The Quack Doctor

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 affixed to the barn door, so far as any uric acid extraction is concerned.

A few weeks ago, Linda Riordan, who lives in Ohio, found the blog post while searching for some info about a letter that her late grandma had kept in a shoebox since 1915.

Linda’s grandfather had sent off for a trial pair of Magic Foot Drafts but sensibly decided not to place a further order. By then, however, he was on their mailing list and they weren’t about to let him go. Linda kindly sent me the letter – it’s in beautiful condition and a very entertaining read.

It’s signed by Frederick Dyer, Corresponding Secretary of the Magic Foot Draft Company, and he doesn’t take the softly-softly approach to sales.

Dear Mr. Greene:

If you have written us a letter regarding the Dyer Foot Drafts we sent on your order last week, it has failed to reach our office yet. We were quite disappointed not to get your letter this morning, for you must know we expect you will be prompt to inform us just how your case is progressing.

The letter goes on to explain that the effect of the Drafts will vary according to the severity of the disease and how the plaster is applied – in other words, if it doesn’t work, it’s because your case is a complicated one or you put the plaster on wrong. Chronic cases might require up to 6 applications.

Any effect like this comes by degrees, perhaps slowly at first, but none the less surely if the patient is faithful in the effort and not over-eager to see a miraculous change right away quick.

Once again, an unsatisfactory result is the patient’s fault for being too impatient or giving up too easily.

Dyer then goes on to ask Mr Greene to read ‘every one of the enclosed fifty-odd letters’ from satisfied patients (these testimonials have not survived). The hard sell continues:

Now then, to be fair with yourself and square with us, what do you intend to do? Try to get rid of your misery as others have, or go on suffering the rest of your natural life? There is positively no reason in settling down and saying: “Oh, I believe my case is incurable, for I have tried so many things, etc., etc.”

There was a money-back guarantee if the Drafts didn’t work, but the company probably relied on the patient wanting to believe there was some improvement, or feeling like an idiot and putting the episode down to experience without bothering to claim a refund.

The letter ends:

Unless you have already sent your order we shall expect a letter from you very soon, and there will be no failure to send the treatment just as you instruct, so you will have it and keep your recovery going steadily on day and night until every last twinge of pain has left you.

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A huge thank you to Linda Riordan for sending me this letter.

Source: The Mills County Tribune, Iowa, 12 March 1914

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 the small towns of the US in the late 1800s. In the early 20^th century, similar products began appearing in the advertising columns, and druggist George H Mayr was quick to get in on the act. Described by the A.M.A. as ‘the fake gallstone trick,’ his method provided patients with immediate, visible results so convincing that the testimonials flooded in.

Mayr was evangelical about his medicine’s properties:

I have watched sick people for years and have reached out my hand to thousands in the great depth of the Valley of Despair and brought them into the light of life and happiness. I want you, and each one suffering, to know the full joys of living with every part of your system in beautiful accord and absolute perfect harmony.

His remedy comprised a bottle of medicine and two sachets of powders. The patient had to take the first powder at about 3pm, then the whole contents of the bottle before bed, then the second powder in the morning. All going to plan, there should be spectacular results:

When the bowels operate, use a vessel and note the poisonous secretions removed by this remedy, in some cases dark green or yellow lumps varying in size from a fine bead to an olive – in severe cases even larger. In other cases quantities of thick tenacious slime or mucous.

Mayr claimed that it was an old French remedy, used for generations to ‘relieve all stomach ailments and keep the bowels free from foul, poisonous matter.’ France, he said, was ‘the nation without stomach troubles.’

Whatever the state of our Gallic friends’ alimentary canals, Mayr’s medicine bottle contained nothing more interesting than olive oil. The powders were flavoured with licorice but other than that, analyses varied. One said they were mainly Rochelle salt (potassium sodium tartrate) while another suggested that one sachet contained Epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) and the second a sodium phosphate.

Either way, the patient would expel greenish waxy globules that looked a bit like stones. The A.M.A.’s report concluded that these were a mixture of fatty acids and soap caused by the alkaline intestinal fluids operating on the oil.  Anyone taking the remedy and cheerfully rummaging through their subsequent excretions would get the same result, regardless of whether or not they had anything wrong with them.

