The Quack Doctor

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.

From the Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1766:

CHRISTMAS DAY.

Welcome, thrice welcome Christmas day !
Let’s eat, drink, dance, and sing away:
Old England ne’er had stronger reason
To welcome in this joyful season !
Mark high and low, and all around us
And know the blessings that surround us.
Let ‘em in all their pomp appear;
Sure omens of a happy year !
First, turn your eyes upon the great ;
When did such virtues rule the state ?
The country has their whole attention,
Without a thought of place or pension.
Of parts, and pow’r, no prostitution,
Of liberty, no diminution ;
Sound as a roach our constitution
Which florid grown, by over feeding,
Is now quite cool with frequent bleeding :
Great Lawyers, with our good at heart,
Now every day new doctrines start.
For freedom and for Magna Chart,
Our clergy too, all int’rest scorning,
Are teaching, preaching, night and morning ;
T o keep their flocks secure at home,
And guard them from the wolves of Rome:
So by their zeal, which never ceases.
The growth of popery decreases.
Physicians now cure each disease,
They take great pains, and little fees.
Nothing but learning, parts, and knowledge,
Can give a passport to the college :
No poison’s sold for nerves or vapours,
No quacking nostrums fill the papers—
These are the gifts the great have sent ye,
For all is concord, peace, and plenty.
The poor, as fat as brawn, we meet ,
Eating minc’d pyes along the street
No Harlots to be seen, not one,
Not ev’n the Whore of Babylon !
These times are sung by great and small
‘Tis merry Christmas for us all;
And certain ’tis, by what is past,
That the new year will match the last.

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!

STeel Spring or Jointed Trusses for the help and cure of Ruptures for Men, Women and Children in the Navel, Cod or Groin. Belt Trusses, made without Iron or Steel Bow, the Belt or Girdle is with Neats Leather, Silk or Velvet, being very easy, with a Spring good for all tender Bodies, especially for the Female Sex, keeping up the Rupture with more Ease and Certainty than any pretended new invention. Good for all Travellers either by Sea or Land. Strait Stockings, with other Instruments to help the infirm, made and sold by GUY NUTT at the White Naked Boy in Westmoreland Court in Bartholomew Close. His Wife helps those of her own Sex, being very skilful in the Business. To be spoke with every Day at his own House.

Source: The London Journal 7 Jan 1727

By the time of this advert, trusses were already a long-established treatment for hernia. The woodcut below, from Peter Lowe’s A Discourse of the Whole Art of Chyrurgerie (1597) shows an example of a 16th-century truss of the type advocated and popularised by Ambroise Paré.

Trusses, however, were only one way of dealing with a hernia. You could try taking herbs orally, such as in this recipe given by Robert Boyle in 1696:

Having well-cleans’d the roots of Sigillum Salmonis, scrape one Ounce of them into a Quart of Broth, and let the Patient take a Mess, or a Porrenger full of it for his Break-fast; or else give half a Dram or two Scruples of the Powder of it at a time, in any convenient Vehicle.

The likelihood of this working seems slim, but it was more pleasant than an ancient Egyptian remedy described by Prospero Alpini, who had encountered a modern version of it during his travels in Egypt in the 1580s. A pyramid of goat’s dung – or, alternatively,  mushrooms – was moulded over the hernia and set on fire in order to cauterise it. The method was still used in Alpini’s time, but with a mound of linen strips rather than dung.

Throughout the 18th century, the plethora of potential remedies included caustics, powders, plaisters, anointing the hernia with eggs, applying a decoction of camomile flowers, and administering tobacco-smoke clysters – which, according t0 William Buchan in Domestic Medicine (1769), ‘have been often known to succeed where every other method failed.’

