The Quack Doctor

Source: The North Wales Chronicle 18 April 1868

In a series of letters to the Medical Circular in the 1860s, Francis Burdett Courtenay, under the pseudonym ‘Detector’, exposed the villainous practices of a breed of quacks preying on men who suspected they had spermatorrhea.

Spermatorrhea (an excessive discharge of semen) was a source of such panic in the mid-19^th century that there were even cases of suicide among those who had convinced themselves – or been led to believe – that they were suffering.

In one of the letters (which he collected into a pamphlet called Revelations of Quacks and Quackery in 1865) Courtenay cites the case of an anxious young man who responded to one of Dr Hammond’s advertisements. The reply asked for two guineas for a ‘self-curative’ belt – he sent the money, but the package he received in return contained only ‘some bottles of medicine and a lotion to rub over the penis and testicles.’ Annoyed that he didn’t get the belt, the patient wrote back, asking where it was.

Hammond responded with a missive calculated to scare his patient half to death. He had looked further into the case (even though he had never actually seen the man) and decided ‘a slight disease of the kidneys’, was causing semen to drain away.

This vital waste is not only capable of causing all the symptoms you detail, but such is the sympathy existing between the generative functions and the brain, that should this drain of the most vital of all your secretions be not immediately arrested, your whole system must suffer very serious derangement, whilst the organs of generation themselves will become vitiated and relapse into a state of utter impotency.

This would result in complete loss of erectile function and lead to ‘withering and wasting of the penis’. In case the lad wasn’t already terrified enough, Hammond predicted that his case would end in insanity. Fortunately, he had sought help just in time!

Hammond again recommended the curative belt (which the patient thought he’d already paid for) and sent a bill for a further 2 guineas. The young man paid up, and while it would be easy to laugh at him throwing good money after bad, there’s no law against being inexperienced and scared that there’s something seriously wrong with you.

The belt arrived, and proved to be an ordinary suspensory bandage, with a band that went round the patient’s waist, holding up a circular string of metal pieces through which one had to place the part in question. This would somehow provide

a continuous current of electricity, which is taken up by the whole system, infusing new life and ‘manly vigour’ into the debilitated or relaxed frame, and affords great support and comfort to the testicles and generative organs.

The patient subsequently consulted Courtenay and was reassured that there was nothing wrong with him.

As well as the belts, Hammond sold ‘Restorative Powders’ and ‘Seminal Replenisher’, which were not only supposed to produce top-quality semen, but also restore ‘brain fluid’, whatever that might be.

In 1869, the more famous electric belt manufacturer, Pulvermacher, tried to gain an injunction against Hammond for using the trademarked slogan ‘Electricity is Life’ – and for bringing the whole electric belt business into disrepute – but failed as it proved difficult to find out exactly who Hammond was.

The following advert, placed right underneath a Dr Hammond ad in the Bristol Mercury, appears to promote a competing specialist in electrical medicine. Percy House and 11 Charlotte Street were, however, the same place, and Henry James was either a sidekick of Hammond’s or quite possibly the same guy. Further aliases later joined the team – there were Dr Walter Jenner, Dr Harrison, Mr Raphey and Mr A Barrows, all at slightly different versions of the same address.  Once patients gave up on the useless treatment from one alias, they would receive through the post a pamphlet extolling the superior virtues of another.

Hammond also employed what Courtenay referred to as ‘the hospital dodge’. His earlier ads proclaimed him to be ‘of the Lock Hospital’ and his letterhead described him as ‘F.A.S., F.S.A., M.R.A.S., H.G. St Mary’s, King’s College, The Lock, and St George’s Hospitals, LONDON.’ An impressive list – but F.A.S., F.S.A. and M.R.A.S. didn’t stand for any recognised qualifications, and H.G. simply meant ‘Honorary Governor.’

Any Tom, Dick or Harry could become an honorary governor just by making a charitable subscription to the hospital. Although the Lock cancelled Hammond’s donations when they found out what he was up to, this didn’t stop him continuing to deceive patients by claiming affiliation with these respectable institutions.