Stones expelled by a patient using Mayr's Remedy. Pictured in Nostrums and Quackery, A.M.A, 1921

Mayr’s dodginess extended to his advertising methods too. In 1918, the New York Tribune revealed that he sent round a list of instructions to editors, giving them advertising copy like this…

………… SOLDIER UNDER FIRE
“We have had several brushes with the enemy since reaching the trenches here, which I am sure I would not have reached had it not been for Mayr’s Wonderful Stomach Remedy. It has entirely cured me of indigestion and awful gas in my stomach. Army food now digests as good as mother’s used to.”

The newspaper was supposed to fill in the blank in the headline with the name of its own town, to present the imaginary soldier as a local lad. The Tribune was quick to take the moral high ground against the papers that accepted this form of advertising, saying rather self-righteously:

But the publisher who cooperates with the quack by deliberately printing what he knows to be a lie is guilty of unspeakable treachery to those who believe what they read in his paper.

Mayr wasn’t the only one to use this advertising ploy, and not the only one promoting the oils-and-salts method. A hundred years later, a similar process called the liver cleanse or liver flush is still going strong. The difference is that now we have the internet, where people can (and do) post pictures of their poo to show off the wonderful things therein. A link to such biological delights is not necessary on a history site, but you’re big enough and ugly enough to do a bit of Googling if you desperately want to know.

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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.

‘There are no Z-rays’ is undoubtedly the best line of the film, but it’s quite difficult to catch the name of the device. It was called a Zerret Applicator, was made of plastic, and though you can’t tell from the video, the stripes were blue and white.

The applicator was supposed to contain a mysterious Z-ray-emitting fluid called Zerret water. It would set you back $50, and to use it you had to hold it in both hands, making sure all your fingers were in contact with it and that your legs were uncrossed. This must be done three times a day for 15 minutes and would help arthritis, rheumatism, diarrhoea, constipation, excess weight and abnormal thinness, as well as a variety of other conditions.

Z-Rays were ‘a force unknown to science’ (this at least was true) and worked by expanding the hydrogen atoms of the body. The instruction booklet went into further detail:

When you hold the Applicator, it works on your life current, expanding the atoms of the same. As this takes place, it expands all atoms of your being. Expansion of your atoms produces what is commonly called relaxation.

The manufacturer, William Ferguson, also claimed that life rays from the body flowed into the Zerret, were rejuvenated and invigorated, then flowed back into the body. The police weren’t convinced, and arrested him and his sales director, Mary Stanakis, together with saleswoman Elay Smith, in September 1948. They were charged with operating a confidence game and conspiracy to defraud. In court, they were supported by a number of satisfied customers, who insisted that the Zerret had cured them. Some admitted, however, that after purchasing the device they, like Smith, had signed up as agents, earning $25 commission on each sale.

Judge Charles Dougherty said: ‘I think you’re all suckers, but I’ll keep an open mind.’ He adjourned the case while the Zerret was analysed. The composition of the devices varied – of three samples investigated, one contained paraffin-soaked cotton, another dry cotton, and the third contained water.

The case continued for over a year, but in May 1950, Ferguson and Stanakis were convicted. Ferguson was sentenced to two years in jail, Stanakis to one year. Most of the devices were destroyed, with a couple being retained for museum display and for starring in PSAs.

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.

Source: The General Advertiser, 19 Jan 1748

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I mentioned the Purging Sugar Plumbs for Worms early in the life of this blog, but didn’t include much beyond the ad itself, and I hardly had any readers then anyway, so I think it’s worth revisiting – especially as this advert is so delightfully worded and cheerfully revolting.

At some point in the early 1740s, a Mr Burchell took over the ownership of another remedy, the Anodyne Necklace, which had been on sale for decades as a cure for babies’ teething pain. He built up his business on this and the worm remedy, fending off imitators with some innovative advertising methods – not least the eye-catching newspaper ads showing exactly what might be gnawing at your intestines (the inclusion of the insect thing on the right is an inspired bit of added horror).

One of Burchell’s methods was to entice punters to his premises by giving away free almanacks and pamphlets. In 1750 he was quick to exploit the fear caused by the earth tremors that had shaken London, by publishing:

ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE
Much Worse than the Two Last. When, and What Time to be Expected? With a Surer SAFEGUARD, Against it, than Going Out of Town. And, Why the Last Two EARTHQUAKES happened to be in this one particular Jubilee Year, more than in Any other Year?

