The following speech appeared in a comic 18th-century booklet called The Harangues or Speeches of Several Famous Mountebanks in Town or Country, which makes fun of high-profile medical salesmen by attributing to them wild claims about their remedies. Later editions (under the title The Harangues, or Speeches, of Several Celebrated Quack Doctors in Town and Country) included extra content such as Dr Rock’s speech, some satirical recipes for common ailments, and quack-related songs.

Henry Morley’s Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair (1859) refers to this ‘little undated book‘ as having appeared in around 1690. The earliest edition on ECCO is stated to be 1725, though the digitised title page has the date 1746 handwritten on it. Whatever the original date, it was popular enough to be reprinted several times during the first half of the 18^th century, and for components of it to be published separately as broadsides.

The speech could have some basis in fact – it is always possible someone took notes when Mr Jones was speaking at York – but it’s unlikely they would have been able to get it verbatim in the midst of an entertained audience, and even less likely that it wouldn’t get embellished for the purposes of humour. In January 1859, however, The Lancet took it literally, quoting a large proportion of the speech (as printed in Morley’s book) to show the similarities between the mountebanks of old and the spiritualists and homeopaths of their own day.

In contrast to the ‘quasi-scientific jargon‘ of modern quackery, ‘It gives a mental refreshment to turn to the laughable orations of the more honest mountebanks of bygone days.‘ Unfortunately, The Lancet missed out on a laugh – Morley had left out the bit about ‘bum-peeping.’

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The Harangue, or Quack Speech of T. JONES, at York.

 

Gentlemen and Ladies,

YOU that have a Mind to preserve your own and your Families Health, may here, at the Expence of a Two-penny Piece, furnish yourselves with a Packet, which contains several Things of great Use, and wonderful Operation in human Bodies against all Distempers whatsoever.

Gentlemen, Because I present myself among you, I would not have you to think, I am any Upstart Glister-pipe Bum-peeping Apothecary; no, Gentlemen, I am no such person: I am a regular Physician, and have travelled most Kingdoms in the World, purely to do my Country good. I am not a Person, that takes Delight, as a great many do, to fill your Ears with hard Words, in telling you the Nature of Turpet Mineral,Mercurii Dulcis, Balsamum Capiviet, Astringents, Laxations, Harboundations, Circulations, Vibrations, Salivations, Excoriations, Scaldations, or Urinations. These Quacks may fitly be called Solimites, because they prescribe only one Sort of Physick for all Distempers, that is, a Vomit.

If a Man has bruized his Elbow, Take a Vomit, says the Doctor. If he has any Corns; Take a Vomit. If he has torn his Coat; Take a Vomit. For the Jaundice, Fevers, Flax, Gripes, Gout, Stone, Pox, nay, even the Distempers, that only my Friend, the famous Dr. Tuff, whom you all know, as the Hocognicles, Marthambles, the Moon-Paul, and the Strong-Fives, A Vomit tantum. Gentlemen, these Impostors value killing a Man, no more than I value drawing an old Stump of a Tooth, which has long troubled any of you; so that, I say, they are a Pack of Tag-Rag, Asifœtida, Glister-Pipe Doctors. Now, Gentlemen, having given you a short Account of this spurious Race, I shall present you with my Cordial Pills, being the Tincture of the Sun, having Dominion from the same Light, giving Relief and Comfort to all Mankind: They cause all Complexions to laugh or smile, in the very taking them; they presently cure all Dizziness, Swimming, Dulness in the Head, and Scurvy.

In the next Place, I recommend to you my incomparable Balsam, which heals all Sores, Cuts, Ulcers, new and old. ‘Tis good for Burns, Scalds, Swellings, Bruizes, Strains, Aches, Weakness in the Joints and Limbs, &c. it cures the King’s-Evil, sore Breasts, and scald Heads; and it is taken inwardly for a Cough, Consumption, short Breath, Weakness of the Back, or any inward Hurt.

The next unparalell’d Medicine contain’d in this my Packet, is an admirable Electuary, celebrated throughout all England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick upon Tweed. It cures all curable Diseases, by very easy and gentle purging; it causes an Appetite, helps all Distempers in the Eyes, Face, swell’d Lips; and opens the Stoppage of the Liver and Spleen, &c.