A John Leech cartoon commenting on the ready availability of poisons - an unscrupulous chemist sells arsenic and laudanum to a child. Credit: Wellcome Images

When you’re under the weather and you Google your symptoms in an attempt to convince yourself that you are about to die, spare a thought for Jean Landess, whose perusal of Chambers’s Encyclopaedia was the beginning of a tragic chain of events.

In May 1868, 39-year-old Mrs Landess, of Paisley, had just weaned her youngest child and had developed what she called a ‘weed’ in her breast. She sought medical help, and the family doctor poulticed and lanced two small abscesses.

Mrs Landess, however, discovered from the Encyclopaedia that her symptoms were almost exactly like those of breast cancer. On the recommendation of an acquaintance who had apparently been cured, she decided to consult an unlicensed practitioner by the name of Paterson. This might seem like a naïve or even downright stupid decision, but I think it’s understandable. She had recently undergone a painful invasive procedure, she was in the midst of the hormonal upheaval of stopping breast-feeding, and now feared that a terminal disease was going to deprive her 8 children of their mother. The recommended cancer-healer must have seemed a potential life-saver. Unfortunately, he proved quite the opposite.

Alexander Paterson was a shoemaker with a sideline in treating cancer patients. He made no claims to being a doctor and does not appear to have been out to swindle anyone. He was no less dangerous, however, for being well-intentioned.

Paterson told Mrs Landess that she did have cancer, but not to worry – it could easily be removed. The first stage of the treatment was a fly-blister (a plaster of cantharides) that would take off the surface of the skin, leaving it ready to absorb his cancer-curing salve. After the plaster had been on for about 12 hours, he applied the ointment and instructed the patient to renew it every day.

By Paterson’s next visit, most of the tissue had turned black, but he saw this as a good thing and reassured Mrs Landess that the treatment was going well. She, however, was suffering from headaches, vomiting and great thirst, and the inflammation of the breast began to spread into her arm. Two days later, she had a fit. Her husband described her appearance as:

…being like a ‘half-felled cow’. Foam issued from her mouth, and she roared most unnaturally.

That evening, she died.

Douglas Maclagan, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at Edinburgh University, carried out a post-mortem examination and confirmed that Mrs Landess had never had breast cancer. There were traces of arsenic in her organs, and when he analysed Paterson’s salve he discovered that it was 49% arsenic and 51% lard.

Arsenic salves were a long-established quack treatment for cancer, and local unqualified healers like Paterson were not unusual – though perhaps less common by the 1860s than they had been in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries. When Paterson was brought to trial charged with culpable homicide, the question was not whether he should have been practising as a healer in the first place, but whether he had been negligent when administering a dangerous medicine.

Paterson’s defence was that he had 20 years’ experience of treating cancer and that when Mrs Landess asked him for help, she knew very well that he was an unlicensed practitioner. Several witnesses came forward to say that he had cured them.

The judge, Lord Ardmillan, must have been in a particularly good mood that day. In summing up, he advised the jury not be too swayed by the fact that Paterson was unqualified, but to take into account his experience, the apparent cures of the witnesses, and the fact that any medical man could muck up sometimes.

‘A mere mistake,’ he said, ‘did not imply culpability.’

The jury found Paterson guilty. Lord Ardmillan, however, told him that ‘no one could suppose he meant any harm to the unfortunate woman Landess’ and sent him to prison for just four months.

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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.

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?

Bristol Mercury 16 June 1838

Baron Spolasco next moved on to Swansea, and celebrated the first anniversary of his rescue by paying for a whole ox to be distributed among the poor. He was, however, about to suffer a temporary reversal of his fortunes, for in 1839 he was arrested in connection with the death of a young woman.

Twenty-three-year-old Susannah Thomas consulted the Baron about abdominal pain. Her aunt’s statement at the inquest gives an insight into how he worked. The Baron allegedly

…told [Miss Thomas] he knew by her eyes, that she was very ill, and that he would cure her; afterwards she would have cause to bless the hour she saw the good Baron Spolasco. Witness was not allowed to relate the symptoms of the disorder of deceased to the Baron, as he said he could know them by her bold eye.

