The Quack Doctor

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I originally posted this on my (now defunct) other blog before I started The Quack Doctor, so I thought I’d move it over here as not many people will have seen it before:

Are your spirits hurried and your brain in need of comforting? Are you suffering from the effects of hard drinking? Do your parts need warming and invigorating? Look no further. Here’s an 18th-century panacea to combat every possible woe.

The advert below is from an Adams’s Weekly Courant, which  happened to be the main newspaper in Chester during the time my book is set.  The paper was run by Mrs Elizabeth Adams, who took over her husband’s printing business after his death.

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RESTORATIVE VIPER DROPS

THESE Drops have for these twenty Years past, in the Proprietor’s private Practice, proved themselves upon some hundred patients, to be an excellent Medicine, beyond any other Chymical Preparation offered to the Publick within the Compass of his Knowledge.

They restore greatly in weak Habits; strengthen weak Backs, warm and invigorate Parts that are languid and weaken’d by Gleets, or other Injuries; they help Digestion; comfort a cold Stomach, and expel Wind both from thence and the Bowels; they remedy the effects of hard Drinking; cleanse the Ureters from slimy and sabulous matter, thereby taking away Gravel pains in the back; compose hurry’d spirits, and take off Flutterings and Lowness, comforting the Brain and causing Chearfulness; they are a noble Balsamick also for all outward Bruises and Wounds, consolidating the Part injured, almost instantly; cure Burns or Scaldings, if immediately applied, in a surprising Manner, and without leaving disagreeable Marks or Eschars.

Any Persons by applying to the Proprietor, at his Shop, will be directed to People of undoubted Credit, who will satisfy them of the great good Effects of these Drops, in the above Cases, for which they are recommended, and in some very dangerous and complicated Disorders, not here inferred, for the sake of brevity.

They are pleasant to take, not giving the least Nausea or Offence to the tenderest stomach.

They are sold in bottles of Three Shillings, with the Cypher and Inscription, as here in the Margin, and in Eighteen-penny Bottles, at the Chymist’s Shop, the Golden Head and Key, at the corner of Bell Savage Gateway, Ludgate-Hill; at Mr Jefferys’s Bookseller, in Pope’s-Head Alley, Cornhill; and also at the Printer’s of this paper.

And for the real Excellence of this Medicine, and its absolute Difference from some Things called VIPER DROPS, any Persons may satisfy themselves, by coming to his Shop, with a Lump of Sugar at any Time, and have a proper Dose of them gratis, for their Satisfaction and Benefit.

At the above Places may be had, The PATENT ANTIVENEREAL ELECTUARY, Price Six Shillings in the Pot, with Directions.

Source: Adams’s Weekly Courant (Chester) 13 August 1754

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“Dr” Richard Rock was a high-profile quack whose usual stomping-ground was Covent Garden – as shown in Hogarth’s The Four Times of the Day (Morning) where his products are being advertised on a billboard (difficult to see in the picture here, but it’s just above the page’s head to the left of the scene). Although the advertising copy refers exclusively to London, Rock probably used the printers of the Weekly Courant and other provincial newspapers as distributors.

If the Viper Drops had lived up to all their claims, there would have been no need for Chester Infirmary to be set up a year later, and I would have had to find something else to write a book about.