The next I present you with, is my Specifick, which certainly cures all Agues in a Minute.

The next is my red Plaister, which radically cures the most inveterate Rheumatism and Gout in a few Days Time.

The last, and most useful Medicine prepared throughout the whole World, is this, my Pulvis Catharticus: Its Virtues are such, it will, equally with the Unicorn’s Horn, expel the rankest Poison; ’tis a perfect, safe, and speedy Cure, for all Venereal Maladies, of what Degree soever, and fortifies the Heart against all Fainting.

I do assure you, Country Folk, these Medicines are as good as any Physician can make, or Patient take; their Virtues are too well known, to say any more; so I shall leave you to experience them. And so I wish you Health and Happiness.

You may come to my Lodgings, at the Barber’s Pole and Stone Gate, at Home, from Seven to Eleven.

From the Morning Post 18 August 1803

It must be at least a couple of months since we last heard from our old friend Ascaris lumbricoides, so it’s time he made another appearance on The Quack Doctor together with a few of his helminthic chums.

I’m putting together a talk about the career of John Gardner, a former soldier and picture-framer who became a medicine vendor and Methodist preacher in the 1780s. Gardner’s best-known nostrum was a vermifuge, relieving his patients of some spectacular parasites that he collected and preserved in his museums at Long-Acre and Shoreditch.

Last week I went to the Wellcome Library to have a look at a broadside (c. 1822) advertising Gardner’s collections, and its cheerfully disgusting exuberance was a joy to read. These specimens had the job of persuading new patients that their symptoms resulted from something equally revolting, and judging by the advertising, this would have worked a treat.

My useless attempt at taking a sneaky picture when no one was looking. The line under the address says 'Dr. G. aged 70 and without enemies - God has done much for him.'

Early 19th-century anti-quackery publications portrayed Gardner as a hypocrite whose conspicuously pious attitude was just a front for charlatanry. The specimens, they claimed, had not passed through any human sphincters but were made by Gardner himself out of everyday substances. His tapeworms were chicken guts and his roundworms vermicelli, while ordinary insects and lizards played the part of the other strange beasts.

Gardner’s shop displayed the sign ‘The Universal Remedy Under God,’ but a critic in the 1820s accused him of holding ‘a poisonous nostrum in one hand, and the Holy Bible in the other,’ and his Methodism perhaps provided him with a get-out clause for patients who weren’t cured. A correspondent to the Medical Adviser in March 1824 described a butcher going to complain that the worm remedy had made him worse. It transpired that the butcher worked on Sundays and didn’t go to church, so Gardner allegedly told him:

God help you, it is an affliction of the Lord for your wickedness. I can do nothing for you, it would be impious to attempt relieving you; good day, I am sorry for you, young man.

(The butcher replied ‘So am I: good day, doctor.’)

John Gardner at the age of 74.

There is another side to Gardner’s religion, however – he was the founder of the Stranger’s Friend Society for the relief of the poor in 1785. By his own account in The Grain of Mustard Seed (1829), he got the idea while visiting a destitute fistula patient in a garret. Gardner began to put by a penny a week to help those less fortunate, and encouraged his neighbours to do the same. The society grew, inspiring similar organisations across the country.

Back to the worms, however. The following is a small selection of the exhibits detailed in Gardner’s broadside. A. lumbricoides is here referred to as Teres – Gardner tended to use the term ‘ascarids’ for threadworms instead.

Worms, from 1 inch to 130 in length, some with 150 suckers; others in the form of caterpillars; another species like woodlice, 12 feet to each; a wolf of the stomach, expelled from a lady at Hoxton, who had nearly fallen victim to its ravages!!

One animal, with ears like a mouse, from a gentleman. Another with 4 horns, 6 legs, and 12 feet, which lived 9 days, from a child of 9 years; a Tape Worm, its edges like the teeth of a saw; a Stomach Worm by a lady’s mouth, 7 inches long, in the act of emitting its young; male and female Teres, one emitting her young, were preying in the vitals of a gentleman five years, who could find no relief in Paris, nor Edinburgh!!!

A round Worm, 10 inches long, from the mouth of a child, aged 20 months, at the Palace; a Worm, resembling a small snake from the bowels of a man; 44 round Worms, 9 inches each, from a child; a narrow Tape Worm from a young woman’s mouth, 18 feet—she also voided 40 feet downwards, had been afflicted 16 years.

