The Quack Doctor

FOR Beautifying and Preserving the TEETH.—LARDNER’s superior prepared CHARCOAL, so much recommended by the Faculty for its safe and antiseptic properties, for cleaning, preserving, and making the teeth beautifully white, in boxes at 2s. and 2s. 9d. each; and Mouth Solution, for curing the scurvy, bracing the gums, preventing the tooth ach, and unpleasant breath, in bottles at 2s. 9d. and 5s. 6d. each. From the great reputation the above preparations have acquired, many imitations are daily offered for sale: the true only are signed “Edmund Lardner” on the label. It is sold wholesale and retail, corner of Albany, Piccadilly; and retail by Newbery, St. Paul’s Church-yard; Rigge, Cheapside; Vade, Cornhill; Davison and Son, Fleet-street; Bacon, Oxford-street; Bailey and Blew, Cockspur-street; and most venders of genuine medicines.

Source: The Times, 22 February 1809

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Nowadays we know that to discover the secret of teeth-whitening, you have to be a single mum, but at the turn of the 19th century it was an ordinary chemist, Edmund Lardner, who introduced this new dentifrice to the public.

Charcoal had long been known as a tooth-whitener, but more so in the East than in this country, and Lardner’s attempts to encourage British people to use it met with approval from physicians.

In 1805 his company published a 3-page pamphlet extolling charcoal’s virtues.

It possesses the desirable qualities of rendering the teeth beautifully white; destroying the fætor arising from carious teeth, which contaminates the breath; removing the scurvy from the gums, and stopping the progress of the decay of the teeth, while, at the same time, it is incapable of either chemically or mechanically injuring the enamel.

A year later, one of Lardner’s shopmen, Alexander Blake, left the company and began selling his own version of the tooth powder, still using Lardner’s name. Lardner claimed to have improved the original product and also upped his competitive game by introducing a new Concentrated Solution of Charcoal.

His enthusiastic promotion of charcoal for the teeth was perfectly acceptable. The only odd thing was that his products didn’t actually contain much of it. The Prepared Charcoal was mainly powdered chalk, with a small amount of genuine charcoal or ivory black (a pigment made from charred animal bones) to darken it. The Concentrated Solution was a spirituous infusion of roses and myrrh, and was later renamed the Mouth Solution. The Medical Observer, while broadly sympathetic to Lardner as a reputable druggist, commented

In what respect roses and myrrh resemble charcoal, we know not,

while The London Medical and Surgical Spectator saw nothing wrong with the solution itself but objected to the false name.

The products remained popular and were used by Lord Byron, who asked his friend Douglas Kinnaird to send him a supply while he was in Venice in 1818. Activated charcoal is still known today as a tooth whitener and odour neutraliser, and Korean and Japanese companies have recently introduced it in a fascinatingly unappealing toothpaste form.

Source: The Morning Chronicle, 27 August 1803

THE PURE DROPS of LIFE; or, Vegetable Extract, prepared only by T. M. Lucas, V.D.M. Road, near Bath. Sold, by special appointment, at Messrs. H. and W. Humphries, No. 87, Fleet-street; No. 2, Haymarket; Mr. G. Long, No. 13, Great Newport street, Long Acre; Mr. Tabart, 157, New Bond -street; Mr. Palley, Newington Causeway; Mr. Leathwait, Royal Exchange; and by the principal Venders of genuine Medicines in the United Kingdoms; in Bottles at 2s. 9d. 6s. 11s. and 22s. each.—N.B. There is a saving of 1s. on the 11s. and 5s. on the 22s. Bottles
REV. CHARLES GREENLY, TO MR. LUCAS.
James’s-street, Bath, May 4th 1800
Sir—For several months I have been much afflicted with a very great hoarseness; I tried several things for relief, but to no purpose; at last I was prevailed upon to take your Pure Drops of Life; I soon found relief, and I bless God, after taking a few bottles, my hoarseness was entirely removed. I believe your drops to be a very precious cordial. I have recommended them to several, and shall continue to recommend them, and am your affectionate                                                                                                                       CHARLES GREENLY.

………………………………………………………………………….

Hoarseness was just one complaint that would supposedly surrender to the Pure Drops of Life. Mr Lucas also advertised them as being efficacious against colds, coughs, liver complaints, cholera morbus (this term could apply to a variety of gastrointestinal afflictions), palpitations, nervous affections, incubus (nightmares), and ‘indispositions of females’. He recommended them to singers and public speakers, saying ‘this Discovery is the greatest ever known, for clearing the voice, strengthening the lungs, and animating the whole frame.’

