The Quack Doctor

Anti-Stiff advert from The Chemist and Druggist, 7 June 1890

Anti-Stiff – a name contrary to the philosophy of today’s email spammers – appears to have been a boon to the athletes of the 1890s. It was a muscle rub intended to ward off aches and fatigue during a variety of sporting endeavours, and its promoter claimed that ‘some athletes are so fond of it that they rub it all over them.’

Unlike the messier liquid liniments that served a similar purpose, Anti-Stiff was a semi-solid substance packaged in a tin. U.S. publication the Western Druggist said that the product comprised petrolatum with some essential oils and colouring – so if you imagine a green, lavender-scented version of Vaseline, it was probably pretty much like that. Such a portable and convenient format made it particularly suitable for cyclists, who could carry it with them without the worry of dropping a glass bottle or spilling the product if they stopped to use it en route.

Adverts for Anti-Stiff regularly appeared in Cycling: An Illustrated Weekly, which began publication on 24 January 1891 and soon became a hit for its attractive layout, informative articles, humorous snippets and lively writing style. Right from the first issue, Anti-Stiff had a prominent advertising presence, asking readers:

Can you wonder that you lost that race?
Why, you did not use “Anti-Stiff!”

Testimonials abounded from the top cyclists of the day. C. A. Smith, who held the Brighton Coach Record (whereby cyclists would attempt to beat the times recorded by the old mail coaches between London and Brighton) said he was well rubbed down with Anti-Stiff before setting off on his ride. Cycling pioneer John Keen, who is mentioned in the ad above, also gave an endorsement, writing that he had used every other preparation known, but found none equal to Anti-Stiff.

John Keen, champion racer of penny-farthings in the 1870 and 80s, who went on to manufacture bicycles. Anti-Stiff advertisements refer to him as 'The Champion Bicyclist of the World.'

Although initially aimed at cyclists, Anti-Stiff was for anyone who hoped to exhibit sporting prowess, including footballers, boxers, runners and skaters. Although Victorian footballers did not enjoy the same lifestyle as their 21st-century counterparts, they were nevertheless invited to view Anti-Stiff as one of the finer things in life:

An article of this kind is a real luxury, and when once it is tried by a footballer, he will always keep a tin of Anti-Stiff handy, and carry it about with him as valued as his watch.

Notts County coach Harry Kirk reported that his players considered it ‘grand stuff’.

Detail of Anti-stiff ad, Cycling: An Illustrated Weekly 11 April 1891

Field athlete H. Griffin also recommended Anti-Stiff:

Personally, I can speak in very high terms of it. During 1890 I used it, notably for a stiffened shoulder through “putting the shot,” which it quickly put right “like a shot.”

I see what you did there, Mr Griffin.

The advert at the top is aimed at chemists. As you can see, the proprietor, Joseph Wilson, uses the incentive of free publicity for any chemist who stocks the product. He also appealed to those in the cycle sales and repair trade by offering to print their headed paper free of charge provided he could include a discreet advert. With marketing techniques so focused on what the customer could get out of the deal, it is no surprise that Anti-Stiff soon became well-known enough to get mentions in entertainment magazines such as Punch and Fun.

In May 1891, however, the latter publication didn’t give anyone much fun when it printed an Anti-Stiff joke so dire that it required a cringe-making Bruce Forsyth-style explanation of the punchline:

It should be sold in Turkey, for there there are millions of muscle men (Mussulmen.)

Whether they promised to cover a bald head with a mop of curls, to rejuvenate greying locks or to produce manly whiskers on the smoothest of chins, hair-related products appear in numerous Victorian and Edwardian adverts. There was a huge choice of potions, lotions, devices and even pills for bringing back a youthful barnet – here are just a few from the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th.

Madame Fox’s Life for the Hair. From The Graphic, 4 March 1882

Foso Hair and Scalp Remedy. From the New York Tribune, 7 January 1906

Wyeth’s Sage and Sulphur Hair Restorer. From the Palestine Herald, Texas, 19 January 1910

Wilson’s Whiskerine. From Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 12 December 1891

Esauline. From the Penny Illustrated Paper, 20 July 1895

Hygienic Vacuum Cap. From Popular Mechanics, December 1909. For more details on this and other vacuum caps, see this previous post: You Needn’t Be Bald.

