.S., H.G. St Mary’s, King’s College, The Lock, and St George’s Hospitals, LONDON.’ An impressive list – but F.A.S., F.S.A. and M.R.A.S. didn’t stand for any recognised qualifications, and H.G. simply meant ‘Honorary Governor.’

Any Tom, Dick or Harry could become an honorary governor just by making a charitable subscription to the hospital. Although the Lock cancelled Hammond’s donations when they found out what he was up to, this didn’t stop him continuing to deceive patients by claiming affiliation with these respectable institutions.

STRENGTH, VITALITY, MANHOOD.
­A Valuable Treatise on Nervous Exhaustion, Loss of Strength, Mental Depression, Exhausted Vitality, and all special diseases and weaknesses of man; their causes, and means of cure.
This book not only contains valuable remarks on how to preserve strength and retain the powers to an advanced age, but points out the best means of restoring Exhausted Vitality, Poverty of Nerve Force, Mental Depression, and will especially interest those who wish to fit themselves for business, study or marriage. This brief work is the only one that contains any sensible advice to the inexperienced, and to all young and middle-aged men will not only prove instructive but a valuable safeguard.
Sent sealed on receipt of 4 penny stamps to any address, by
CHARLES GORDON, 288, Great Horton Road, Bradford, Yorks.—Advt. Copyright.

Source: The Illustrated Police News, 22 December 1900

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Other than the romantic-haired individual in the illustration, this advert doesn’t offer much to distinguish itself from the plethora of late 19th-century ads promising restored manhood or cures for nervous debility. Should you send off your 4 penny stamps, however, you would receive a 43-page booklet recommending a ‘concentrated herbal remedy’ with the brilliant name of Gordon’s Vital Sexualine Restorative.

The Restorative cost a rather steep 22s a bottle, and was a red-brown syrupy liquid that was to be taken at a dose of one teaspoonful in a glass of water three times a day. The pamphlet claimed it would cure a range of problems:

Onanism, Night Emissions, Seminal Losses, Waste of Vitality, Brain Fag, Depression, General Weakness, Loss of Energy, Nervous Debility, Spermatorrhoea and Variocele.

On the bottle label was a list of even more conditions, including Brain Wreckage and Nerve Tire.

Described as a ‘Brain Fertiliser’, the product was supposed to ‘create nervous fluid, brain matter and nerve force.’ It:

Brightens the intellect, improves the memory and mental faculties, restores strength, and promotes a renewal of life in the entire system.

The BMA analysed the mixture in 1911 and found it to consist of iron, calcium, sodium and potassium hypophosphites, quinine sulphate, citric acid, sugar, colouring and water. As they dryly pointed out:

Metallic hypophosphites are not generally considered to be “concentrated herbal remedies.”

Gordon (who used the meaningless letters P.M.B. after his name in an attempt to impress punters) sold a number of other medicines for the not-so-discerning gentleman. There were the Viro-Erectile Elixir, the Varixolene Liniment, the Bubo Compound, Gentiana Tonic, Gravolene, and anti-syphilitic and anti-gonorrhoeal mixtures. And, as I’m sure you will be delighted to know, the range was completed by the Gleet Compound.

Source: The General Advertiser, 6 March 1744. Click here for transcript.

I wonder if this advert looks familiar to regular readers. The writing style and capitalisation, and even the medicine’s name, are reminiscent of Mr. Burchell’s Famous Little Sugar Plums, and here again we see a proprietor tempting punters with freebies. Dr Russel of the Green Hatch, Holborn, sought to tap into Burchell’s success by adopting the same tactics, but over the years it isn’t a clear-cut case of him copying his contemporary – they used lots of similar ploys and it’s not always obvious who got there first.