The ingredients included ‘a great variety of Flowers, Fruits, Seeds, &c.,’ so an endorsement from über-botanist Sir Joseph Banks was just the thing to give the Drops credibility. In a promotional pamphlet, Lucas claimed that he had visited Sir Joseph, who had taken a glass of the remedy and pronounced it an excellent carminative (anti-fart medicine). From this, Lucas concluded that:

If the pure drops of life are approved by the first botanist in the world, what family would be without them?

The key word is, of course, ‘if’. In 1807, a new anti-quackery publication called The Medical Observer wrote to Sir Joseph (after some prompting from a reader) for his version of events. He replied:

I am much too well convinced of the unavoidable necessity of regular medical advice, in the administration of every medicine whatever, to have on any occasion allowed my name to be used as a recommendation of any nostrums or quack medicines.

He had never seen Mr Lucas’s advertisements and the use of his name was unauthorised. The wording doesn’t rule out the possibility that Mr Lucas did encounter Sir Joseph at some point, with the two parties perhaps interpreting the meeting differently, but  Sir Joseph’s view was:

I certainly consider it a crime against the public, to recommend to them, by false pretences, or by deceit of any kind, medicines or any other matters or things.

The Medical Observer also drew attention to the letters V.D.M. after Lucas’s name – a suffix that might have appeared to the unwary to be a medical qualification, but meant Verbi Dei Minister – Minister of the Divine Word. This was a fairly flexible designation that people could adopt to show their dedication to preaching the Gospel, without necessarily having a theology degree or being ordained in the Church of England. It was useful for nonconformist preachers who had a strong commitment to God but nothing much ‘official’ to back it up (er… a bit like how I claim to be a historian just because I research history a lot, I suppose!)

Some of Lucas’s ads refer the reader to an article in the Evangelical Magazine that supported his claims. In fact, this was just another advert that he wrote himself. I don’t know whether Lucas was a genuine preacher but I suspect he was, and probably didn’t see any contradiction between his calling and his rather dubious methods of promoting his invention.

The Medical Observer mentions the wider problem of quacks using fake or irrelevant qualifications to impress the punters. It tells of one such character who, as well as claiming to be an M.D., put E.D.   A.T.W.   D.A.  after his name. Although I wouldn’t put it past the editors to have embellished this story, it’s worth repeating what the letters stood for:
E.D. – Electrical Doctor
A.T.W. – Author of a Treatise on Worms
D.A. – Donor of Advice

There – I think everyone on the planet qualifies as a D.A. Congratulations!

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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!

For part 1 of this article, click here. There’s also a transcript of an 1818 Rakasiri advert here.

In 1828, a ‘nervous young man’ who had wasted more than 10l. on the Cordial Balm of Rakasiri went to a magistrate and succeeded in getting his money back. During the proceedings, the Balm’s proprietors, Charles and John Jordan, threatened to make it public that he had venereal disease, but he stuck to his guns and they backed down, claiming that they were returning the money out of respect for the man’s character and not because they were guilty.

Shortly afterwards, a well-to-do young woman, Miss May, consulted them for asthma and ended up 15l. worse off, some of which amount she had to borrow from her sister. Finding her breathing worse and the fiery medicine affecting her stomach, (as mentioned in the previous post, it was highly concentrated alcohol) she heard about the young man’s success and also asked for her money back. The Times reported in early 1829 that

To this, the “doctors” answered, that if Miss May attempted to take any such step as that young man had taken, that they would disclose the real nature of the complaint she was labouring under to her friends, which would ruin her character.

Far from being horrified into silence, Miss May said her friends knew very well she had a cough arising from asthma, and they would now also know “the threat that you have dared to utter.” She got her lawyer, Thomas Cox, on the case and went to the same magistrate who had ordered the young man’s refund. He told her to apply to the Middlesex Sessions for a bill of indictment for fraud. This was refused and the Jordans’ lawyer, Mr Adolphus, published a notice in the Morning Chronicle titled “Base and Malicious Charge of Fraud Refuted,” which referred to Miss May and Mr Cox as ‘infamous calumniators’ and said:

Who ever heard of a person making a purchase, using the article so purchased and then, forsooth, demanding their money back, much less make a charge of fraud against the tradesman so refusing? The attempted fraud was on their own side, and a gross attempt it was.

The doctors challenged Miss May and her lawyer to repeat their accusations, at which Cox wrote to them – a letter that was printed in the Chronicle – inviting them to meet him and his client before the magistrate for that very purpose. The Jordans said they would only respond if summoned by the magistrate himself, and didn’t turn up. “Was it not monstrous,” Mr Cox said,

that such imposters as these men, who were literally a pest in society, and the direct enemies of the human race, should be rolling in their carriages and wallowing in wealth, while men of high education, who had laboriously, and at great expense, studied their profession and made themselves masters of medical knowledge, were living, in many instances, in obscurity, and scarcely able to supply the means of living respectably.