Should the hernia become strangulated, however, there was nothing else for it but to undergo an operation. Percivall Pott described the process in A Treatise on Ruptures (1756) – the full account of the operation is too long to reproduce here, but you can get a general idea of what it’s like from the beginning:

When the operation shall be thought necessary, the manner of performing it is this:

The pubis and groin must be shaved clean, and the patient laid upon a table of convenient height, on his back, with his legs hanging easily over the end of it, then with a straight dissecting knife an incision must be made thro’ the skin and membrana adiposa, beginning just above the ring of the abdominal muscle, and continuing quite down to the inferior part of the scrotum…

Fortunately for most sufferers, the safest and most practical option was to wear a well-fitted truss indefinitely. Pott advised that:

With a truss properly made, and carefully wore, the meaner kind of people may be rendered fit for all the offices of life, will be capable of labour of any kind, of walking, of riding, &c. as all those find themselves to be, who are willing to do these kind of things

He warned, however, against unqualified practitioners who would misdiagnose other conditions as ruptures, and send patients away with a truss on their venereal bubo or abscess. Pott’s comments on ruptured patients’ reluctance to consult a physician are pertinent to quackery on a wider scale:

With this opinion and this fear, these pretenders are well acquainted, and very lucrative use do they make of them ; they well know, that the man who looks on his disorder as a material imperfection in his form, or as the cause of any debility, will be glad to be rid of it at almost any expence or trouble : hence the ignorant and credulous are subjected to tedious confinements, painful applications, and hazardous operations, while the timorous and bashful are cheated out of large sums of money for imaginary diseases or pretended cures.

Above: some examples of 18th-century trusses, engraved by Thomas Jefferys. This and the 16th-century image are used courtesy of Wellcome Images.

This post departs from the usual because it’s not directly related to an advertised remedy, and no one involved is out to make money from selling cures. While I was researching the Sugar Plums for Worms, however, I came across many interesting stories showing the impact of parasites on individuals’ health, and the heroic efforts those individuals made to cure themselves. A mere two cases are given here – there are many more. I was intending to describe a third, but it was one that made even me feel sick.

In early 1757,  (though the case was not published until 1785 in the Medical Transactions of the College of Physicians, London), Daniel Neal, of Doddlestone in Cheshire, was

…attacked with uncommon pains in his stomach, attended with nausea, vomiting, constipation of the bowels, and an almost total loss of sleep and appetite. Under these circumstances he soon became greatly emaciated, and could neither stand nor walk uprightly ; his belly grew small and hard, and so closely contracted, that the sternum covered the navel in such a manner, it could with difficulty be discovered or felt with the finger; his urine was always milky, and soon deposited a thick white sediment; his excrements were very hard and lumpy, resembling those of sheep, only of a brown color, nor had he ever a stool of that kind without some medicine or other to procure it.

He continued in this state for some years, eventually going to hospital in 1761 and spending seven weeks there before giving up and going home. The following Christmas, he was advised by a neighbour to drink salt and water, so he immediately gave it a try, dissolving two pounds of salt  in two quarts of water and downing the lot in under an hour. The effect was rapid – he threw up ‘about half a pint of small worms, part ascarides, and the rest resembling those worms which are called the botts, and frequently met with in the stomach of horses, only much smaller, and about the size of a grain of wheat.’

More worms made their exit in the other direction but the salt affected the patient with ‘a most troublesome dysuria and strangury.’ Thankfully, this soon abated, and the undefeated Mr Neal repeated his adventure, ‘the effects of which were nearly similar to the former, only, that most of the worms were now burst, and came away with a considerable quantity of slime and mucus.’ ..

Five days after his first go at the treatment, Neal was up and about. He soon recovered completely, though he took the precaution of drinking salt water every so often, just in case.

A few years before Neal’s ordeal, in 1750, a ‘Gentleman at Lyons’ wrote to the Gentleman’s Magazine with an account of how he had rid himself of his tapeworm after years of unsuccessful medical treatment that had parted him only from his money, not from his passenger. Having determined that he would rather ‘die by poison, which I might ignorantly swallow in my search for a remedy, than to languish so long in bed,’  the gentleman set about recklessly eating every herb he could find, but nothing worked. At length, he decided drastic measures were called for.

