General Health & Panaceas

Homocea

Source: The Graphic (London) 13 October 1894 I haven’t tried to transcribe this for obvious reasons, but I think it should be clear enough, and you can click to make it bigger. Some of the assertions on the sleeves of those elegant arms sound better than others; ‘touches the spot for hemorrhoids’ doesn’t conjure up […]

Dr. Sibly's Re-Animating Solar Tincture

Googling for info on this remedy will get you quite a few results giving some variant on: “Dr.” Sibley, an English patent medicine seller of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, even went so far as to claim that his Reanimating Solar Tincture would, as the name implies, “restore life in the event of sudden death”. […]

Sparks and Son India-Rubber Urinals

Far from being a quack remedy, this device must have been a boon to desperate travellers everywhere. Surgical instrument maker William Huntly Bailey, whom we have met before, described the problem: If there is any inconvenience in travelling on the railway, it is on account of the few stoppages, and no doubt many persons have […]

Dr Rock's Restorative Viper Drops

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 […]

Pure and Healthy Leeches

Pure and Healthy Leeches.—Potter and HAILEY beg to assure the Profession, Druggists, &c., that the Leeches they offer are such as can be recommended for Purity, Health, and Readiness of Biting. POTTER AND HAILEY, Importers of Leeches and Turkey Sponge, Herbalists, &c., 66, Farringdon-market, London. Source: The Medical Times and Gazette, 3 […]

Henry Thompson's Real Cheltenham Salts

Although Henry Thompson claimed to manufacture the salts by evaporating spa water, The Monthly Gazette of Health for 1 Sept 1819 claimed that the product was nothing more than Glauber’s salt (sodium sulphate decahydrate). The Gazette had “been informed, by a gentleman residing in Cheltenham, who could prove the fact, that many tons of common Glauber’s […]