An insect from a young woman’s stomach, of a caterpillar form: it lived 7 weeks in a bottle, and gnawed through two corks!!

Two hundred worms resembling wood-lice, expelled from Mr. A— Hollywell Mount, which had tormented him for many months; a Bamboo Worm, with 4 horns and 12 legs, expelled from a man, whom it had nearly destroyed. Worms from the mouth, nose and ears of Mrs. T.——, and in the milk of the breast of Mrs. P.——, Bishopsgate Road.

This is a short excerpt from a speech attributed to Dr Richard Rock in a satirical mid-18th-century pamphlet called The harangues, or speeches, of several celebrated quack-doctors, in town and country. Rock, whose Viper Drops have previously appeared on this site, is sometimes referred to as an itinerant quack, but his activities were rooted in his premises at Ludgate Hill. When he went out to promote his products mountebank-style, he remained close to home, becoming a familiar figure in Covent Garden. The image of him on the left is a detail from plate 5 of Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress.

The first edition of Harangues is undated but the exchange with the Basket-woman puts the speech at 1742/43, when gin consumption was at its height and civil disturbance was in the air. Rioters protested against proposals that would repeal the largely ignored prohibition and bring gin consumption under the control of the law i.e. make it profitable for the government.

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Gentlemen,

It is with great Pleasure that I see you all, as soon as I arrive in my Chair, flock round about it: It is a Proof, that as I come to do Publick Good, I have a Publick Esteem. I don’t know, Gentlemen, whether here, in Covent-Garden-Market, ye ever heard of Public Spirit; but there is such a thing talk’d of among Parliament Men.

Basket-Woman. Oh! That is the new Act of Parliament, Doctor, about Spirituous Liquors. Pray, Doctor, will Gin be cheaper, or dearer?

Doctor. Cheaper, cheaper, or at least as cheap, my Dear; you may thank Goody Sandsby for that.—But without Jest; —The Public Spirit I meant was, what we in the City call a Love for our Country, without any private View: They talk of the same Thing at Westminster. It is this Publick Spirit, which brings me here among ye: It is the Good of my Country, which engages me to enter into its Public Service. I come not to impose upon ye; for they, who impose on the People, whether it be in Physic or Politics, are equally Quacks.

Some Fools have indeed, call’d Me a Quack: But what is a Quack? A Cheat. —Now, ye all know, I have dispens’d my Medicines, I have effected Cures, I have attended ye all, in this very Place for several Years, and no one ill Thing has been laid to my Charge. ——Let any other Great Man at Court say as much if he can. —I am always the same be I where I will: When I am at Leicester-House I am the same Man as when here; or if at St. J——s’s, my Packets are the same, my Advice is the same and my Speeches to ye are all to the same Purpose.

Had I any private View, any Ambition, any Desire, but to serve my Country, I could have gratify’d them. I am above such paltry Things, as foolish Dignities, and empty Titles. Let P——rl——t Men accept Places, and desert their Cause; let Commoners do pitiful Actions to become L——ds: But let Dr. ROCK be still Dr. ROCK.

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Source: Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 3 April 1823

Much of the evidence on this one is anecdotal, but the proprietor of the Balm of Zura, Dr A. Lamert, certainly sounds quite a character.

Lamert was the son of a London-based German quack who dabbled in ophthalmology before moving on to selling a Nervous and Rheumatic Balsam and treating venereal disease.

While Lamert senior worked solely from his Spitalfields address, his son branched out, setting up a dispensary in Bristol and travelling the country, announcing in each town’s newspaper that the lucky denizens were to be favoured with a visit. In the first four decades of the 19^th century he went far and wide, taking in Derby, Ipswich, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Falmouth, Exeter, Manchester and plenty of other places in between. While at Ipswich in 1811 he received some anonymous hate-mail with a Bury postmark. His dad advertised in the Bury and Norwich Post offering a 30 guinea reward for identifying the culprit, but the residents of Bury appear to have remained silent.

Lamert Jnr was the ostentatious variety of quack who flaunted his wealth and took every opportunity to publicise his miraculous cures. The Citizen (October 1 1829) described him as:

…a fearfully dashing gentleman, all powder, with a black servant, and drives a beautiful pair of greys. Vive la quackery!