In return for 22s. 6d., he supplied two pills and some powder – the aunt noticed that this was exactly the same for all the other patients. Back home, Miss Thomas became worse, so her aunt sent for the Baron, who advised to try some castor oil and a gruel and turpentine clyster. A quarter of an hour after he left, Miss Thomas died. The autopsy revealed that her intestines were inflamed and her stomach ulcerated and gangrenous, with a hole in the stomach wall allowing the contents to escape into her abdominal cavity. The surgeon conducting the post mortem examination believed that the Baron’s medicines – composed of aloes and jalap – had hastened the patient’s death.

Baron Spolasco was charged with manslaughter and, furious about the ‘foul conspiracy got up against him’ was sent to gaol to await the next circuit court. When his trial came up, the surgeon could not say with certainty that the medicines were the cause of death and the Baron was found not guilty.

But it wasn’t long before he had another brush with the law. In March 1840 he was arrested for forging the government stamps on his pills. An undercover policeman went to the Baron’s house and was furnished with medicines whose stamps imitated a design discontinued in 1823. Spolasco’s defence was that the packets were intended for sale in Ireland, where stamps were not necessary. He again spent a few months in gaol waiting for the Assizes, and again was acquitted.

One might have expected him to lie low for a while after this troublesome time, but he was as ostentatious as ever and within a few months of getting out of gaol, he published a song (in both English and Welsh) lauding his genius.

I pledge unto Spolasco’s name,
A name in which we glory;
His splendid cures and healing fame
Recorded are in story.
Be mindful of Spolasco’s skill,
Ye patrons of his merit;
Save him from all impending ill.
And a relentless spirit.

It goes on in the same vein for ten verses.

Advertising token from the Baron's days in Cork.

(Thank you to Lucy Martin for the above photograph.)

The Baron remained in Swansea for several more years, and was mentioned in an inquest for the Rev. Edward Matthews Davies, who died of kidney disease in 1843. The Baron had  tried to get him to hand over 20 guineas for consultation. Mr Davies’ servant asked whether such a large amount of money would actually result in a cure, and Baron Spolasco allegedly replied:

Do you think I would take any man’s money if I could not cure him? It is not the money I want, it is a name; I can get money as fast as I can count it.

It proved clear that the Rev Mr Davies had died of natural causes, and this time the Baron was not charged with anything. The coroner observed that:

…however culpable it might be to extort money from the pockets of a person labouring under a deadly disease, by pretending to cure him, yet a coroner’s jury could not deal with the case, unless it were proved that death was caused by the medicine prescribed.

At some point over the next few years, Baron Spolasco moved to London, remaining there until a 16-year-old servant girl stole a diamond ring from him, saying in her defence that she had taken it in revenge after he criminally assaulted her. She quickly changed her story to state that he had ‘taken a little liberty’ but that she had pushed him away. The Baron denied her allegations but appears not to have pressed charges for the theft. Soon afterwards he departed these shores for New York.

He carried on there just the same as he had done everywhere else, trumpeting his miracles and charging hefty fees for his advice. But he gradually went to seed and became the subject of Walt Whitman’s merciless description in ‘Street Yarn’ (1856):

Somebody in an open barouche, driving daintily. He looks like a doll; is it alive? We’ll cross the street and so get close to him. Did you see? Fantastic hat, turned clear over in the rim above the ears; blue coat and shiny brass buttons; patent leathers; shirt-frill; gold specs; bright red cheeks, and singularly definite jetty black eyebrows, moustache, and imperial. You could see that from the sidewalk; but you saw, when you stood at his wheel, not only the twinkling diamond ring and breast-pin, but the heavy, slabby red paint; and even the substratum of grizzly gray under that jetty dye; and upon our word there’s a hair of the same straggling out under the jaunty oiled wig! How straight he sits, and how he simpers, and how he fingers the reins with a delicate white little finger stuck out, as if a mere touch were all — as if his whole hand might govern a team of elephants! The Baron Spolasco, with no end of medical diplomas from all sorts of universities across the ocean, who cures everything immediately; you may consult him confidentially, or by letter, if you choose. It would be worth money to see that old gentleman — they say he is nearly eighty — undress himself! Clothes, wig, calves, stays, moustache, teeth, complexion — what a bald, bare, wizened, shriveled old granny he would be!