The more cynical among us might be tempted to say welcome to real life, Mr Cox, but as the doctors realised that Miss May was really going to start court proceedings for libel, they got nervous. (‘Notwithstanding the anti-nervous powers of their medicine,’ commented the Monthly Gazette of Health.) They settled out of court, refunding Miss May’s money, paying her legal expenses and giving her £100 compensation. They also agreed to publish a notice in the papers saying that their previous statements were without foundation.

It would be nice to finish with the Gazette‘s conclusion:

To Miss May, for her heroic conduct, and Mr. Cox, her solicitor, for the firmness with which he conducted the proceedings, the thanks of the public are due. They have completely knocked up the Balsam of Rakasira (sic) trade, than which a more infamous traffic has not been carried on in the most barbarous country.

But we all know real life ain’t like that, and this was not the end of the Jordans’ Rakasiri racket. They continued advertising as before until 1840, when they suddenly dropped the M.D. qualification and became Messrs Jordan and Co, Surgeons, with premises in Bristol as well as London. Later in the 1840s, a medicine called Balm of Rakasiri was being sold by Messrs Henry & Co, Liverpool, with a very similar advertising style to the Jordans, and in the 1850s Messrs Lewis were the proprietors. The name finally changed to Dr. Lucas and the remedy was still burning the oesophagi of the credulous at the end of the 1860s.

Source: The Morning Chronicle, Saturday 12 December 1818. For transcript, click here.

On this site I include anything medical or surgical provided it was advertised, so not all the remedies were considered quackery in their time. Some were endorsed and prescribed by reputable doctors, and many were no worse than the orthodox medicines then available. Others, while inefficacious, were produced by honest people who believed in the power of their product and did not set out to rip people off.

The brothers Jordan, however, were a right pair of dodgy coves.

In 1816, C.J. Jordan of Cannon-street-road started placing ads saying he could cure ‘a certain disease’ without using mercury. At this point he referred to himself as a surgeon, but by 1818 he had adopted the qualification M.D. and was calling the remedy The Cordial Balm of Rakasiri, or Nature’s Infallible Restorative. His business was the East London Medical Establishment, but this might as well have been the East London Nose-Picking Establishment for all its professional credibility. With the medicine selling at 11s a bottle (33s for family size), the business was lucrative, and in August 1821 it became the Surrey and West London Medical Establishments with premises in Great Surrey Street, Blackfriars and in Berwick Street, Soho.

In early 1823, the adverts started referring to ‘Drs. C. & J. Jordan.’ The Monthly Gazette of Health, with its usual entertaining indignation, introduced the new partner as

Dr John Jordan, who, from the rank of distributer [sic] of handbills has lately been raised to the dignity of M.D. by leaping, we suppose, over a broomstick.

Balm (otherwise Balsam) of Rakasiri was, in theory, a resin from a tree species native to the Americas. It was said to have stimulant and tonic properties, and had briefly been known in Britain in the early 18th century before its limited popularity had fizzled out. The Jordans’ adverts recommended it for a variety of conditions, including consumption and scrofula, but like its inspiration, Solomon’s Balm of Gilead, the main targets were venereal disease and ‘nervous’ disorders supposedly caused by masturbation. The natural source of the resin not being available in the UK, the Jordans formulated their own version – spirit of wine (rectified ethyl alcohol) flavoured with rosemary oil and sugar.

Both The Monthly Gazette of Health and The Medical Adviser campaigned against the Jordans during the 1820s, and while these publications are far from dispassionate, they make for entertaining reading. According to the Adviser, the Jordans had started out as pencil-sellers before taking the Cannon-street-road premises and setting up their medicine business.

One would think to see these two fellows, standing at their door with their hands in their pockets, their hair powdered, their sleek countenance and suit of black, that they really were medical men; although to a discerning eye a peculiarly roguish cunning, and an expression of innate ignorance, are labels on their front…

Of the Doctors’ fancy carriage, the Adviser continued:

…we fancy their seat the back of an hypochondriac ; their foot-board a grave-stone: their wheels a compilation of human bones; their chariot-rim decked with diseased livers ; their reins the intestinal canal; their side lamps two bottles of Rakasiri; and their whip a long bill! with which the two black longtailed horses most awfully harmonize.

The Adviser – without much relevance, perhaps – also accused the Jordans of stealing a pig, then rather childishly printed their purported reply:

I wont to no what you meen by tacking my karacter as you doo you rite in your book that I mede awey with a milkmans pigg but I wood ave you to no sir that sich like slander shall not be suffered to pass. You also say that I was a pencel pedlar this I despise and say it is a ly. I never hokd pencels I only took orders for em, and even if I did it is no affere of yours I got my bred onnestly.

To the people who had fallen for the scam, however, the Balm of Rakasiri wasn’t  so funny. In part 2 of this post, we’ll see how a young woman stood up to the quacks.