Ads for The Montpellier Little Bolus and Burchell’s ads for his Anodyne Necklace appear in the same papers, sometimes right next to each other. As I mentioned in the Sugar Plums post, Burchell gave away free almanacks – so did Russel, whose publication was called the Thee and Thou Almanack. The adverts say it offered answers to common questions about Quakers:

Why we are called QUAKERS?
Why we’ve Silent Meetings? Why Women Preach as well as Men?
Why we use THEE and THOU? Why we never Put off our Hats?

Russel also resorted to poetry:

This ALMANACK has Nothing Writ twice o’er
What’s in’t, No ALMANACK e’er had Before :
It is quite NEW, Year Thirty-EIGHT its Date is,
‘Twill Nothing Cost, for Thee may’st have it GRATIS,
At the Green Hatch, ‘gainst Gray’s Inn Gate in Holborn,
If to ASK for’t, Thee will not be too Stubborn.

(both bits quoted from the London Daily Advertiser, Feb 4 1737)

My favourite aspect of the ad at the top is that it offers a free dose to anyone whose name appears in the Venereal and Gleet Patient’s Directory.

‘Gleet’ (the word derives from the Middle English for slimy, and is related to the Latin gluten, meaning glue) refers in this context to a mucopurulent discharge from the urethra or vagina as a result of gonorrhoea. It lingered after the acute symptoms had subsided, and although clearly the result of the clap, was viewed as a condition in its own right. It is described as follows by William Buchan:

…when the quantity of running is considerably lessened, without any pain or swelling in the groin or testicle supervening; when the patient is free from involuntary erections; and lastly, when the running becomes pale, whitish, thick, void of ill smell, and tenacious or ropy ; when all or most of these symptoms appear, the gonorrhoea is arrived at its last stage, and we may gradually proceed to treat it as a gleet with astringent and agglutinating medicines.

Such astringent medicines included white vitriol (zinc sulphate) and preparations of lead injected up the affected parts. The great John Hunter wasn’t overly enthusiastic about astringents – he advised that introducing a simple, unmedicated bougie (a slender instrument) into the urethra would be enough to cure most gleets (in men, that is – he dismisses women’s gleets in a couple of paragraphs). The bougie ‘need only be five or six inches long‘ and required ‘a month or six weeks application.’ Hunter also mentions gleets cured by electricity, but does not specify how the cure was carried out.

For people putting up with this nagging condition, and faced with a variety of embarrassing and eye-watering cures, quack pills were worth a try, but the real genius of Russel’s modus operandi lies in the free pamphlet. The mid-18th-century sufferer was not expected to be loyal to a specific doctor and to blindly accept whatever he advised, so the average individual with a gleet might well have done the rounds of several practitioners and nostrum vendors. The idea that somewhere along the way you’d got on a published list of venereal patients was rather alarming.

Whether Russel’s directory contained real names or made-up ones, I don’t know, but once people arrived at the Green Hatch for a furtive shuffle through the pages, they were a captive audience for the Montpellier Little Bolus at 2s. a pop.

For part 1 of this article, click here. There’s also a transcript of an 1818 Rakasiri advert here.

In 1828, a ‘nervous young man’ who had wasted more than 10l. on the Cordial Balm of Rakasiri went to a magistrate and succeeded in getting his money back. During the proceedings, the Balm’s proprietors, Charles and John Jordan, threatened to make it public that he had venereal disease, but he stuck to his guns and they backed down, claiming that they were returning the money out of respect for the man’s character and not because they were guilty.

Shortly afterwards, a well-to-do young woman, Miss May, consulted them for asthma and ended up 15l. worse off, some of which amount she had to borrow from her sister. Finding her breathing worse and the fiery medicine affecting her stomach, (as mentioned in the previous post, it was highly concentrated alcohol) she heard about the young man’s success and also asked for her money back. The Times reported in early 1829 that

To this, the “doctors” answered, that if Miss May attempted to take any such step as that young man had taken, that they would disclose the real nature of the complaint she was labouring under to her friends, which would ruin her character.

