The Quack Doctor

It is surprising the number of Persons that apply daily from 11 o’clock till 3, at No. 84, Wells-street, Oxford-street, to consult Dr. Cameron, who discovers disorders by an inspection of the morning urine, and although Dr. C.’s method is singular, it it (sic) a well known fact, that he restores many to perfect health, when the most eminent of the profession have failed, in painful, lingering, and dangerous cases; as diseases of the liver, bilious, and other obstructions, complaints in the Stomach, loss of appetite, jaundice, consumptions, dropsy, &c.; also those complaints peculiar to females at the different periods of life, and in all instances of Debility produced by free living and excesses, that derange, disorganize and weaken the nervous and muscular powers.

Source: The Anti-Gallican Monitor, 21 May 1815

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Uroscopy had been a diagnostic tool for centuries. The colour, consistency, smell and taste of urine were observed since the time of Hippocrates, and in the 17th century Thomas Willis described one circumstance in which it could be useful – in the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus. By Cameron’s time, however, the idea that it was possible to diagnose every disease from the urine alone – often without even seeing the patient – was well within the realms of quackery and uroscopists were derided as ‘piss-prophets’.

Cameron set up as a doctor in Well Street off Oxford Street in about 1809. Initially sharing premises with a silhouette-maker, he soon had enough good fortune to part ways with his impoverished artist friend. Because of urine-casting’s long history, he was able to attract patients who thought there was something in it and who were suspicious of most doctors’ insistence that it was a load of rubbish.

An anecdote in the Medical Adviser (1824) tells of Cameron’s modus operandi. The Adviser is not the most impartial of publications so the details must be taken with a pinch of salt, but they did claim to have verified the story.

A Holborn innkeeper consulted the doctor for chest pains and received some pills. After a month of taking them, he became unable to urinate and, in agony in the middle of the night, had to send for a surgeon to catheterise him. The pills turned out to contain the purgatives jalap and calomel (mercurous chloride), which the surgeon felt had been responsible for his symptoms. He recovered (apart from the chest pain, which was still there) – but not without wanting to pay Cameron back.

The vengeful innkeeper sent his ostler, along with a ‘heavy’ for back-up, to take a urine sample to Cameron. Variations on this story are still doing the rounds today, so you can immediately see what’s coming…

The doctor tasted the urine, and concluded that the sufferer was in a bad way, but could be cured. By asking questions about the age of the patient (24), how hard he worked (lots of heavy loads) and whether he was a drinker (a pail of water twice a day), Cameron diagnosed a bad back, at which point the ostler revealed that the urine was from his donkey.

‘Get out of my house, you rascal!’ bellowed the enraged ‘Doctor’ as he chased the little ostler about the parlour, who now got behind his colossal assistant, and as well might Cameron pierce the shield of Ajax as make an impression upon him, so he contented himself with snatching up the bottle, opening the window and dashing it into the street.

He continued to have a go at the visitors until they ‘coolly retired.’  In reporting the tale, the Medical Adviser certainly didn’t disguise its contempt of the self-styled Water Doctor:

In the name of the north and the honor of old Scotland is this fellow a Cameron? And has the name that is associated with deeds of glory and the might of auld lang syne, dwindled into a filthy water-taster?

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.

A MORE VALUABLE DISCOVERY was never
made in Medicine than NELSON’S MIXTURE for DIS-
EASES of the LUNGS.—Coughs the most inveterate, sleepless
nights, wheezing, and shortness of breath, profuse spitting, pains
in the chest, and spitting of blood, in short asthma and consumption
is completely cured by it;  it lessens excessive perspirations and
amends the expectoration, changing the secretion from purulent
matter to healthy phlegm, and while it heals and strengthens the
lungs it invigorates the tone of the stomach and recovers the body
from a state of debility and emaciation. For recent coughs, colds,
catarrhs &c. it is seldom wanted more than two or three days.
Having for the last 22 years observed the sad inefficacy of every
mode of treatment adopted by the most eminent physicians, J.
NELSON was induced to venture on a practice new and peculiar to
himself, and from which he has experienced such unparalleled success,
that he can with confidence declare, if the patient does not find
speedy and effectual relief from this medicine, all that the Royal Col-
lege of Physicians can do will be of no avail; having now declined
practice, this medicine is offered to the public under the form of a
mixture. Sold by J. Brooks, 421, Oxford-street, and J. Leathwait,
South entrance, Royal Exchange.