The Almanack referred to in the ad above is intriguing – what could it contain that other almanacks left out? Although the content changed each year, a 1750 ad goes into more detail:

In the Month of Lent, is a large LIST of Other Fasters from FLESH CONVERSATION as well as FLESH DIET, Such as MISERS, WORN-OUT Sinners, etc.
The Miser’s CHAST, ’cause he won’t PAY a Wh—re
The Worn-Out’s CHAST, ’cause He can Sin NO MORE
And,  All the Other Months, have also their OWN proper TIMELY Observations, Not to be Met With, in Any of the COMMON ALMANACKS, but Only in THIS One, Which Tells What THEY Don’t.

Fun for all the family, by the sounds of it.

Later in the 18th century, the theme of free stuff continued, with Basil Burchell (who I think was the son of the original proprietor, but I’m not sure) issuing coin-like advertising tokens with the sugar plumbs on one side and the Anodyne Necklace on the other (he used the spelling ‘sugar plumbs’ in his ads too). The tokens usually had a hole in them so they could be worn on a ribbon.

Worm medicines were a good bet for a quack, because although intestinal worms were very common, especially in young children, this didn’t make them any nicer to have than they would be nowadays. The symptoms of untreated worm infestations were bad enough, but this was accompanied by the downright horror of being inhabited by living creatures. J Cook, a correspondent to the London Magazine in 1768, gave a description of the main varieties:

There are three sorts of worms which generally infest the human body. The round ones, the broad ones, and ascarides. Sometimes, but seldom, anomalous ones are discharged, viz. horned, hairy, with four feet, with two heads, with three, and some with four forked tails, etc.

The very thought of what might be in there led some people to go to extraordinary lengths to get rid of them, and I will blog about a couple of examples in my next post.

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 Heart-burn; Acid Eructations, or sour Belchings; Strangury, or when the Water is made by little and little; Gripes, Fevers, and Convulsions in young Children, and all those Uneasinesses which they are subject to from Acidities, the well-known
Cause of most of their Disorders.
By Vertue of the King’s Royal Letters Patent, I appoint Mess. William and Cluer Dicey and Comp at Dr. Bateman’s Warehouse, in Bow-Church-Yard, London, my only Venders of the LIQUID SHELL,
to whom all Persons are desired to apply for the same.
………………………………………………………………W. BAKER.
Sold also (Retale only) at my House in Helmet-Court, near Katherine-Street in the Strand, at 1s. 6d. the Vial; sealed, as in the Margin, with Baron SCHWANBERG’s Coat of Arms; over it there are these words; BY THE KING’S PATENT; and under-neath, in a Scroll, LIQUID SHELL; where, and at Dr. Bateman’s Warehouse aforesaid, may be had, SCHWANBERG’s UNIVERSAL POWDER, for the speedy curing Acute and Inflammatory Fevers, &c, Price 2s. the Parcel.

***The great Demand for this DISSOLVENT since the Publication of the Patent, has obliged the Proprietor to enlarge the Apparatus in his Elaboratory, by which Means he prepares it in greater Quantities than he could heretofore; and being willing that every afflicted Person may be benefited thereby, the Vials now contain above double the Quantity at the same Price.

Source: The Whitehall Evening Post, or, London Intelligencer, 19 December 1749

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More common than today because of poorer nutrition and untreated urinary tract infections, bladder stones could be a nightmare for the sufferer. When they were causing pain and stoppage of the urine, something had to be done – but faced with the prospect of an agonising operation, patients can hardly be blamed for trying out dissolvent medicines like this one.

William, Baron Schwanberg, according to his epitaph in a 1755 collection compiled by W Toldervy, was a nobleman of Mecklenberg in Germany, born c.1686. The epitaph presents him in glowing terms, but then it’s an epitaph, so I suppose it would:

No man had more honour, honesty,
Or integrity ;
And his Humanity and Benevolence
Gain’d him the Love and Esteem,
As his Learning excited the
Admiration of the World!
But a too arduous application
In studying the Sciences
Shortened his Valuable Life.

He invented not only the Liquid Shell but also a Fever Powder and a cure for scurvy called the Aurum Horizontale Pill. The Fever Powder is of particular interest because Schwanberg had some dealings with a certain Robert James.

Schwanberg died in 1744, and a few years later James was granted a patent for his own Fever Powders, which went on to become one of the most successful patent medicines of all time. James managed to keep the composition of his powders secret, by ambiguously wording the patent specification, but to Schwanberg’s administrator Walter Baker, the case was clear – James had stolen the recipe. A cartoon of the time shows James pickpocketing the Powders from their proprietor, and preparing to stab him in the back, but although Baker petitioned the King to revoke the patent, he was unsuccessful.