Far from being horrified into silence, Miss May said her friends knew very well she had a cough arising from asthma, and they would now also know “the threat that you have dared to utter.” She got her lawyer, Thomas Cox, on the case and went to the same magistrate who had ordered the young man’s refund. He told her to apply to the Middlesex Sessions for a bill of indictment for fraud. This was refused and the Jordans’ lawyer, Mr Adolphus, published a notice in the Morning Chronicle titled “Base and Malicious Charge of Fraud Refuted,” which referred to Miss May and Mr Cox as ‘infamous calumniators’ and said:

Who ever heard of a person making a purchase, using the article so purchased and then, forsooth, demanding their money back, much less make a charge of fraud against the tradesman so refusing? The attempted fraud was on their own side, and a gross attempt it was.

The doctors challenged Miss May and her lawyer to repeat their accusations, at which Cox wrote to them – a letter that was printed in the Chronicle – inviting them to meet him and his client before the magistrate for that very purpose. The Jordans said they would only respond if summoned by the magistrate himself, and didn’t turn up. “Was it not monstrous,” Mr Cox said,

that such imposters as these men, who were literally a pest in society, and the direct enemies of the human race, should be rolling in their carriages and wallowing in wealth, while men of high education, who had laboriously, and at great expense, studied their profession and made themselves masters of medical knowledge, were living, in many instances, in obscurity, and scarcely able to supply the means of living respectably.

The more cynical among us might be tempted to say welcome to real life, Mr Cox, but as the doctors realised that Miss May was really going to start court proceedings for libel, they got nervous. (‘Notwithstanding the anti-nervous powers of their medicine,’ commented the Monthly Gazette of Health.) They settled out of court, refunding Miss May’s money, paying her legal expenses and giving her £100 compensation. They also agreed to publish a notice in the papers saying that their previous statements were without foundation.

It would be nice to finish with the Gazette‘s conclusion:

To Miss May, for her heroic conduct, and Mr. Cox, her solicitor, for the firmness with which he conducted the proceedings, the thanks of the public are due. They have completely knocked up the Balsam of Rakasira (sic) trade, than which a more infamous traffic has not been carried on in the most barbarous country.

But we all know real life ain’t like that, and this was not the end of the Jordans’ Rakasiri racket. They continued advertising as before until 1840, when they suddenly dropped the M.D. qualification and became Messrs Jordan and Co, Surgeons, with premises in Bristol as well as London. Later in the 1840s, a medicine called Balm of Rakasiri was being sold by Messrs Henry & Co, Liverpool, with a very similar advertising style to the Jordans, and in the 1850s Messrs Lewis were the proprietors. The name finally changed to Dr. Lucas and the remedy was still burning the oesophagi of the credulous at the end of the 1860s.

Source: The Morning Chronicle, Saturday 12 December 1818. For transcript, click here.

On this site I include anything medical or surgical provided it was advertised, so not all the remedies were considered quackery in their time. Some were endorsed and prescribed by reputable doctors, and many were no worse than the orthodox medicines then available. Others, while inefficacious, were produced by honest people who believed in the power of their product and did not set out to rip people off.

The brothers Jordan, however, were a right pair of dodgy coves.

In 1816, C.J. Jordan of Cannon-street-road started placing ads saying he could cure ‘a certain disease’ without using mercury. At this point he referred to himself as a surgeon, but by 1818 he had adopted the qualification M.D. and was calling the remedy The Cordial Balm of Rakasiri, or Nature’s Infallible Restorative. His business was the East London Medical Establishment, but this might as well have been the East London Nose-Picking Establishment for all its professional credibility. With the medicine selling at 11s a bottle (33s for family size), the business was lucrative, and in August 1821 it became the Surrey and West London Medical Establishments with premises in Great Surrey Street, Blackfriars and in Berwick Street, Soho.

