The Quack Doctor

Source: The Graphic, 19 Feb 1881

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This is a product I really don’t know much about, but I just had to feature it on the site because I love the chap’s cheerfully unsympathetic response to his friend’s agony. And the agony of corns is not to be underestimated, judging by a case study from Thomas J Ashton in 1853. He reports on a maid-servant, aged 20, who had such a painful corn on her little toe that she cut it off.

Not the corn, the whole toe. Her method was to put a knife against the toe, like a chisel, and strike it hard with a mallet. The resulting haemorrhage occasioned some alarm to her mistress, who had her taken to hospital. She eventually recovered, but the healing was complicated by the fact that there was bone sticking out and, unlike with a normal amputation, no flap of skin left to cover the wound.

Bond’s Corn Cure was only advertised for a brief period in 1881, but was part of a long tradition of salves, plasters and unspecified wonder-cures that had appeared in the papers for more than 100 years. There was also a plethora of home remedies, but the usual advice from medical writers was to wear well-fitting shoes and use pads of linen or soft leather with a hole in them – much like the modern corn plasters.

Those crippled by pain, however, could get pretty desperate, and one option was to pay an itinerant corn-cutter to treat the offending area. Some of these practitioners were more skilled than others, and some were more honest than others. From the late 18th century, they were increasingly referred to as chiropodists, but the term met with a sneering response from the faculty, who saw it as a ludicrous attempt to make the occupation sound more scientific.

The paring of corns by a family member or by the patient themself carried a risk of drawing blood and causing septicaemia, but an additional risk with corn-cutters was that of being bled of large sums of cash.

An 1846 correspondent to the Lancet described how an earl of his acquaintance was fleeced by a chiropodist known to be preying on elderly wealthy customers. The earl, aged 78, had two troublesome corns and was willing to do anything to get rid of them – including agreeing to the corn-cutter’s demand of 10s. per corn.

The operation commenced; when it was over, the corn-cutter presented my friend with a paper on which were arranged 116 corns, or dark somethings which he designated such, and smilingly announced his claim of £58!

The earl paid up and, hugely embarrassed, didn’t admit the episode to his family for several weeks – whereupon they found it hilarious and told everyone, including the doctor who wrote in to the Lancet. His opinion on what he would have done in the same situation was: “I would have made the fellow eat up his corns, and then kicked him down stairs.”

But how was it physically possible for the chiropodist to extract 116 corns from the earl’s foot? Well, it was all part of a lucrative scam carried out by more than one disreputable corn-cutter of the time. At the beginning of the procedure, the chiropodist would smear a thick ointment over the foot. Within this were shavings from horses’ hooves, which could then be plucked out and displayed to the horrified patient. Some quacks used pieces of porcupine quill, according to the Lancet, but that seems to me a lot of trouble to go to when hoof-clippings were readily available.

With such dodgy practices going on, it’s no surprise that chiropody had a bad reputation, but there were ethical practitioners too, and by this time they were beginning to recognise the need for regulation. Lewis Durlacher, Surgeon-Chiropodist to the Queen, said of corn-cutters in the preface to his 1850 work, The Foot, its Pain and Penalties:

From such men the public, being unable of themselves to distinguish between the competent practitioner and the empiric, ought to be protected either by legislative enactments, or by medical bodies licensing those who make chiropody a part of their regular medical education.

In spite of Durlacher’s attempts, however, a professional body – The Society of Chiropodists – was not established in Britain until as late as 1912.

This chiropodist appears to have been a fine, upstanding member of the community rather than a charlatan – but his advertisement has just enough of the yuk factor to make it worth including.

Joel Farbstein was born in Warsaw in about 1820 but probably spent some time in London before settling in Hull in the 1840s. He advertised heavily in the Hull Packet through the 1850s and 60s, often telling patients that they had better get in quick because he had been summoned to another part of the country. This was no ruse – he also advertised in other regional papers to say he was in town for a few days. For example, in The Bristol Mercury in March 1855, he advised that he would be in Clifton for “EIGHT DAY’s ONLY.” Never let it be said that the grocer’s apostrophe is confined to the yoof of today.

(Image from Nordisk familjebok, vol. 8 1908) 

In 1865 Mr Farbstein’s career was interrupted by a macabre incident … but first, the advert:

EFFICACIOUS CURE FOR CORNS, BUNIONS
AND DEFORMED NAILS.
J. FARBSTEIN, CHIROPODIST, for nine years
resident in Hull, has the honour to inform the
nobility, Gentry, and Inhabitants of Hull, that by a
method peculiar to himself, he completely eradicates
Corns, Bunions, Nails growing in the Flesh, from the
child to the adult, without causing the slightest pain:
the patient is enabled immediately after attendance to
walk with perfect ease and comfort. J. F. has been
favoured with upwards of 500 Testimonials from parties
in Hull and its vicinity, who has been cured by him.
May be consulted daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.—Parties
in the country attended on reasonable Terms.
Mr. FARBSTEIN begs to caution persons against that
evil practice of allowing their corns to be cut by strangers
or unskilful persons, as it is at all times highly danger-
ous and frequently entails serious consequences.
Observe the Address! No. 11 Bourne-street, Hull.

Source: The Hull Packet and East Riding Times, Friday 6th February 1857

In 1865, Mr. Farbstein, as president of Hull’s Hebrew congregation, authorised a burial in the Jewish cemetery. The deceased was a baby that had been born at six months’ gestation and survived for only a short period. After the burial, internal politics overcame sensitivity and a Mr. Lewis Marks, claiming to be the congregation’s rightful president, asserted that the burial was unlawful unless authorised by him. He and his supporters dug up the baby and delivered it back to its parents’ house, where the distraught father did everything possible to hide the incident from his wife. This gruesome story was reported throughout the country when the case came to court, with Marks and his cronies charged with the illegal disinterment of the child.

In court in March 1865, Mr. Farbstein “suddenly ran upon the bench, and, quivering with intense excitement, showed a bundle of papers to the magistrate, at the same time uttering several scarcely comprehensible exclamations.” (Hull Packet, March 17th, 1865)

This suggests he had found some useful evidence and was excited about showing it to the court … but he was immediately dispatched to a lunatic asylum. Observers suspected foul play and fought to get him released, and after a week of incarceration he was handed over into the care of two “keepers.” His mental state nor his standing in the community appear to have suffered in the long term – by May that year he was advertising his chiropody services as before, and being elected onto the committee of the Hull Harmonic Society.

Mr. Farbstein died in 1888. His daughter Eva was an acclaimed soprano and music teacher, achieving fame as far as London, and his son Louis and younger daughter Amelia followed in his footsteps as chiropodists.