Detail from 'A Reply for the present to the Unknown Author of Villany Detected' (1754), reproduced in England under the House of Hanover by Thomas Wright (1848)

In 1747, an anonymous correspondent to the Gentleman’s Magazine sent in an account of his analysis of the Liquid Shell, an excerpt of which is as follows:

Having, therefore, procured some of the Liquid Shell, which is a clear transparent liquor, put into it a human stone formed in the urinary passages, upon which a very white sediment precipitated ; and there was the like white sediment when a few drops of spirit of hartshorn were dripped into some of the same liquor ; which fully proves that it was in both cases the lime of burnt shell, and not the parts of the dissolved stone, as is pretended; for there was no stone put in with the spirit of hartshorn. Besides, this precipitated matter is much too white to be any part of dissolved stones.

The correspondent went on to suggest that the white sediment in patients’ urine after taking the medicine was not the stone breaking apart, but also the residue of lime.

The correspondent was later identified in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1764 as eminent scientist Dr Stephen Hales (D.D. rather than M.D.). Hales has another role in the history of bladder stone remedies – he was on a government committee that investigated, and ultimately approved of, Joanna Stephens’ famous treatment. This preparation netted its maker £5000 from the government, who could not find a cheaper way of persuading her to reveal the recipe. The secret ingredients turned out to be soap, eggshells, snails, and several herbs.

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For anyone interested, I’ve put a transcript of a description of cutting for the stone on a separate page. Not suitable for squeamish persons, especially men.

For part 1 about Swaim’s Panacea, click here.

Woodcut commissioned by Swaim, showing Hercules battling the Hydra.

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 the past ten years or so, sarsaparilla had been attracting renewed medical attention in the US as a blood purifier, so it was probably with this in mind that the doctors were well-disposed towards Swaim’s medicine. Swaim combined the sarsaparilla syrup with oil of wintergreen, giving it a pleasant taste that made it a hit with patients too. Gibson’s endorsement gives a further clue to its popularity:

I have always found it extremely efficacious, especially in secondary syphilis and mercurial disease. I have no hesitation in pronouncing it a medicine of inestimable value.

The symptoms of secondary syphilis, of course, disappear of their own accord before the disease goes into a latent phase – no wonder the Panacea and so many other treatments of the time claimed success.

In 1827 the New York Medical Society appointed a Committee on Quack Remedies, and the Philadelphia Medical Society soon did likewise. While the New York Committee acknowledged the possible benefits of the Panacea and other sarsaparilla-based syrups, the Philadelphia one was tougher, gathering numerous cases of people who had taken the medicine. The outcomes of these cases varied from no effect at all, to ‘a most violent and alarming bowel complaint’, to death. Analysis showed that the remedy contained corrosive sublimate (mercuric chloride).

Later, the New York Committee released its own analysis, done at the time of the investigation but not published, which showed that they too knew all along that it was mercury - so there, Philadelphia. A new analysis in 1831 also showed the presence of arsenic, but the ingredients varied from batch to batch and it was the luck of the draw whether you got the poisons.

By this time the doctors’ enthusiasm had waned. Chapman wrote:

Nathaniel Chapman, pictured 1846

Early in the history of that article, I was induced to employ it, as well from professional as common report in favour of its efficacy, and was well pleased at the result in several cases. But! more extensive experience with it soon convinced me that I had overrated its value, and for a long period I have entirely ceased to prescribe it.

Gibson admitted that: In several cases that came under my notice, ptyalism has followed the use of it. (Excessive salivation, a symptom of mercury poisoning.) Their testimonials, however, were now out of their control and there was nothing they could do to stop Swaim continuing to use their names.

In 1836, long after the US physicians had backtracked on their endorsement of the nostrum, British journal The Medical-Chirurgical Review condemned them in true Tunbridge Wells style:

We were utterly astonished to find an impudent PANACEA bolstered up with the names and certificates of some of the first authorities, in the medical profession, of the United States!…

We are mortified and grieved, beyond measure, to find professional propriety (to give it no other name) at so low an ebb among our brethren in America! This admonition from Europe will surely rouse the faculty of the United States to some sense of the duty they owe to their brethren throughout the world.