Convinced that tapeworm (then more commonly called flatworms or broadworms) were oblivious to medicines because their heads were safely buried in the intestinal wall, the gentleman fashioned ‘some small hooks of lead, with 3 points, like an harping iron, and fastened them with a piece of thread to a leaden bullet, in order to swallow them.’..This innovative method

…brought away many pieces of these worms, without producing any ill effects, except that when the worms were entangled in the hook, they made such efforts to disengage themselves, as threw me into great agonies.

After moderate success, the gentleman redesigned the hook, attached it to a piece of thread like a fishing line and swallowed it, keeping hold of the end. His witnessing friends had

…such a compassionate sense of my sufferings and danger that, to avoid the pain of attending the issue of so dangerous an experiment, they chose rather to leave me, than to remain near enough to afford me such assistance as I might need.

Unable to pull the hook back up, he swallowed it, and at length it reappeared at the other end of his digestive system accompanied by a worm described – rather traumatisingly – as being 30 ells long with a head like a cat. Further use of the hooks eventually cured him. He concluded his account with:

The author of this letter has much more to add, both concerning the symptoms of this malady and method of cure, but feared to be tedious; he kindly intimates a readiness to satisfy those whose curiosity or distress may make them desirous of further information.

Source: The General Advertiser, 19 Jan 1748

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I mentioned the Purging Sugar Plumbs for Worms early in the life of this blog, but didn’t include much beyond the ad itself, and I hardly had any readers then anyway, so I think it’s worth revisiting – especially as this advert is so delightfully worded and cheerfully revolting.

At some point in the early 1740s, a Mr Burchell took over the ownership of another remedy, the Anodyne Necklace, which had been on sale for decades as a cure for babies’ teething pain. He built up his business on this and the worm remedy, fending off imitators with some innovative advertising methods – not least the eye-catching newspaper ads showing exactly what might be gnawing at your intestines (the inclusion of the insect thing on the right is an inspired bit of added horror).

One of Burchell’s methods was to entice punters to his premises by giving away free almanacks and pamphlets. In 1750 he was quick to exploit the fear caused by the earth tremors that had shaken London, by publishing:

ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE
Much Worse than the Two Last. When, and What Time to be Expected? With a Surer SAFEGUARD, Against it, than Going Out of Town. And, Why the Last Two EARTHQUAKES happened to be in this one particular Jubilee Year, more than in Any other Year?

The Almanack referred to in the ad above is intriguing – what could it contain that other almanacks left out? Although the content changed each year, a 1750 ad goes into more detail:

In the Month of Lent, is a large LIST of Other Fasters from FLESH CONVERSATION as well as FLESH DIET, Such as MISERS, WORN-OUT Sinners, etc.
The Miser’s CHAST, ’cause he won’t PAY a Wh—re
The Worn-Out’s CHAST, ’cause He can Sin NO MORE
And,  All the Other Months, have also their OWN proper TIMELY Observations, Not to be Met With, in Any of the COMMON ALMANACKS, but Only in THIS One, Which Tells What THEY Don’t.

Fun for all the family, by the sounds of it.

Later in the 18th century, the theme of free stuff continued, with Basil Burchell (who I think was the son of the original proprietor, but I’m not sure) issuing coin-like advertising tokens with the sugar plumbs on one side and the Anodyne Necklace on the other (he used the spelling ‘sugar plumbs’ in his ads too). The tokens usually had a hole in them so they could be worn on a ribbon.

Worm medicines were a good bet for a quack, because although intestinal worms were very common, especially in young children, this didn’t make them any nicer to have than they would be nowadays. The symptoms of untreated worm infestations were bad enough, but this was accompanied by the downright horror of being inhabited by living creatures. J Cook, a correspondent to the London Magazine in 1768, gave a description of the main varieties:

There are three sorts of worms which generally infest the human body. The round ones, the broad ones, and ascarides. Sometimes, but seldom, anomalous ones are discharged, viz. horned, hairy, with four feet, with two heads, with three, and some with four forked tails, etc.

