The Quack Doctor

DELICACY of Complexion.—The incomparable BLOOM of NINON DE L’ENCLOS, superior to any thing yet discovered for rendering the skin soft, smooth, and beautiful in the extreme. Its wonderful effects in removing freckles, morphews, worms, &c. justly entitle it to that preference so long bestowed on it by the most elegant beauties in this kingdom. It is particularly recommended for the hands and arms, bestowing on them a delicacy and whiteness, superior to any thing vended for similar purposes.—Sold only by Mr. Golding, 42, Cornhill; Mr. Overton, 47, Bond-street; Mr. Wright, Wade’s Passage, Bath; and Miss Grigson, Liverpool; in bottles 4s. each.

Source: The Times, 20 June 1805

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The story behind the Bloom suggested it had been introduced to Britain in 1782 by Mademoiselle Louisa Pigout of Paris, who appointed London agents to reach the British market. She credited the product for the beauty of famed 17th-century writer and courtesan Anne (nicknamed Ninon) de L’Enclos, who had handed down the recipe. Another of Pigout’s claims was that the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, would use no other cosmetic.

A 1784 advert gave detailed instructions for use:

Let the skin be thoroughly cleansed with Almond Washball, or oatmeal. Being wiped perfectly dry, shake the bottle exceeding well, and immediately pour a little of the fluid into a cup, and with a fine cloth rub it on the skin, more or less, as you please, till it is quite absorbed. Lastly, gently wipe the face with a soft flannel. Two or three bottles, and frequently less, will evince the pre-eminence of its virtues, beyond the possibility of a doubt.

If Ninon (right) really employed this preparation, she did well to survive to the age of 84. It comprised almond emulsion, essence of lavender and white lead.

White lead (lead carbonate) had been used in cosmetics since antiquity. In Ninon’s time and well into the 18th century it commonly took the form of ceruse – a mixture of the compound with vinegar. In 1756, Adam Fitz-Adam’s periodical The World noted that women who used ceruse

doe quickly become withered and grey-headed, because this doth so mightily dry up the natural moysture of their flesh: and if any give not credit to my report let them but observe such as have used it, and I doubt not but they will easyly be satisfied.

This was positively complimentary compared with Fitz-Adam’s description of women who used corrosive sublimate, but I’ll keep that for another time. In 1786 a correspondent to the Daily Universal Register (the forerunner of The Times) was equally disapproving of cosmetics in this satirical ‘receipt for making a fashionable lady’:

…viz. two pounds of cork, five yards of whalebone, one pound of hair, six pounds of wool or cotton, two drams of white lead, and half a dram of rouge—these, with a proper quantity of bones for the skeleton, and flesh and blood for the muscles, with the skin of a mouse for eye brows, a pound of powder, and half a pound of pomatum, will compleat the business.

The Monthly Gazette of Health – a publication I am very fond of but accept as rather subjective – estimated the cost of ingredients for a bottle of  ‘Bloom’ as 1d, and surmised that it was made in London, not Paris.

‘Bloom of Ninon,’ was the name of a Victorian face powder too, but this was a completely different product, consisting of precipitated chalk, talc, bismuth subcarbonate, zinc oxide and starch, perfumed with orris and rose essences. The use of lead cosmetics, however, continued throughout the 19th century, particularly in the theatre. In the 1850s, a writer in the Medical Times and Gazette described the case of a clown suffering from colic as a result of using lead carbonate mixed in lard. On his recovery he planned to continue using it because nothing else would create the desired whitening effect, but was eventually persuaded to convert to zinc oxide.

Medical jurisprudence writer Alfred S. Taylor described the symptoms of chronic lead poisoning as follows:

There is first pain, with a sense of sinking commonly in or about the region of the umbilicus. Next to pain there is obstinate constipation, retraction of the abdominal parietes, loss of appetite, thirst, foetid odour of the breath, and general emaciation. The skin acquires a yellowish or earthy colour, and the patient experiences a saccharine, styptic, or astringent taste in the mouth. A symptom of a peculiar nature has been pointed out by the late Dr. Burton and others (Med. Gaz. xxv. 687), namely, blueness of the edges of the gums, where these join the bodies of the teeth : the teeth are of a brownish colour.