The early success of Swaim’s Panacea inspired imitators to cash in with their own versions, and they were completely blatant about it. ‘Swayne’s Panacea’ hoped to dupe punters who weren’t paying attention, and ‘Shinn’s Panacea’ was sold with the statement: The subscriber having discovered the composition of Swaim’s celebrated Panacea, has now a supply on hand for sale.

One of the heavyweight rivals was Parker’s Renovating Vegetable Panacea, the ads of which contained fighting talk:

In justice to myself, I have been induced to reply to a false and unjustifiable attack made upon me and others by Swaim, the vender of a certain Panacea in this city.

I have been acquainted with the ORIGINAL RECIPE FROM WHICH SWAIM MANUFACTURES HIS MEDICINE FOR UPWARD OF TEN YEARS. IT WAS OBTAINED FROM MY FATHER-IN-LAW, WHO NOW RESIDES IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK, WHO HAS USED IT FOR THIRTY YEARS , AND PERFORMED INNUMERABLE EXTRAORDINARY CURES WITH IT.

Parker used his own version of the Hydra image, which, in a nice dig at Swaim’s battling Hercules, shows the mythical beast already defeated:

Swaim’s reply tried to turn the copy-cat ads to his advantage:

This medicine had been used for seven years before an attempt was made to imitate it; but the great demand for it, and its wonderful success, have induced a great number of persons to imitate it in various ways—upwards of fifty different mixtures have been got up in imitation of it, which is a convincing proof of it being a medicine of great value.

Although the initial fame of the medicine declined, it continued to be made throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, latterly with a different formula involving  alcohol and a huge amount of sugar.

1894 ad from the Galveston Daily News

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 unri-
valled. Its safety and innocence have been fully tested, so that
it may be administered to the most tender and helpless infant.
No one, however, is advised to take it without being first con-
vinced of its efficacy and of the rectitude of the proprietor’s in-
tention. He has been induced to establish agencies in England
in consequence of the repeated and large orders for the Medicine
from various parts of the kingdom. He respectfully informs the
public that they can be supplied wholesale by EVANS, SON, and
CO., 85, Lord-street, Liverpool; EVANS and LESCHER, 4 Cripple-
gate-buildings, London; and retail by most of the respectable
Druggists in England, Ireland, and Scotland.

Source: The Liverpool Mercury, Friday 7 August 1847

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If you’re Welsh, don’t be annoyed at being left out; count yourself lucky.

Although I’ve chosen a British ad here, the medicine’s home was Philadelphia, where William Swaim settled after a career as a bookbinder in New York. A probably apocryphal tale has him finding the panacea recipe scribbled on a blank leaf of a book he was binding; another story, related in James Harvey Young’s The Toadstool Millionaires, has Swaim finding out the ingredients from a reputable physician called Dr Quackinboss. Although this sounds made up, the name (but with the spelling Quackenboss), genuinely did belong to a New York doctor in the 1820s. (And for purposes of mild amusement, here is a modern example.)

Swaim’s advertising materials included booklets endorsing his nostrum, and the following unpleasant picture appeared in these and occasionally in his ads. You might recognise it if you saw the colour version recently displayed on the Ephemera Assemblyman blog. In this one, the bottle of Panacea is more prominent, and the facial expression more grotesque, but the depiction of the legs is thankfully less gruesome for the lack of colour.

Notice that the caption says ‘The representation and her actual appearance after having been Cured by the use of Swaims Panacea.’ I think they must mean ‘The representation of…’ but anyway, AFTER is the interesting word here. This image was supposed to encourage people to buy the medicine. Just think! Take this stuff and you too could spend the rest of your life hiding in a darkened room, tragically plastering your face with yet more mercurial preparations while the looking glass mocks you with the ghostly memory of the carefree beauty you were long, long ago.

The logic behind the use of this picture is difficult to grasp – any further theories welcome in the comments, but it could be:

1. In that state, Miss Linton should actually be dead, so the very fact that she’s sitting in a chair grinning is a testament to the miraculous power of the Panacea.

2. The horror of the image would exert a strange fascination on punters and compel them to read the promotional book. This is what happened to ‘Morleigh,’ the British writer of Life in the West, (1843):

‘…fronting the title page, we have a full-length portrait of a lady, or skeleton in a ball dress, grinning horribly. If this lady is cured, thought I, it would be very advisable for her to stay at home. Faugh! the very portrait has made me ill. I threw the book aside with scorn, little thinking that in a few days hence, when the book had mysteriously disappeared, I should earnestly seek a copy, and devour the contents with as much gusto as a starving sailor would munch an old shoe.’

