quack remedies
A Fortune Built on Sand: Health Grains
In early 20th-century New York, a mailman introduced a new patent medicine called Health Grains for indigestion – but the ingredients were far from beneficial. Mrs Bertha Bertsche, a 38-year-old widow, could often be found supervising the pans on the kitchen range at her home in Glebe Avenue, Westchester Square, New York. Inside the pans, […]
Read MoreA miraculous change right away quick
Last October I blogged about the Magic Foot Drafts, a remedy for rheumatism that required the patient to stick pine-tar-coated oilcloth plasters to the soles of their feet. This was supposed to draw out uric acid through the pores, but as Samuel Hopkins Adams said in The Great American Fraud, …they might as well be […]
Read MoreMayr’s Wonderful Stomach Remedy
Some secret remedies remain secret for centuries. Not Mayr’s Wonderful Stomach Remedy. Within about a year of it becoming famous, a Chicago newspaper was describing its promoter as a ‘comical quack’ and ‘one of the most entertaining medical fakers in Chicago.’ The Stomach Remedy was inspired by the methods of the itinerant con-artists who worked […]
Read MoreThe Zerret Applicator
And now for something completely different… We leap forward into the 1950s today with this Public Service Announcement from the US Food and Drug Administration. The presenter is actor Raymond Massey and his advice is all too relevant today. [youtube]R2t6Ei55TYU[/youtube] ‘There are no Z-rays’ is undoubtedly the best line of the film, but it’s quite difficult […]
Read MoreThe Cordial Balm of Rakasiri – part 2
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 […]
Read MoreThe Cordial Balm of Rakasiri – part 1
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. […]
Read MoreBaron Schwanberg's Liquid Shell
By the KING’S Royal Letters Patent, SCHWANBERG’s LIQUID SHELL, DAILY confirmed, by Experience, not only to be a sure DISSOLVENT for the STONE and GRAVEL, but a most powerful, safe, and efficacious Medicine in the Spasmodic and Windy Cholic, Pains in the Breast, Hypochondriac Disease, and all Kinds of Flatulences, Diarræa, or Looseness; Cardialgia, or […]
Read MoreSwaim's Panacea – part 2
For part 1 about Swaim’s Panacea, click here. Within a few years of establishing his products, William Swaim was enjoying the benefits of endorsements from some of Philadelphia’s most eminent physicians, including Nathaniel Chapman, William Gibson, William Pott Dewees, Thomas Parke and James Mease – and he didn’t even have to make them up. For […]
Read MoreSwaim's Panacea – part 1
SWAIM’S PANACEA.—This Medicine has acquired a very extensive and established celebrity in Europe and America, and its virtues are known and acknowledged by many of the most respectable physicians of both countries. As an alterative, and in various diseases, particularly in cases of inveterate corruption of the blood descending to the second generation, it stands […]
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