Although the idea of historical ladies sacrificing their lives to vanity makes a good story, confirmed cases of death by cosmetics were few and far between. Reported instances of lead poisoning usually involved accidental ingestion via contaminated foodstuffs or water, or prolonged exposure to lead in the trades of house-painting and colour grinding – the symptoms of chronic poisoning were commonly known as painter’s colic.

Even so, it was not a great idea to put lead on your face. As the Monthly Gazette said of the Bloom of Ninon in 1819:

The repeated application of lead to the skin of the face, instead of animating the countenance, would assuredly, by paralysing the nerves, render it inanimate.

Therefore, it was nothing like any beauty treatments that are available today.

I’m attempting to use the long ‘s’ for this transcript – I hope Wordpreſs doesn’t do anything weird with it:

.
HYſtericon, or Antidote againſt Fits, Vapours,
Hypochondriack Melancholy, Vertigoe, Gid-
dineſs or Swimming in the Head, Phrenzy, or
Deprivation of Senſes, Suffocations, or Riſings in
the Throat, Faintings, Swoonings, &c. (common-
ly called Fits of the Mother) for all which, it’s a
moſt admirable thing for Prevention as well as
Cure, whether the Cauſe be Suppreſſion, or Stop-
page of the Spleen, &c. or Hypochondriack, in
admirably prevailing againſt, and taking away
the very Cauſe of ſuch Diſtempers, that they ſel-
dom return again; wonderfully comforts, relieves
and cheriſhes Languiſhing Nature, reſtores and
corroborates the weaken’d Faculties, revives the
Spirits, and enlivens the whole Body, with ſo
much Celerity, Eaſe, Safety, and Pleaſure, that
it has ſcarcely its Equal. Sold at Mr Stephens’s
in Broadſtreet, near the Royal-Exchange, at
1s. 6d. a Bottle, with Directions.

Source: A Review of the Affairs of France, 12 April 1705

.

Ancient Greco-Roman theories of gynaecology presented the womb as a roving organ that could end up out of place within the body, even interfering with the brain or causing choking sensations in the throat. Independent and troublesome, it was attracted to pleasant smells and repulsed by foul ones. If a woman showed hysterical symptoms, this must be due to the womb rising, and it made sense to waft a variety of unpleasant substances in front of her face in order to deter the rogue womb from travelling any further.

By the 18th century the structure – and stationary nature – of the womb had been determined, but the traditional remedies persisted and a woman suffering from ‘fits of the mother’ might be assailed with any number of strong smells – for example sal ammoniac, asa foetida, garlic, bitumen or burnt feathers. Some doctors thought blowing tobacco fumes directly into the woman’s mouth would do the trick. Thomas Otway joked about this in his comedy A Soldier’s Fortune (1681), where Clarinda describes her decrepit husband Sir Davy thus:

“Then for his Person ’tis incomparably odious; he has such a breath, one kiss of him were enough to cure the fits of the mother, ’tis worse than assa foetida”

I don’t know whether the Hystericon (which I haven’t been able to find advertised anywhere except as above in Defoe’s Review) was supposed to be smelled or ingested, but there were certainly medicines to be taken inwardly – though not necessarily from the head end of the alimentary canal. Camomile clysters were one option, while oral medicines might contain amber (in salt or oil form) or herbs such as mugwort and valerian. Should convulsions occur, the Peruvian bark was recommended, and of course the ubiquitous blood-letting was always worth a try.

John K’eogh, in Zoologia Medicinalis Hibernica, (Dublin, 1739) a book about the medicinal properties of animals, described the following strange remedy:

A girdle made of the skin of a buck killed in coition with a doe, squeezed about the belly in the paroxysm or fit, is said to cure the suffocation of the Womb, or fits of the Mother.