…while the Medical Adviser in 1824 was typically indignant:

All Devonshire, and the next fifty counties, does not produce so arrant a humbugger as this: he is powdered from the occiput to the coccygis,—from one shoulder to the other —from the cape of his coat to the buttons of his waist,—a curricle a-la-Jordan, an eyeglass,—a bamboo, and a copper face. Thus he parades about, all outside, while if you tapped him upon the head it would sound like a drum, —so hollow, so empty, so brainless is the wight.

(‘a-la-Jordan’ refers to the proprietors of the Cordial Balm of Rakasiri.)

One of Lamert’s innovative ways of increasing his fame was to attend the theatre and, during the performance, instruct a servant to call out that he was wanted for some medical emergency.

‘These interruptions,’ grumbled the Medical Adviser, ‘always happen when some interesting part of the play is going on.’

Lamert’s theatrical connections, however, were not confined to sitting in the audience. In his youth he had sung at the Royalty Theatre in Whitechapel, but after being pelted with oranges, he changed his career path and went on to follow in his father’s footsteps as a quack.

His arrogance might have made him capable of drawing attention, but this was often from pranksters rather than admirers. In 1848, (after Lamert’s death) an anti-quackery lecturer called Mr Richardson told of a student going to consult the doctor, pretending to be deaf. Lamert, assuming he would not be heard, ‘made some very free remarks on the character of the student’, who soundly thrashed him and went on his way.

The Medical Adviser (who, once they had it in for a quack, didn’t tend to let up), tells the tale of a dissatisfied customer who – not quite literally – gave Lamert a taste of his own medicine. The patient had wasted £5 on the Balm of Zura and received no benefit, so he took the empty bottle along to a tavern where Lamert was regaling the drinkers with a song. When the doctor ‘had occasion to absent himself a short time from the company,’ the joker pissed in the bottle and topped it up with brandy and water. On Lamert’s return he complained to him that his last purchase of Zura had gone sour.

As the doctor tasted the mixture, a couple of the tavern-goers were ‘necessitated to quit the room, to give vent to their risible titillation.’ Then someone pretended to get angry that the sour mixture might be poisonous, so Dr Lamert drank the whole bottle in proof of its safety, to the hilarity of all concerned.

They let him in on the joke and the original prankster ‘prudently decamped’ in the face of his wrath.

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This noble composition was on sale for most of the first half of the 18^th century but enjoyed a moment of fame 200 years later when an American news editor stumbled on the advert and found it entertaining enough to fill a space in his paper. Other papers lifted the text and printed it as a curiosity from the funny olden days. If those early 20th-century reporters had gone back in time to Jacob’s Coffee House in 1739, however, they would not have found much spiritual enlightenment. The product name just meant it contained angelica.

Source: The Daily Post, 17 January 1739

Angelick Snuff

The most Noble COMPOSITION in the World, instantly removing all Manner of Disorder of the Head and Brain, easing the most excruciating Pain in a Moment; taking away all Swimming or Giddiness, proceeding from Vapours, or any other Cause; also Drowsiness, Sleepiness, all other Lethargick Effects; perfectly curing Deafness to Admiration, and all Humours or Soreness in the Eyes, wonderfully strengthening them when weak.

It certainly cures Catarrhs or Defluxions of Rheum, and remedies the most grievous Tooth-ach in an Instant; is excellently beneficial in Apoplectick Fits, and Falling Sickness, and assuredly prevents those Distempers; corroborates the Brain, comforts the Nerves, and revives the Spirits.

Its admirable Efficacy in all the above mention’d Cases, has been experienc’d above a thousand Times, and very justly causes it to be esteem’d the most beneficial Snuff in the World, being good for all sorts of Persons: And as most of the above Disorders are sudden, and the Remedy by this most noble Angelick Snuff as speedy, no Family ought to be without it, nor ever will, when they have once used it. Price One Shilling a Paper, with Directions; and is to be had only at Jacob’s Coffee-house against the Angel and Crown Tavern in Broad-street, behind the Royal Exchange.