This advertisement for Eno’s Fruit Salt appeared in the special Royal Wedding Edition of the Penny Illustrated Paper on 8 July 1893. The edition commemorated the nuptials of Prince George, Duke of York and Princess May of Teck – the future King George V and Queen Mary. Click the image to enlarge.

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.

In honour of the birth of The Quack Doctor’s new baby niece, who arrived early Saturday morning in the car park of Harlow Hospital, this post looks at a liniment that claimed to make labour a doddle.

The Daily Times, Portsmouth, Ohio 4 May 1899

Mother’s Friend was on sale in the US and Canada by the mid-1880s, though some adverts said it had been around for longer. During the last couple of decades of the 19^th century and into the 20^th, the advertising made some far-fetched claims.

The packaging stated that the liniment would ‘cause an unusually easy and quick delivery’ and that it would ‘alleviate in a most magical way the pains, horrors and risks of labor’. Used early in pregnancy, it would also cure morning sickness.

Some of the advertising went further and suggested that the use of Mother’s Friend would make the resulting baby clever and good-looking. In this 1901 ad, for example, an anonymous father sets up a potential fratricide situation by describing the youngest of his three children as the ‘healthiest, prettiest and finest-looking of them all’.

The Alamance Gleaner, 13 June 1901

The advert below  rings a few alarm bells by insisting that there is no opium, morphine or strychnine – but in fact this was true. Twice in 1909, consignments of Mother’s Friend were seized under the Food and Drugs Act (1906) and deemed misbranded because of the claims made. Analysis showed them to be a mixture of oil and soap (the type of oil is not specified in the misbranding reports but presumably it was a vegetable oil).

The Rock Hill Herald 19 April 1902

The Bradfield Regulator Company was allowed to continuing selling the product provided it did not make unrealistic claims, so from then on Mother’s Friend was marketed as a massage oil to help with dry skin and the aches and pains of pregnancy. Later, under ownership of the S.S.S. Company, it became a body lotion, firmly in the category of toiletries rather than medicines.

The Reading Eagle 11 March 1941

The bolder claims of the early advertising, however, were not without some merit – for pregnant women, accustomed to having to listen to everyone else’s birth horror stories, the positive outlook of Mother’s Friend must have been a welcome change.

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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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From the Pittsburgh Dispatch, 2 Jan 1890

Alexander Wilford Hall wasn’t trying to flog a potion or contraption. His secret to health and longevity was something that people could do for themselves, for their whole lives, at very low cost. That is, if they really had the stomach for it.

On sending in a stamp, the enquirer would receive information about a booklet detailing the mysterious method. At a steep $4, this publication must really be something special, and according to a laudatory biography of Hall in Jay Henry Mowbray’s 1898 book Representative Men of New York, it sold 500,000 copies in the US, England and Australia. Purchasers were asked to agree to a ‘Pledge of Honor’ (or Honour, depending which country you were in) not to divulge the secret to anyone but their own family, although doctors were allowed to recommend it to patients.

The pamphlet reveals that the secret was a process that has enjoyed a resurgence in more recent times:

Disease depends upon the absorption of poisonous materials from the colon and rectum. Wash this out thoroughly with hot water once or twice a day and disease is robbed of its power, death of its terror and the doctor of his occupation. Use a large quantity of water, one or two gallons; retain it for as long as possible and that which is not absorbed can finally be expelled, taking with it accumulations which have a tendency to create diseases.

A sceptical correspondent to The Medical World, Dr Massie, colourfully paraphrased this as ‘Use lots of water (a gallon or two), retain it as long as possible, and then “Let her go, Gallagher!”’