In early 1823, the adverts started referring to ‘Drs. C. & J. Jordan.’ The Monthly Gazette of Health, with its usual entertaining indignation, introduced the new partner as

Dr John Jordan, who, from the rank of distributer [sic] of handbills has lately been raised to the dignity of M.D. by leaping, we suppose, over a broomstick.

Balm (otherwise Balsam) of Rakasiri was, in theory, a resin from a tree species native to the Americas. It was said to have stimulant and tonic properties, and had briefly been known in Britain in the early 18th century before its limited popularity had fizzled out. The Jordans’ adverts recommended it for a variety of conditions, including consumption and scrofula, but like its inspiration, Solomon’s Balm of Gilead, the main targets were venereal disease and ‘nervous’ disorders supposedly caused by masturbation. The natural source of the resin not being available in the UK, the Jordans formulated their own version – spirit of wine (rectified ethyl alcohol) flavoured with rosemary oil and sugar.

Both The Monthly Gazette of Health and The Medical Adviser campaigned against the Jordans during the 1820s, and while these publications are far from dispassionate, they make for entertaining reading. According to the Adviser, the Jordans had started out as pencil-sellers before taking the Cannon-street-road premises and setting up their medicine business.

One would think to see these two fellows, standing at their door with their hands in their pockets, their hair powdered, their sleek countenance and suit of black, that they really were medical men; although to a discerning eye a peculiarly roguish cunning, and an expression of innate ignorance, are labels on their front…

Of the Doctors’ fancy carriage, the Adviser continued:

…we fancy their seat the back of an hypochondriac ; their foot-board a grave-stone: their wheels a compilation of human bones; their chariot-rim decked with diseased livers ; their reins the intestinal canal; their side lamps two bottles of Rakasiri; and their whip a long bill! with which the two black longtailed horses most awfully harmonize.

The Adviser – without much relevance, perhaps – also accused the Jordans of stealing a pig, then rather childishly printed their purported reply:

I wont to no what you meen by tacking my karacter as you doo you rite in your book that I mede awey with a milkmans pigg but I wood ave you to no sir that sich like slander shall not be suffered to pass. You also say that I was a pencel pedlar this I despise and say it is a ly. I never hokd pencels I only took orders for em, and even if I did it is no affere of yours I got my bred onnestly.

To the people who had fallen for the scam, however, the Balm of Rakasiri wasn’t  so funny. In part 2 of this post, we’ll see how a young woman stood up to the quacks.

For part 1 about Swaim’s Panacea, click here.

Woodcut commissioned by Swaim, showing Hercules battling the Hydra.

Within a few years of establishing his products, William Swaim was enjoying the benefits of endorsements from some of Philadelphia’s most eminent physicians, including Nathaniel Chapman, William Gibson, William Pott Dewees, Thomas Parke and James Mease – and he didn’t even have to make them up.

For the past ten years or so, sarsaparilla had been attracting renewed medical attention in the US as a blood purifier, so it was probably with this in mind that the doctors were well-disposed towards Swaim’s medicine. Swaim combined the sarsaparilla syrup with oil of wintergreen, giving it a pleasant taste that made it a hit with patients too. Gibson’s endorsement gives a further clue to its popularity:

I have always found it extremely efficacious, especially in secondary syphilis and mercurial disease. I have no hesitation in pronouncing it a medicine of inestimable value.

The symptoms of secondary syphilis, of course, disappear of their own accord before the disease goes into a latent phase – no wonder the Panacea and so many other treatments of the time claimed success.

In 1827 the New York Medical Society appointed a Committee on Quack Remedies, and the Philadelphia Medical Society soon did likewise. While the New York Committee acknowledged the possible benefits of the Panacea and other sarsaparilla-based syrups, the Philadelphia one was tougher, gathering numerous cases of people who had taken the medicine. The outcomes of these cases varied from no effect at all, to ‘a most violent and alarming bowel complaint’, to death. Analysis showed that the remedy contained corrosive sublimate (mercuric chloride).