Source: Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 20 July 1826

In 2003, the Daily Mail ran a story titled: Beeswax is ‘miracle’ cure. The article referred to an 18th/19th-century ointment called The Poor Man’s Friend, a popular remedy for wounds and skin conditions. The reason it hit the 21st-century press was that its inventor’s original secret recipe had come up for auction.

Giles Laurence Roberts, proprietor of the Poor Man’s Friend, didn’t have a great start in life. Born in April 1766 in Bridport, Dorset, he contracted smallpox when he was nine months old. Although he recovered, he then got rickets and was unable to walk until the age of five.

Young Giles, however, pulled through, and by his early teens had developed a keen interest in medical botany, studying Culpeper and formulating his own herbal medicines. He achieved some local fame as a healer, particularly for cases of fever and ague, and was also fascinated by electricity, conducting experiments with a homemade electrical apparatus. Unable to make it work at first, he persevered and eventually managed to give himself an electric shock.

At 18, he went to work for a mechanic, but his master soon died and Roberts expressed a wish to become an apothecary’s apprentice. His family didn’t approve and he ended up in Bristol working for an optician. Sharing his lodgings was a respectable surgeon called Mr Pitt, who encouraged him in his interest in healing and anatomy.

Back home in 1788, Roberts set up shop as a druggist and, although unqualified, began practising as an apothecary. After six years’ successful business, he travelled to London to study Anatomy and Midwifery, attending lectures at Guy’s and St Thomas’s, and only a year later arrived back in Dorset as a fully licensed surgeon, apothecary and accoucheur. Only one thing was missing – the title ‘Doctor.’

King’s College Aberdeen awarded him a medical degree on 20 April 1797 – this appears to have been arranged by his tutors in London, and he did not have to do any further study or pass exams. Aberdeen was well-known for awarding medical qualifications on receipt of cash, so it’s possible that some money changed hands. Dr Roberts’s background of diligent study, however, made him far more deserving of his new title than many of the ‘Doctors’ featured on this site.

His successors describe his physical appearance as follows:

He was short in stature, being only about five feet high, dark complexion, a beautiful black eye, and in his younger days long black hair falling on his shoulders. In his dress, and appearance generally, he was singular and original, bearing mostly the character of a Quaker or Friend.

He began selling his own branded remedies at the end of the 1790s, starting with the Pilulae Antiscrophulae for scrophula and scorbutic eruptions. The Poor Man’s Friend remained a local product until about 1820 when it got an endorsement from an aristocratic patient and sales took off.

During the 1820s, Roberts began publishing a yearly pamphlet called the The annual mentor; or, Cottager’s companion: comprising concise maxims and golden rules for preserving the mind and body in health, and conducive to wealth, long life, and happiness, a Friend to the Poor, and a Companion for the Rich.

It’s no surprise that this free publication was mainly a plug for the Poor Man’s Friend and the Pilulae Antiscrophulae. At 32 pages, however, it contained a lot of other useful information. Short essays gave advice on health issues such as personal hygiene:

If dirty people cannot be removed as a common nuisance, they ought at least to be avoided as infectious. Superior cleanliness sooner attracts our regard than even finery itself, and often gains esteem where the other fails.

and there were lists of Wholesome Counsellings, including:

He that will not sail until all dangers are over, must never put to sea.
An ass was never cut out for a lap-dog
The wise man even when he holds his tongue says more than the fool when he speaks.
Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.

There were also articles on choosing a wife, on the slovenly practice of burning green wood, on how to escape from a fire, and many more aspects of life. Although on the surface this all sounds tediously didactic, the information was presented in an engaging, accessible way that doesn’t come across as too worthy, and it beats Britain’s Got Commercial Breaks for an evening’s entertainment.

Roberts remained in Bridport for the rest of his life, dying in 1834. He left the recipes to Thomas Beach and John Barnicott, who took over the shop – the building is now Grade-II listed and houses a restaurant called Beach & Barnicott.

Roberts was in the middle of compiling the 1835 edition of the Annual Mentor when he died. Beach and Barnicott went ahead with publication, but in a shortened 24-page format. Later editions were reduced to 12 pages, most of which was adverts and testimonials. There were still a few general articles to draw the reader in, but the publication didn’t have the same entertainment value as when Roberts was alive.