The very thought of what might be in there led some people to go to extraordinary lengths to get rid of them, and I will blog about a couple of examples in my next post.

By the KING’S Royal Letters Patent,

SCHWANBERG’s

LIQUID SHELL,

DAILY confirmed, by Experience, not only
to be a sure DISSOLVENT for the

STONE and GRAVEL,

but a most powerful, safe, and efficacious Medicine in the Spasmodic and Windy Cholic, Pains in the Breast, Hypochondriac Disease, and all Kinds of Flatulences, Diarræa, or Looseness; Cardialgia, or Heart-burn; Acid Eructations, or sour Belchings; Strangury, or when the Water is made by little and little; Gripes, Fevers, and Convulsions in young Children, and all those Uneasinesses which they are subject to from Acidities, the well-known
Cause of most of their Disorders.
By Vertue of the King’s Royal Letters Patent, I appoint Mess. William and Cluer Dicey and Comp at Dr. Bateman’s Warehouse, in Bow-Church-Yard, London, my only Venders of the LIQUID SHELL,
to whom all Persons are desired to apply for the same.
………………………………………………………………W. BAKER.
Sold also (Retale only) at my House in Helmet-Court, near Katherine-Street in the Strand, at 1s. 6d. the Vial; sealed, as in the Margin, with Baron SCHWANBERG’s Coat of Arms; over it there are these words; BY THE KING’S PATENT; and under-neath, in a Scroll, LIQUID SHELL; where, and at Dr. Bateman’s Warehouse aforesaid, may be had, SCHWANBERG’s UNIVERSAL POWDER, for the speedy curing Acute and Inflammatory Fevers, &c, Price 2s. the Parcel.

***The great Demand for this DISSOLVENT since the Publication of the Patent, has obliged the Proprietor to enlarge the Apparatus in his Elaboratory, by which Means he prepares it in greater Quantities than he could heretofore; and being willing that every afflicted Person may be benefited thereby, the Vials now contain above double the Quantity at the same Price.

Source: The Whitehall Evening Post, or, London Intelligencer, 19 December 1749

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More common than today because of poorer nutrition and untreated urinary tract infections, bladder stones could be a nightmare for the sufferer. When they were causing pain and stoppage of the urine, something had to be done – but faced with the prospect of an agonising operation, patients can hardly be blamed for trying out dissolvent medicines like this one.

William, Baron Schwanberg, according to his epitaph in a 1755 collection compiled by W Toldervy, was a nobleman of Mecklenberg in Germany, born c.1686. The epitaph presents him in glowing terms, but then it’s an epitaph, so I suppose it would:

No man had more honour, honesty,
Or integrity ;
And his Humanity and Benevolence
Gain’d him the Love and Esteem,
As his Learning excited the
Admiration of the World!
But a too arduous application
In studying the Sciences
Shortened his Valuable Life.

He invented not only the Liquid Shell but also a Fever Powder and a cure for scurvy called the Aurum Horizontale Pill. The Fever Powder is of particular interest because Schwanberg had some dealings with a certain Robert James.

Schwanberg died in 1744, and a few years later James was granted a patent for his own Fever Powders, which went on to become one of the most successful patent medicines of all time. James managed to keep the composition of his powders secret, by ambiguously wording the patent specification, but to Schwanberg’s administrator Walter Baker, the case was clear – James had stolen the recipe. A cartoon of the time shows James pickpocketing the Powders from their proprietor, and preparing to stab him in the back, but although Baker petitioned the King to revoke the patent, he was unsuccessful.

Detail from 'A Reply for the present to the Unknown Author of Villany Detected' (1754), reproduced in England under the House of Hanover by Thomas Wright (1848)

In 1747, an anonymous correspondent to the Gentleman’s Magazine sent in an account of his analysis of the Liquid Shell, an excerpt of which is as follows:

Having, therefore, procured some of the Liquid Shell, which is a clear transparent liquor, put into it a human stone formed in the urinary passages, upon which a very white sediment precipitated ; and there was the like white sediment when a few drops of spirit of hartshorn were dripped into some of the same liquor ; which fully proves that it was in both cases the lime of burnt shell, and not the parts of the dissolved stone, as is pretended; for there was no stone put in with the spirit of hartshorn. Besides, this precipitated matter is much too white to be any part of dissolved stones.