A MORE VALUABLE DISCOVERY was never
made in Medicine than NELSON’S MIXTURE for DIS-
EASES of the LUNGS.—Coughs the most inveterate, sleepless
nights, wheezing, and shortness of breath, profuse spitting, pains
in the chest, and spitting of blood, in short asthma and consumption
is completely cured by it;  it lessens excessive perspirations and
amends the expectoration, changing the secretion from purulent
matter to healthy phlegm, and while it heals and strengthens the
lungs it invigorates the tone of the stomach and recovers the body
from a state of debility and emaciation. For recent coughs, colds,
catarrhs &c. it is seldom wanted more than two or three days.
Having for the last 22 years observed the sad inefficacy of every
mode of treatment adopted by the most eminent physicians, J.
NELSON was induced to venture on a practice new and peculiar to
himself, and from which he has experienced such unparalleled success,
that he can with confidence declare, if the patient does not find
speedy and effectual relief from this medicine, all that the Royal Col-
lege of Physicians can do will be of no avail; having now declined
practice, this medicine is offered to the public under the form of a
mixture. Sold by J. Brooks, 421, Oxford-street, and J. Leathwait,
South entrance, Royal Exchange.

Source: The Times, 8 August 1817

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It is a truth universally acknowledged than anyone writing anything to do with Jane Austen must oh-so-wittily begin their article with ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged…’ Thus yesterday The Times reported that Austen might have died of tuberculosis rather than the Addison’s Disease previously suspected.

The above advert was placed in that same newspaper in the months before and after Austen’s death, and its comments about the medical profession are barbed enough to have perhaps occasioned her a sly smile. Less amusing, however, were the actual symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis, or phthisis as it was known:

In the last stage of phthisis, the emaciation is so great that the patient has the appearance of a walking skeleton ; his countenance is altered, his cheek-bones are prominent, his eyes look hollow and languid, his hair falls off, his nails are of a livid colour and much incurvated, and his feet and ancles are affected with oedematous swellings. To the end of the disease the senses remain entire, and the mind is confident and full of hope.
The Modern Practice of Physic, Robert Thomas, 1828

The early 19th-century consumptive patient didn’t have the option of the later sanatoria, where fresh air was the order of the day. Instead, doctors advised the ‘close room’ regime, with as little exposure to the elements as possible – or, for those who could afford it, travel to a warmer climate. When, in 1840, country doctor George Bodington suggested a fresh air cure, his ideas met with derision from the faculty (partly, no doubt, because he had a real go at eminent physician Sir James Clark for not coming up with any ideas of his own.)

In spite of the romantic image of consumption, the majority of sufferers were poor and unable to swan off to the Mediterranean. In Bishopsgate, London,  an Infirmary for Asthma, Consumption, and other Diseases of the Lungs offered treatment to those who could not afford doctors. The wards were kept at a ‘moderate summer temperature’ all year round, but most people were treated as outpatients, and presumably had to return to their own chilly lodgings after consultation.

Other prominent treatments included blood-letting, cupping and blistering. Digitalis was popular but controversial, and tartar emetic in regular use. In 1829, James Murray wrote on the value of inhalations of iodine, but it took a couple of decades for this to catch on.

There were various theories as to the cause of consumption – the patient’s lifestyle, constitution and even looks being considered strong factors, but in 1822, Richard Reece’s Monthly Gazette of Health referred rather dismissively – and intriguingly – to an anonymous practitioner’s discovery:

A person, residing at Bath, asserts in his public advertisements, that, on microscopical examination of the matter brought up from the lungs of consumptive subjects, he has discovered animalculae of the shape of a maggot, to the irritation of which he attributes cough and the progress of the organic affection! By destroying these mischievous animals, by means of inhaling a particular gas, he says he has succeeded in restoring patients to health, whose cases were declared to be hopeless.

Although Reece (who, incidentally, was the doctor caught up in the case of Joanna Southcott’s supposedly miraculous pregnancy in 1814) exaggerates, making the microscopist sound like someone touting a remedy for financial gain, I believe he is referring to one Mr Rogers. Earlier in 1822, Rogers made a discovery that the London Medical and Physical Journal thought ‘may ultimately prove of some importance.’ The Journal reported Rogers as saying:

I have observed that the matter, or pus, expectorated in a certain stage of pulmonary consumption, is actually filled with multitudes of minute worms; the forms of which, in their evolutions from the surrounding mucus, are so distinctly seen, as to obviate all doubt of their identity with living animalculi.

The description bears more than a passing resemblance to what is now called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, officially discovered by Robert Koch 60 years later:

‘Is it unreasonable,’ Rogers suggested before he faded into obscurity, ‘to regard these worms, the existence of which is indisputable, as forming the concomitant cause of consumption?’

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.