Source: The Times, 8 August 1817

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It is a truth universally acknowledged than anyone writing anything to do with Jane Austen must oh-so-wittily begin their article with ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged…’ Thus yesterday The Times reported that Austen might have died of tuberculosis rather than the Addison’s Disease previously suspected.

The above advert was placed in that same newspaper in the months before and after Austen’s death, and its comments about the medical profession are barbed enough to have perhaps occasioned her a sly smile. Less amusing, however, were the actual symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis, or phthisis as it was known:

In the last stage of phthisis, the emaciation is so great that the patient has the appearance of a walking skeleton ; his countenance is altered, his cheek-bones are prominent, his eyes look hollow and languid, his hair falls off, his nails are of a livid colour and much incurvated, and his feet and ancles are affected with oedematous swellings. To the end of the disease the senses remain entire, and the mind is confident and full of hope.
The Modern Practice of Physic, Robert Thomas, 1828

The early 19th-century consumptive patient didn’t have the option of the later sanatoria, where fresh air was the order of the day. Instead, doctors advised the ‘close room’ regime, with as little exposure to the elements as possible – or, for those who could afford it, travel to a warmer climate. When, in 1840, country doctor George Bodington suggested a fresh air cure, his ideas met with derision from the faculty (partly, no doubt, because he had a real go at eminent physician Sir James Clark for not coming up with any ideas of his own.)

In spite of the romantic image of consumption, the majority of sufferers were poor and unable to swan off to the Mediterranean. In Bishopsgate, London,  an Infirmary for Asthma, Consumption, and other Diseases of the Lungs offered treatment to those who could not afford doctors. The wards were kept at a ‘moderate summer temperature’ all year round, but most people were treated as outpatients, and presumably had to return to their own chilly lodgings after consultation.

Other prominent treatments included blood-letting, cupping and blistering. Digitalis was popular but controversial, and tartar emetic in regular use. In 1829, James Murray wrote on the value of inhalations of iodine, but it took a couple of decades for this to catch on.

There were various theories as to the cause of consumption – the patient’s lifestyle, constitution and even looks being considered strong factors, but in 1822, Richard Reece’s Monthly Gazette of Health referred rather dismissively – and intriguingly – to an anonymous practitioner’s discovery:

A person, residing at Bath, asserts in his public advertisements, that, on microscopical examination of the matter brought up from the lungs of consumptive subjects, he has discovered animalculae of the shape of a maggot, to the irritation of which he attributes cough and the progress of the organic affection! By destroying these mischievous animals, by means of inhaling a particular gas, he says he has succeeded in restoring patients to health, whose cases were declared to be hopeless.

Although Reece (who, incidentally, was the doctor caught up in the case of Joanna Southcott’s supposedly miraculous pregnancy in 1814) exaggerates, making the microscopist sound like someone touting a remedy for financial gain, I believe he is referring to one Mr Rogers. Earlier in 1822, Rogers made a discovery that the London Medical and Physical Journal thought ‘may ultimately prove of some importance.’ The Journal reported Rogers as saying:

I have observed that the matter, or pus, expectorated in a certain stage of pulmonary consumption, is actually filled with multitudes of minute worms; the forms of which, in their evolutions from the surrounding mucus, are so distinctly seen, as to obviate all doubt of their identity with living animalculi.

The description bears more than a passing resemblance to what is now called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, officially discovered by Robert Koch 60 years later:

‘Is it unreasonable,’ Rogers suggested before he faded into obscurity, ‘to regard these worms, the existence of which is indisputable, as forming the concomitant cause of consumption?’