Later, the New York Committee released its own analysis, done at the time of the investigation but not published, which showed that they too knew all along that it was mercury - so there, Philadelphia. A new analysis in 1831 also showed the presence of arsenic, but the ingredients varied from batch to batch and it was the luck of the draw whether you got the poisons.

By this time the doctors’ enthusiasm had waned. Chapman wrote:

Nathaniel Chapman, pictured 1846

Early in the history of that article, I was induced to employ it, as well from professional as common report in favour of its efficacy, and was well pleased at the result in several cases. But! more extensive experience with it soon convinced me that I had overrated its value, and for a long period I have entirely ceased to prescribe it.

Gibson admitted that: In several cases that came under my notice, ptyalism has followed the use of it. (Excessive salivation, a symptom of mercury poisoning.) Their testimonials, however, were now out of their control and there was nothing they could do to stop Swaim continuing to use their names.

In 1836, long after the US physicians had backtracked on their endorsement of the nostrum, British journal The Medical-Chirurgical Review condemned them in true Tunbridge Wells style:

We were utterly astonished to find an impudent PANACEA bolstered up with the names and certificates of some of the first authorities, in the medical profession, of the United States!…

We are mortified and grieved, beyond measure, to find professional propriety (to give it no other name) at so low an ebb among our brethren in America! This admonition from Europe will surely rouse the faculty of the United States to some sense of the duty they owe to their brethren throughout the world.

The early success of Swaim’s Panacea inspired imitators to cash in with their own versions, and they were completely blatant about it. ‘Swayne’s Panacea’ hoped to dupe punters who weren’t paying attention, and ‘Shinn’s Panacea’ was sold with the statement: The subscriber having discovered the composition of Swaim’s celebrated Panacea, has now a supply on hand for sale.

One of the heavyweight rivals was Parker’s Renovating Vegetable Panacea, the ads of which contained fighting talk:

In justice to myself, I have been induced to reply to a false and unjustifiable attack made upon me and others by Swaim, the vender of a certain Panacea in this city.

I have been acquainted with the ORIGINAL RECIPE FROM WHICH SWAIM MANUFACTURES HIS MEDICINE FOR UPWARD OF TEN YEARS. IT WAS OBTAINED FROM MY FATHER-IN-LAW, WHO NOW RESIDES IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK, WHO HAS USED IT FOR THIRTY YEARS , AND PERFORMED INNUMERABLE EXTRAORDINARY CURES WITH IT.

Parker used his own version of the Hydra image, which, in a nice dig at Swaim’s battling Hercules, shows the mythical beast already defeated:

Swaim’s reply tried to turn the copy-cat ads to his advantage:

This medicine had been used for seven years before an attempt was made to imitate it; but the great demand for it, and its wonderful success, have induced a great number of persons to imitate it in various ways—upwards of fifty different mixtures have been got up in imitation of it, which is a convincing proof of it being a medicine of great value.

Although the initial fame of the medicine declined, it continued to be made throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, latterly with a different formula involving  alcohol and a huge amount of sugar.

1894 ad from the Galveston Daily News

SWAIM’S PANACEA.—This Medicine has acquired a very
extensive and established celebrity in Europe and America,
and its virtues are known and acknowledged by many of the most
respectable physicians of both countries. As an alterative, and
in various diseases, particularly in cases of inveterate corruption
of the blood descending to the second generation, it stands unri-
valled. Its safety and innocence have been fully tested, so that
it may be administered to the most tender and helpless infant.
No one, however, is advised to take it without being first con-
vinced of its efficacy and of the rectitude of the proprietor’s in-
tention. He has been induced to establish agencies in England
in consequence of the repeated and large orders for the Medicine
from various parts of the kingdom. He respectfully informs the
public that they can be supplied wholesale by EVANS, SON, and
CO., 85, Lord-street, Liverpool; EVANS and LESCHER, 4 Cripple-
gate-buildings, London; and retail by most of the respectable
Druggists in England, Ireland, and Scotland.