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To be continued…

In the next post – what was actually in Swaim’s Panacea, the proprietor’s on-off relationship with the medical profession, and how the Panacea’s success spawned blatant imitations.

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Picture courtesy of the US National Library of Medicine

MR. ELIAS GROVES, of Clapham, attests, that he was afflicted upwards of a Year and half with a most violent windy Disorder, to so great a Degree, that the Wind would roll about, as it were, all over his Body, and occasion him frequently to be discharging it in a surprising Manner out of his Mouth for ten Hours together. This most grievous Complaint wasted him away as if in an Atrophy, and cause a great Sinking of his Spirits: He had the Advice, and followed the Prescriptions of two eminent Physicians, (as he can make it appear) as well as others, without the least Benefit, until he took Dr. Lowther’s Powders and Drops, the joint Use of which in a short Time entirely remov’d his Complaints.
These Powders and Drops (for the great Invention of which his Majesty honoured Dr. Lowther with his Royal Letters Patent, November 1757) are sold in Six Shilling and Three Shilling Parcels, at Brooke’s Warehouse, Fleet-Street, and Dawson’s Warehouse the foot of Westminster-Bridge; at which last place the Doctor may be consulted gratis every Tuesday from Three to Five, and Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, from Ten to One, at Brooke’s.
These Powders and Drops are incontestably proved to be the greatest Specific ever invented for the Cure of every Species of Fits, Nervous and Paralytick Disorders. Sold also by Mr. Marlow, at the Angel and Crown Tavern, Tunbridge-Wells, as the Waters of that Place are known to be very powerful Deobstruents, by their Chalybeat Virtues. These Powders may be taken in them to great Advantage.

Source: The Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer, 8-11 July 1758

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This advert is quite restrained by William Lowther’s standards – he only mentions the King’s Letters Patent once. Elsewhere he drew even more attention to this supposedly great honour, and called the drops the ‘Royal Specific Anodyne Drops.’ Although references to the patent can come across as a bit pompous, Lowther wasn’t alone in using this method of convincing punters that the medicine was respectable. It was common for vendors to do so, and there was no reason why they shouldn’t, although they were perhaps disingenous in implying that the monarch was a personal fan of the product. The king didn’t need to have tried the remedy – patents were granted for all sorts of things, and although the inventor had to provide a written specification of how the medicine was produced, there was no requirement to prove that it worked or even that it was safe.

The ‘Dawson’s Warehouse’ referred to was a carpet warehouse, and in 1757 Dr Lowther’s Tuesday schedule involved hot-footing it over there from Brooke’s in Fleet Street, in time to start his consultations at 2pm. In 1758 he began giving himself an extra hour – perhaps he needed time to grab something to eat on the way.

Although the Powders (patented before the Drops, in June 1755) were also advertised as an anti-epileptic medicine, there was a considerable list of disorders they claimed to help, as related in the London Gazette in June 1757 (spellings and punctuation as in original):

Tremblings, Faintings, Swoonings, Sick Qualms, Reachings, Loathings, lost Appetites, bad Digestion, weak Nerves, Flutterings, Palpitations, Anxieties, confused Thoughts, Lethargies, dull melancholic Dispositions, Vapours, low Spirits, Restlessness, Weariness, Frightful Dreams, Pains in the Head and Stomach, Vertigo’s, Swimings, Giddiness, Dizziness, Dimness, Flushings, the Cramp, Contractions, sudden Catchings, Obstructions, disorders incident to the Fair Sex, and, in fine, the whole train of Fits, Nervous and Paralitic Complaints.

In 1771 Lowther published a pamphlet called A Dissertation on the Dropsy; distinguishing the different species of dropsy, the various causes of the disorder, and the most effectual method of cure. The Monthly Review‘s verdict (shown here in its entirety) was rather dismissive:

This dissertation is full of hard words and cramp phrases, and is written with a view to celebrate the great and unknown virtues of Dr. Lowther’s diuretic drops.

Lowther’s medicine was still well-known enough in the 1780s to warrant it a place in a satirical poem about newspapers, published in The Town and Country Magazine:

Here puffing empirics, in a pompous style
Excite “the passing tribute of a smile”

In Lowther’s far-famed powders you will find
(Forget not those which are prepar’d by Hinde)
Virtues most potent, powerful to cure
The worst diseases men can here endure
Whoe’er on them will, confident, rely
May Death’s dragoons for numerous years defy.