Dr Massie also said:

I don’t know anything about Hall’s right to use the prefix ‘Dr.’, but suspect it is merely a trap to get some unwary M.D. to send for the June number of his alleged scientific journal, and be by it further deceived to send $4.00 for his alleged “Hygienic Method”

Massie needn’t have feared, however – Hall had a PhD from Lebanon Valley College, PA, and was Doctor of Laws from the University of Florida – therefore doubly entitled to be called ‘Doctor’. If people thought this meant he had a medical qualification, well, so be it!

After an inauspicious start as a mule-driver on the Erie Canal towpath, Hall worked hard to gain an education and became a writer and editor, producing his own journal, the Microcosm, and several works of philosophy. It was in the Microcosm that he announced the discovery of ‘this treatment for the cure of almost every known form of disease,’ and invited people to send $4 for the pamphlet. Although the secrecy and high cost aroused the suspicions of doctors like Massie, other physicians approved. Dr J H Etheridge of Chicago, for example, reported in rather graphic detail in the Medical Standard on his success with the treatment. In the case of one patient who had been a ‘poor breakfaster’ for years, ‘the discharges from her bowels were simply enormous’.

Etheridge might not have seen the Hygienic Treatment as quackery, but there was a danger of the method being promoted by amateur enthusiasts.

In 1889, 20-year-old George Harger, a student at the Rome Free Academy in New York, bought Hall’s pamphlet and was convinced it held the key to health. Whenever any of his fellow students were ill, he advised them to give up on conventional medicine and try the hygienic cure. His persistence, added to the fact that he was a staunch prohibitionist, didn’t do a lot for this young chap’s popularity. When he persuaded a seriously ill 16-year-old boy to adopt the hygienic treatment, enough was enough. The insufferable but unfortunate Harger was set upon by a mob of 15 other students and any remaining contents of his colon were promptly kicked out of him.

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From The Standard (London) 10 April 1897

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Perhaps this is not strictly medical, but I noticed this ad while researching something else, and was intrigued enough to find out more.

The invisible elevators, I discovered, were cork wedges about 1 inch thick, designed to be worn inside your shoes. The image below is of a US version patented in 1896 and exactly matches the description of those sold in the UK by a young entrepreneur called Arthur Lewis Pointing.

The product retailed at 3s 9d per pair, or 5s 6d for a superior version. You had a job to get hold of the cheaper set, however – if you sent in 3s 9d, you would receive a letter saying that they were out of stock but that you could have the higher quality ones if you sent the balance.

The grand-sounding Oriental Toilet Company, 87 Strand, was simply a room hired by Pointing as a place to receive letters, which were collected each day and taken to his other premises where a staff of thirteen young women sent out the replies. Pointing also promoted a wealth of other products under various names and addresses, for example this bust improver ostensibly sold by ‘Madame E. P.’

In 1897, Pointing, 29, was arrested for fraud and brought to trial at Bow Street Police Court. Dissatisfied customers told of the pain occasioned by trying to walk in the elevators, and their futile attempts to get their money back. One of the witnesses was described in various newspaper reports as a ‘diminutive girl’ and ‘a pleasant-looking little domestic servant’ – which can’t have done much for her sensitivity about her height!

To be fair, two witnesses also appeared for the defence, suggesting that the elevators were comfortable and effective, but one of them worked for Pointing and said she had tried the product out of curiosity since the trial began.

Less loyal to her boss was the Oriental Toilet Company’s head clerk, Charlotte Smith, who said that there was no difference between the 3s 9d and the 5s 6d products. She explained how the business worked.

When anyone enquired about the elevators, they would receive a circular sympathising with the plight of short people, who inevitably found themselves ‘decried and treated with a certain amount of contempt and pity.’

‘Many,’ it said, ‘will certainly speak in praise of little women, but few of little men.’ This did not, however, mean that women didn’t need the product:

Little women, provided they are beautifully proportioned and know how to dress daintily, can be, and are, very attractive; but when these little women get past their fresh beauty and become fat or thin their trials begin. We all know how ridiculous it is to see a little fat woman waddling along like a motherly old duck, whereas a tall, stout, middle-aged woman does not look ridiculous at all.