The Poor Man’s Friend remained available until the mid-20^th century, but made the news in 2003 when Bridport Museum bought the secret recipe for £480. Its composition, in the words of the Daily Mail, was ‘nothing more than 95% lard and beeswax’. Nothing, that is, except the other 5% - a fragrant but dangerous concoction of mercurous chloride, sugar of lead, mercuric oxide, zinc oxide, bismuth oxide, red pigments and oils of rose, bergamot and lavender.

Above right: Mid 19th-century dispensing pot. Photograph courtesy of the Science Museum, London.

It is surprising the number of Persons that apply daily from 11 o’clock till 3, at No. 84, Wells-street, Oxford-street, to consult Dr. Cameron, who discovers disorders by an inspection of the morning urine, and although Dr. C.’s method is singular, it it (sic) a well known fact, that he restores many to perfect health, when the most eminent of the profession have failed, in painful, lingering, and dangerous cases; as diseases of the liver, bilious, and other obstructions, complaints in the Stomach, loss of appetite, jaundice, consumptions, dropsy, &c.; also those complaints peculiar to females at the different periods of life, and in all instances of Debility produced by free living and excesses, that derange, disorganize and weaken the nervous and muscular powers.

Source: The Anti-Gallican Monitor, 21 May 1815

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Uroscopy had been a diagnostic tool for centuries. The colour, consistency, smell and taste of urine were observed since the time of Hippocrates, and in the 17th century Thomas Willis described one circumstance in which it could be useful – in the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus. By Cameron’s time, however, the idea that it was possible to diagnose every disease from the urine alone – often without even seeing the patient – was well within the realms of quackery and uroscopists were derided as ‘piss-prophets’.

Cameron set up as a doctor in Well Street off Oxford Street in about 1809. Initially sharing premises with a silhouette-maker, he soon had enough good fortune to part ways with his impoverished artist friend. Because of urine-casting’s long history, he was able to attract patients who thought there was something in it and who were suspicious of most doctors’ insistence that it was a load of rubbish.

An anecdote in the Medical Adviser (1824) tells of Cameron’s modus operandi. The Adviser is not the most impartial of publications so the details must be taken with a pinch of salt, but they did claim to have verified the story.

A Holborn innkeeper consulted the doctor for chest pains and received some pills. After a month of taking them, he became unable to urinate and, in agony in the middle of the night, had to send for a surgeon to catheterise him. The pills turned out to contain the purgatives jalap and calomel (mercurous chloride), which the surgeon felt had been responsible for his symptoms. He recovered (apart from the chest pain, which was still there) – but not without wanting to pay Cameron back.

The vengeful innkeeper sent his ostler, along with a ‘heavy’ for back-up, to take a urine sample to Cameron. Variations on this story are still doing the rounds today, so you can immediately see what’s coming…

The doctor tasted the urine, and concluded that the sufferer was in a bad way, but could be cured. By asking questions about the age of the patient (24), how hard he worked (lots of heavy loads) and whether he was a drinker (a pail of water twice a day), Cameron diagnosed a bad back, at which point the ostler revealed that the urine was from his donkey.

‘Get out of my house, you rascal!’ bellowed the enraged ‘Doctor’ as he chased the little ostler about the parlour, who now got behind his colossal assistant, and as well might Cameron pierce the shield of Ajax as make an impression upon him, so he contented himself with snatching up the bottle, opening the window and dashing it into the street.

He continued to have a go at the visitors until they ‘coolly retired.’  In reporting the tale, the Medical Adviser certainly didn’t disguise its contempt of the self-styled Water Doctor:

In the name of the north and the honor of old Scotland is this fellow a Cameron? And has the name that is associated with deeds of glory and the might of auld lang syne, dwindled into a filthy water-taster?

The Hull Packet, 1 November 1803

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What is any self-respecting quack to do in the face of criticism?  

The answer in 1804 was exactly the same as it is now – turn nasty and threaten to sue the arse off everyone.  

The name ‘Ching’s Worm Lozenges’ might suggest that this will be an icky-parasite post, but in a way I wish it were. Instead, this story is incredibly sad.  

There were two kinds of lozenge – yellow and brown – that had to be taken at different times of day. Both contained white panacea of mercury. The travelling sales agents, however, were under strict instructions to assure customers that ‘not a single particle’ of mercury was in them.  