Source: The Liverpool Mercury, Friday 7 August 1847

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If you’re Welsh, don’t be annoyed at being left out; count yourself lucky.

Although I’ve chosen a British ad here, the medicine’s home was Philadelphia, where William Swaim settled after a career as a bookbinder in New York. A probably apocryphal tale has him finding the panacea recipe scribbled on a blank leaf of a book he was binding; another story, related in James Harvey Young’s The Toadstool Millionaires, has Swaim finding out the ingredients from a reputable physician called Dr Quackinboss. Although this sounds made up, the name (but with the spelling Quackenboss), genuinely did belong to a New York doctor in the 1820s. (And for purposes of mild amusement, here is a modern example.)

Swaim’s advertising materials included booklets endorsing his nostrum, and the following unpleasant picture appeared in these and occasionally in his ads. You might recognise it if you saw the colour version recently displayed on the Ephemera Assemblyman blog. In this one, the bottle of Panacea is more prominent, and the facial expression more grotesque, but the depiction of the legs is thankfully less gruesome for the lack of colour.

Notice that the caption says ‘The representation and her actual appearance after having been Cured by the use of Swaims Panacea.’ I think they must mean ‘The representation of…’ but anyway, AFTER is the interesting word here. This image was supposed to encourage people to buy the medicine. Just think! Take this stuff and you too could spend the rest of your life hiding in a darkened room, tragically plastering your face with yet more mercurial preparations while the looking glass mocks you with the ghostly memory of the carefree beauty you were long, long ago.

The logic behind the use of this picture is difficult to grasp – any further theories welcome in the comments, but it could be:

1. In that state, Miss Linton should actually be dead, so the very fact that she’s sitting in a chair grinning is a testament to the miraculous power of the Panacea.

2. The horror of the image would exert a strange fascination on punters and compel them to read the promotional book. This is what happened to ‘Morleigh,’ the British writer of Life in the West, (1843):

‘…fronting the title page, we have a full-length portrait of a lady, or skeleton in a ball dress, grinning horribly. If this lady is cured, thought I, it would be very advisable for her to stay at home. Faugh! the very portrait has made me ill. I threw the book aside with scorn, little thinking that in a few days hence, when the book had mysteriously disappeared, I should earnestly seek a copy, and devour the contents with as much gusto as a starving sailor would munch an old shoe.’

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To be continued…

In the next post – what was actually in Swaim’s Panacea, the proprietor’s on-off relationship with the medical profession, and how the Panacea’s success spawned blatant imitations.

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Picture courtesy of the US National Library of Medicine

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PIGEON MILK
THE GENTLEMAN’S FRIEND
Fits vest pocket (no liquid). Does
not stain. Stricture impossible.
Cures Gonorrhea and Gleet
in 1 to 4 days. A safe, sure cure.
Mailed (sealed) to any address
for $1. Ask druggists or write,
RUST MEDICAL COMPANY,
DETROIT, MICH.

Source: Sandusky Daily Register (Ohio) 1 April 1891 (sorry about the bad scan.)

This one comes from the “men will buy any damn thing if we randomly associate it with boobs” school of advertising. Rust Medical Company displayed marketing genius when they plastered their product name over the one place on the whole page a man’s eyes would immediately travel to.

Especially the kind of men in need of this remedy.

Other adverts for Pigeon Milk reveal that it was an injection – not in the modern hypodermic sense but in the sense of using a needle-less syringe to squirt the stuff straight up the affected part. Allen Vegotsky, in his 2004 article on Dr Hatchett’s Drug Store Museum, describes the pack as containing a bottle, syringe and a tin of pills, somewhat accounting for the hefty price. (The ad’s ‘no liquid’ assertion is puzzling, though.)