The correspondent went on to suggest that the white sediment in patients’ urine after taking the medicine was not the stone breaking apart, but also the residue of lime.

The correspondent was later identified in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1764 as eminent scientist Dr Stephen Hales (D.D. rather than M.D.). Hales has another role in the history of bladder stone remedies – he was on a government committee that investigated, and ultimately approved of, Joanna Stephens’ famous treatment. This preparation netted its maker £5000 from the government, who could not find a cheaper way of persuading her to reveal the recipe. The secret ingredients turned out to be soap, eggshells, snails, and several herbs.

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For anyone interested, I’ve put a transcript of a description of cutting for the stone on a separate page. Not suitable for squeamish persons, especially men.

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.

Lord Grosvenor's Arabian Stallion with a Groom. Stubbs, c.1765

The Gentlemen, Farmers, Jockies, Stage-Coachmen and Carriers Universal Medicine in the true Cordial Horse Balls and Preparation of Antimony, adapted for the Use and Benefit of all, as well the Race as Cart Horse,
THE CORDIAL BALLS at 4s. per Pound, which in above 40 Years private Experience and 12 Years Publication, are approved of and recommended by several Noblemen, Gentlemen and Farmers as a Specifick Remedy for Sickness, Loss of Appetite, Colds, Gripes, Worms and Botts; they soon Cure a new Cold, and give immediate Relief in an old Cold, by opening the passages in the Lungs, and have cured many Horses thought to be broken Winded, and four Ounces is better than any Cordial Drink that can be made or given.
The Preparation of Antimony at 5s. per Pound for Grease. Stiffness in the Limbs after hard Riding, and by purifying the Blood disperses all Knots, Swellings, or Itching; and is, if used according the Directions, a preservative against the Farcin, Mange and Founder, and has cured many Horses of the Farcin after other Medicines have proved ineffectual, and the Horse worked all the while. It is an effectual Cure (with some of the Cordial Balls) for a dry husky Cough tho’ never so longstanding; it answers all the ends of Purging, with many other peculiar Virtues better experienced than expressed and set forth more at large in the Advertisement and Directions of both Medicines given with them.
They are prepared and sold by SAMUEL GIBSON, Druggist, at the Angel and Crown in Lombardstreet, AND NO WHERE ELSE, who also sells Pyrmont Water, Spaw Water, and all sorts of Drugs.
N.B. Whereas a certain Person at Exeter pretends to sell my Preparation of Antimony, and give with it a Written Advertisement and a Printed Direction, this is to inform all Gentlemen and others, that they may not be imposed upon by his common Antimony for my Preparation.

Source: The London Journal, 17 May 1729

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Although Gibson was not the only proprietor of a named version of Cordial Balls, they increasingly became a generic remedy for horses’ ailments, and the domestic farriery books of the 18th and 19th centuries freely gave recipes for making them. The famous Dr Henry Bracken, who published Farriery Improv’d in 1738, suggested a mixture of aniseed, caraway, cardamom, brimstone, turmeric, saffron, licorice dissolved in small beer, elecampane, and wheat flour.

Some writers, however, thought the habit of dosing, bleeding and purging horses for every little ailment had gone too far:

“I think the practice of giving cordial balls to horses on every slight occasion,” said Professor Thomas Peall of the Royal Dublin Society, “may be aptly compared to the nefarious custom of dram-drinking in men, and is attended with pretty much the same effects ultimately.” (The Sportsman’s Magazine, Jan 1817)

The professor continued his tenuous analogy by relating an anecdote about an Irish horse that had become addicted to whiskey. Horses, he warned, “may not only become passive, involuntary debauchees, by the custom of having cordials thrust or poured down their throats, but may actually be brought to be fond of ardent spirits.”

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.