But however peculiar the 18th-century remedies, the Victorian fascination with hysteria produced some far more discomfiting treatments. Thankfully this post is long enough without describing them!

This is another of the ads from Defoe’s A Review of the Affairs of France, which I have mentioned previously.

COSMETICON:    A    most     excellent     wash
to Beautifie the  Face,  &c.,  rendring  the  Skin sur-
prisingly white and  clear:  It  takes  away  all  Hard-
ness,  Tan,  Sunburn,  or  other  Discolourings:   All
Morphews,  Scurfs,  Freckles,  Lentils,  &c.,  tho’  of
never so long standing, speedily  heals chop’d Lips,
Pimples, or other breakings-out  in  the  Skin,  after
an admirable manner. Gives such a delicate,  pure,
clear, natural  lustre  to  the  Face  and  Hands,  &c.,
that  nothing  in  Nature  can  possibly  exceeds  it ;
yet leaves no  darnish,  but  is  wholly  free  from  all
pernicious   Ingredients,   as   Mercury  &c,   being
pure, sweet, clean, harmless and transparently clear;
’tis   found,  by  many  Years   Experience,  to  make
the skin so incomparably pure,  fine  and  soft,   and
so free from all Defilements and  Defects   whatsoe-
ver, that   it   leaves   no   room  for  anything  of   the
like kind to come  after   it.   For   Bruises   by   Falls,
&c., Aches and Pains even of   the   Gout   or   Rheu-
matism, it’s a present Sovereign  Remedy.  Sold   at
Mr.  Stevens’s,  a   Tin-Shop   next   the  Three  Nuns
near Salisbury-Court   in   Fleet-street,   and   at   Mr.
Parker’s Bookseller at  the  Keg  and  Star  in  Corn-
hill,  over  against  the  Royal-Exchange,  at   3s.   6d.
a Bottle, with Directions.

Source: A Review of the Affairs of France, Tuesday 3 April 1705

Note: Archaic spellings too numerous to detail but all as in original.

Nothing very funny about today’s remedy, I’m afraid.

Adverts for abortifacients appeared in many 18th- and 19th-century newspapers, but they had to be discreet, as is the case with this one, which focuses on the pamphlet before mentioning the availability of the pills.

The pamphlet was most likely an advertisement for Mr and Mrs White’s other services - they also offered lying-in accomodation, where women who would otherwise give birth alone could “depend on being treated with honour, attention and secrecy.” Their babies would also be put out to nurse and be “humanely taken care of.” The reassuring tone of the couple’s adverts might have given hope to isolated women faced with unwanted pregnancies, and Mr and Mrs White initially come across as kindly souls who just want to help people.

But then they hit the reader with the price of the pills. At 1l. 2s. per box, these are only for the rich or the desperate, and the Whites’ intentions become more ambiguous.

 Image above: Detail from Côt ou tard la vérité se découvre by J. Arago (1790-1855). Courtesy of the US National Library of Medicine.

              This Day is Published, Price 1s.
By J. WHITE, Surgeon and Man Midwife, and Mrs.
WHITE, Midwife, at No. 2, London House Yard, the
North Side of St. Paul’s Church Yard.
AN Address to the Community on concealed
PREGNANCY, worthy the perusal of Ladies, whose
situation requires a temporary retirement, as therein is set
forth the expence of the months Lying-in.
Where may be had, Mr. White’s Restorative Salo Pills,
(stamped according to Act of Parliament) at 1l. 2s. per
box, which is an effectual remedy to remove all obstruc-
tions or irregularities, and as Ladies are subject to many
complaints, which through delicacy they often conceal to
the prejudice of their healths, Mrs. White may be consulted
with on any ailment or disorder incident to her own sex.
All letters, post paid, attended to, and medicines sent
into the country if required.

Source: The Daily Universal Register (London) Thursday 2nd February 1786

Note: “expence” is as shown.