There is a natural substance called pigeon milk – it’s a curdy secretion produced by both hen and cock pigeons to feed their young. They regurgitate it for pigeon junior to gobble down, but when he’s full, they can swallow what’s left and keep it for next time. And here is where the marketing ploys fall down, because if I were a man, I for one would not want even a fake version of pigeon sick anywhere near my most prized appendage.

Although no proprietor is shown in the following advertisement, the Vegetable Life Drops were one of several cures touted under the name Dr Walter De Roos. De Roos was an enigmatic character and the name was purported to be an alias for one John (or George) Robinson, who might well have bought the business in 1858 from brothers Alfred and Samuel Barker. Whether or not De Roos was ever a real person, his Compound Renal Pills were still being sold under that name in the early 20th century.

     THE MOST WONDERFUL MEDICINE IN THE WORLD!!
          CURE IN FOUR WEEKS.— THE GUTTÆ VITÆ, or,
         VEGETABLE LIFE DROPS, Protected by Royal Let-
ters Patent;  Sanctioned  by  the  Faculte  de  France,  &c., have in
numberless   instances  proved  their  superiority  over  every  other
advertised  Remedy  for  langour,  lassitude,  depression  of  spirits,
irritability,  excitement,  fear,  distaste  and   incapacity   for   society,
study or  business,  indigestion,  pains  and  palpitation  in  the  side,
giddiness,  noise  in  the  head,  &c.  This  medicine  strengthens the
vitality of the  whole  system,  gives  energy to the muscles, speedily
removes nervousness, renovates  the  impaired  powers of life, and
invigorates  the  most  shattered  constitution.  For   skin   eruptions,
sore throat,  pains  in  the  bones, and those diseases in which mer-
cury, sarsaparilla, &c.,  are  too  often  employed,  to  the  utter  ruin
of health, its surprising efficacy has only to be tested.
   Before wasting valuable  time  in  seeking  aid  from  instruments,
electricity, galvanism,  with  similar  absurdities  professing  to  set
aside medicines, by American impostors and others, whose boas-
ted “distinguished qualifications”  consist  solely  of  their  consum-
mate  impudence,  sufferers  will  do  well   to  make  fair  trial  of  a
remedy, which concocted on scientific principles cannot fail.
Price 4s. 6d. And 11s., or four times  the  latter  at  33s.  per  bottle,
through all Chemists,  or  direct  from  25,  Bedford Place, WHERE
THOUSANDS OF TESTIMONIALS MAY BE SEEN.

Source: The North Wales Chronicle, October 24 1863

For all this advert’s outrage against impostors, Walter De Roos was summoned to Uxbridge Petty Sessions in 1864 by solicitor and anti-quackery campaigner William Talley under the New Medical Act , which provided for a fine of £20 for anyone falsely claiming medical qualifications.The doctor did not turn up, but was represented by his “learned counsel” – coincidentally also called Mr Robinson – whose entertaining exchanges with Talley are documented in Extraordinary Success of the New Mode of Treatment. The prosecution failed and De Roos – or whoever he was – went on to cause further damage.

He was implicated in a suicide in 1865, when 24-year-old James Miles was found drowned in the canal at Higham, Kent, having suffered a period of depression. Among the deceased’s belongings were 30 letters and pamphlets from Dr De Roos impressing upon him that he must continue to take the doctor’s medicine – and demanding immediate payment for it. Bearing in mind De Roos’s pamphlets had titles like Private Hints on the Causes, Symptoms, and Cure of All the Secret Disorders Incident to Both Sexes and The Medical Adviser: On Certain Infirmities and Disorders of the Generative and Urinary Systems : the Premature Failure of Sexual Power, with Plain Directions for Its Perfect Restoration : Practical Observations on Marriage : Its Disqualifications, and Their Removal it is hardly surprising that the newly married young man was troubled.

Local surgeon Mr J.J. Ely said of the pamphlets: “I have no doubt whatever they would cause a great depression of spirits.”