On 4 December 1803, a little boy called Thomas Clayton, aged 3, was given the Lozenges, followed three days later by a repeat dose. He went into a high state of salivation – one of the symptoms of mercury poisoning. His parents sent for medical help, but to no avail.  

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…the mouth ulcerated, the Teeth dropped out, the Hands contracted, and a Complaint was made, of a pricking Pain in them and the Feet, the Body became flushed and spotted, and at last Black, Convulsions succeeded, attended with a slight delirium; and a Mortification destroyed the Face, which proceeding to the Brain, put a period (after indescribable Torments) to the life of the little sufferer, on Sunday, the 1st instant, Twenty-Eight Days after he had taken the Poisonous Lozenges.  

The coroner’s verdict was ‘Poisoned by Ching’s Worm Lozenges’ and the above description is from a handbill written by the child’s father, also called Thomas Clayton. Clayton was a printer and bookseller, so was able to produce loads of these leaflets and personally deliver them all around his local neighbourhood in Kingston-upon-Hull. In them, he noted that the main Hull papers (the Packet and the Advertiser) had ignored both the death and the coroner’s verdict – probably because they received so much advertising revenue from Ching’s.  

John Ching himself had died in about 1800. The business was ostensibly carried on by his widow, but really came under the control of a dodgy cove called Mr Butler.  

Signing himself R. Ching, Butler responded with a broadside of his own, attacking the grieving father and threatening to prosecute him for publishing the case. He called Clayton’s words ‘malicious invective,’ ‘AN INFAMOUS ASSERTION and ABOMINABLE FALSEHOOD,’ and said he had ‘FLAGRANTLY LIBELLED TRUTH.’ These handbills were printed by Robert Peck of the Hull Packet – who, like many newspaper printers, was a vendor of patent remedies and was firmly on Butler’s side.  

I don’t know whether Clayton’s grief and campaigning activities led him to neglect his business or whether he was already in financial trouble, but he was declared bankrupt about a month after his son’s death. Although the newspapers hadn’t reported the poisoning, they were quick to advertise the sale of all the Claytons’ property. In a particular act of despicableness, Robert Peck allegedly turned up at the sale and boasted to Mrs Clayton that her husband would not get away with the libel.  

Clayton wanted to take the precaution of getting a written copy of the coroner’s verdict, but when he went to pick it up, he discovered that the coroner ‘had not time’ to do it. The Deputy Town Clerk was equally unhelpful, but it turned out that Butler was all talk and never went ahead with the prosecution.  

By 1805 Clayton must have managed to get back in business as a printer, because he published An Essay on Quackery, and the dreadful consequences arising from taking advertised medicines; with remarks on their Fatal Effects, with an account of a recent death occasioned by a Quack medicine. The author is anonymous and is usually assumed to be Thomas Clayton himself, but I believe it to be his brother, M. J. Clayton. The 140-page essay appears cobbled together, is understandably emotional, and it reproduces lots of excerpts from other writers, but it also offers a measured, sensible list of recommendations for stamping out quackery by replacing the government’s quack-related income with duties on other activities.  

This government revenue was substantial and goes a long way towards explaining why dangerous medicines were allowed to continue. Each bottle or packet had to carry a stamp – some quacks portrayed this as being a mark of official approval but, like most things in life, it was solely a way for the government to get money. I only have figures for 1839, but at that point the government was making approximately £49,300 per year from stamp duty, advertising duty, licences, patents and paper duty (for the wrappers that many remedies were sold in). It’s an awful lot of money, but the price paid by families like the Claytons was much greater.  

In a letter to the Medical Observer, the Essay author is exaggeratedly humble about his literary talents, but hints at attempts to suppress the book, and confesses himself chagrined at the lack of interest from the medical faculty. He also says that his own two children narrowly escaped the same fate as little Thomas, and so the Essay‘s chilling curse on Butler clearly comes from the heart:  

Dire conscience all thy guilty dreams affright,
With the most solemn horrors of the night.
The screams of infants ever fill thy ears,
And injured heav’n be deaf to all thy prayers.  