When an order was placed, the customer would receive the out-of-stock letter, and more often than not this resulted in the remittance of the extra 1s 9d. If the customer asked for their money back instead, they would be sent the elevators anyway in the hope that they wouldn’t bother taking the matter further. Persistent complainants were offered a selection of toiletries, or – rather randomly – some liver pills, in exchange for the elevators. If you wanted your 3s 9d back that much, you really had to work for it.

These money-making ploys, however, were not actually illegal. Arthur Pointing might have been dodgy, but the court ruled that he hadn’t committed a criminal offence, and acquitted him.

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Would you buy a homeopathic remedy from this man?

Source: The Morning Times (Washington D.C.) 13 December 1896

James Monroe Munyon’s pompadour hairstyle was a familiar feature of American newspapers around the turn of the 20^th century. Having tried his hand at teaching, law, social work, publishing and song-writing, he started his Homoeopathic Home Remedy Company in the early 1890s and hit pay dirt.

In 1897, Munyon opened a London head office and a depot in Liverpool. A massive advertising campaign promised free vials of the remedies and challenged the British public to test his new system of curing disease. Perhaps Munyon anticipated lasting fame in the UK, but he couldn’t have predicted what his company would be remembered for.

There was a separate remedy for every disease. To name but a few, there were…

Munyon’s Kidney Cure, which a 1907 analysis showed to be 100% sugar.
Munyon’s Asthma Cure (sugar and alcohol)
Munyon’s Blood Cure (sugar)
Munyon’s Special Liquid Blood Cure (sugar, potassium iodide and corrosive sublimate)
Munyon’s Catarrh Cure (sodium bicarbonate, salt, borax, phenol and gum)
Munyon’s Special Catarrh Cure (sugar)
Munyon’s Grippe Remedy (sugar and arsenic)
Munyon’s Pile Ointment (a farthing’s worth of soft paraffin).

At various times these products were declared misbranded in the US because of the claims that they could cure disease, and Munyon received fines – but he carried on his business regardless. One of the slogans he used in his advertising was:

There is no punishment too great for him who deceives the sick.

While his remedies were coming under scrutiny from the BMJ and the American Medical Association, 60-year-old Munyon was busy marrying his third wife, 24-year-old actress Pauline Neff Metzger. His fortune was not an effective enough remedy for their differences, and they divorced in 1913.

Munyon had bought an island off North Palm Beach, Florida, and opened a resort there in 1903, calling his luxury hotel the Hygeia and attracting wealthy invalids. One of the attractions of the place was the ready supply of Paw Paw Tonic, a cure-all made from papaya. The place burnt down in 1917 and Munyon died a year later of an apoplexy while having lunch at the Poinciana Hotel on the mainland. His obituary in the New York Times quoted him as having said he started out with:

virtually no capital except ambition and a belief in letting folks know about it.

The company continued, and as late as the 1940s, shipments of its products were still being seized by the government and condemned. In 1944, a batch of Paw Paw Tonic was found to contain strychnine.

Above: Munyon’s Catarrh Cure. Photo credit: Michael Till. This was part of an inhaler that would originally have had a stopper with a tube insertion, allowing the patient to snort the remedy.

Munyon’s Homoeopathic Home Remedy Company has a colourful enough history of its own, but is now chiefly remembered for its other claim to fame.

The London office’s first manager was an industrious employee who had spent the past few years as a Consulting Physician in the Philadelphia and then Toronto branches, impressing Munyon with his work ethic and ability to improve sales. Unfortunately, the London manager started having problems with his wife, who was still in the US trying to become a professional singer and openly having affairs.

When she moved to London in 1900, he made some attempt to support her in her music hall career, but the stormy relationship interfered with his work. He left Munyon’s and did the rounds of various other patent medicine companies, including the Sovereign Remedy Company, his own business the Yale Tooth Specialists, and the Aural Clinic, later returning to the advertising department of his original employer.

Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen eventually got the sack from Munyon’s. By then he had taken up with Ethel le Neve, his wife was still giving him trouble, and things kind of went downhill from there.

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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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