WHITEHEAD’S
ESSENCE OF MUSTARD.
—–
CHILBLAINS are prevented from breaking, and their tormenting itching instantly removed, by WHITEHEAD’s ESSENCE of MUSTARD, universally esteemed for its extraordinary efficacy in Rheumatisms, Palsies, Gouty Affections, and Complaints of the Stomach; but where this certain remedy has been unknown or neglected, and the Chilblains have actually suppurated, or broke, Whitehead’s Family Cerate will ease the pain, and very speedily heal them. They are prepared and sold by R. JOHNSTON, Apothecary, 15, Greek-street, Soho, London: the Essence and Pills at 2s. 9d. each;—the Cerate, at 1s. 1½d. They are also sold by the Printer of this Paper, at the HULL PACKET OFFICE, in Scale Lane, Hull, and by every medicine vender in the United Kingdom. The genuine has a black ink stamp, with the name of R. Johnston inserted on it.
The severest Sprains and Bruises are cured by a few applications of the Fluid Essence.

Source: The Hull Packet, 15 April 1806

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I tend to avoid blogging about the most widely advertised remedies because chances are they’ve already been researched by someone else, and there’s no point in a non-academic, sleep-deprived novelist trying to add anything to the sum of knowledge. So I’ve been skimming over the Whitehead’s Essence ads for ages. They crop up so often in early 19th-century newspapers that I became inured to them – probably much like early 19th-century newspaper readers. I now discover that the product inspired a satire too funny to ignore.

Whitehead’s Essence was patented in 1798, but had been been around for a few years by then. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the conditions of obtaining a patent was that the inventor had to file a specification detailing how to make the product. No one, however, would necessarily test out the recipe, so it was possible to get away with vague or nonsensical instructions. The author of the 1805 publication Essays on Quackery encountered this when he planned to use patents to find out the composition of various remedies. An acquaintance advised him not to bother:  ‘Your recipes on specifications in the patent office will assuredly err, for, although I believe each is given in with the solemnity of an oath, it is doubtful whether any one be true.’

Robert Johnston, owner of the Essence of Mustard, submitted a long and complicated process that would be impossible to replicate without losing the will to live. The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal called it ‘a motley group of ingredients,’ and The Medical Observer asked ‘Does not the grant of a patent for such a most absurd and ridiculous recipe, casts (sic) an indelible disgrace on our country?’ Rather than granting Johnston a patent, they said, the government should have ‘granted a warrant for taking him into custody, and inflicted on him some condign punishment.’

The real recipe was much simpler – oil of turpentine with spirit of rosemary and camphor, plus a small quantity of flour of mustard. Turpentine had long been used as a remedy for chilblains, so there wasn’t much new about this product, but it was famous enough to be known in the US within a few years of being established. And that’s where an amusing parody appeared in March 1798.

The article in Philadelphia’s Weekly Magazine is purportedly a letter from a farrier who has just discovered a wonderful remedy – Blackhead’s Essence of Pitchfork. The writer first condemns the medical profession for charging a fortune for ‘words and wind’:

Apply to a physician—what does he do for you? He feels your pulse; tells you, what you knew before, that you are sick ; takes the fee ; and then packs you off to the apothecary. How long will people be gulled by these men!

He then goes on to introduce the Essence of Pitchfork:

It has been universally acknowledged, that pitchforks are very useful and essential, but rather irritating and inconvenient when taken in their natural state.

The Essence would cure everything, including wooden legs and drowning, and was available in two forms, ‘viz. Sharp, powerful steel points, for internal use, and hickory staff for external’  - a reference to Whitehead’s being available as both a topical preparation and as pills. The article concludes with these testimonials, mocking the whole breed of advertisers who used exaggerated stories to try and sell their remedies:

I DO hereby solemnly declare and affirm, that, as I was walking up Arch-street in January last, I slipped, and tumbled to pieces: By a judicious and timely application of Blackhead’s Essence of Pitchfork, the parts were gathered together, without the loss of a single member.
Jedediah Scarramouch
March 14, 1798

HAVING died some time ago, to the great grief of my dear wife, she applied Blackhead’s Essence of Pitchfork, in staff, to my poor corse. Symptoms of returning life soon appeared, and in a few weeks I was all alive.
Count Obadiah.
March, 1798.

I DO hereby certify, that I used to be as thin and poor as a snake, and was subject to being drowned. I purchased some of Blackhead’s Essence of Pitchfork, and, in due season, grew as fat as a pig, and have never been drowned since.
Joban Nincum.
March, 1798.

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.