Though ‘they’ might have said Spolasco was pushing eighty, he was more like a mere 56. His fortunes declined and he moved to increasingly less salubrious parts of the city, defaulting on his rent each time. He died in 1858, unable to find a miraculous cure for his own cancer – but  perhaps still mourning the death of his little son on the Cork coast twenty years before.

On 19 January 1838, the steamer Killarney set sail from Cork, bound for Bristol. On board were 37 people and 600 pigs, and ahead of them was the most violent storm in more than half a century. The steamer was forced to turn back, and anchored at Cove for a few hours, until the Captain made the ill-fated decision to continue. By the following evening, 21 survivors were clinging to a rock, fast losing hope of rescue.

One of these survivors was Baron Spolasco (above), a flamboyant character who had been fraudulently practising as a physician and surgeon in different parts of Ireland. Though he looks rather exotic, he was probably born in the north of England in about 1800, and his real name appears in different sources as John Williams, John Smith, or the slightly more impressive John William Adolphus Frederick Augustus Smith.

Spolasco did not specialise in particular ailments – he cured everything instantly. You can click to enlarge this handbill and see the extent of his claims. I am very grateful to Lucy Martin for the handbill and portrait photographs, which she took at the University of Cork Art Gallery.

One part of the handbill says:

Any individual who has lost his, or her nose, can be supplied with a REAL one, Grecian, Roman or Aquiline, perfect and natural as by nature

This was done by the Talicotian operation, an ancient and ingenious way of reconstructing a missing nose by bringing down a flap of skin from the patient’s forehead.

On that fateful Friday in January 1838, Spolasco was off to Bristol to meet the agent of a ‘high personage’ about a complicated surgical case (or perhaps the people in Cork were starting to get wise to him). All his belongings were loaded onto the Killarney but he, his eight-year-old son Robert and their two Newfoundland dogs were five minutes late. They had almost resolved to wait for the next week’s boat, when some locals offered to row them out to the steamer.

During the course of that night and the next morning, the storm and the terrified pigs put the steamer in peril and it perished in Renny Bay. The poor Newfoundlands rapidly joined the choir invisible, but the Baron and Robert were among the 21 people who reached a rock 200 yards from shore. Though so close to land, there were no rescue attempts until the Sunday, by which time little Robert was among those who succumbed to the waves. In his Narrative of the Wreck of the Steamer Killarney, Spolasco later described his feelings about the death of his son:

I pause one moment to offer up my most fervent supplications to my God, to spare such of you my kind readers, as are fathers, and mothers; to spare you ever, from having to go through, to witness, to feel, to suffer, even a thousandth part of what I did for my dear, my sweet, my beautiful boy. Alas ! he is now no more, he is as still as the grave ! yes he is quiet—he moves not—he breathes not—he no longer enchants me as he was wont to do, morning, noon and night, with his sweet prattling, his but too sensible conversation ! HE IS DEAD ! ! !

The Narrative is a gripping read and, while melodramatic (in a good way) and self-aggrandising, the Baron’s story concurs in most details with other reports of the wreck.

The image below is from the Narrative, and though there’s no doubt a bit of artistic licence, it does emphasise just how near and yet so far the stranded people were from the land. They could see the locals making off with the dead pigs washed up on the beach, but they could do nothing to get themselves there alive.

We had not the good fortune to reach the top of the rock; we only got to between one and two yards of it and that part faced the sea. We had to hold on all night by our fingers and toes – something like being suspended by our hands and toes from the sill of a window in one of the upper stories of a house, and at every moment the tremendous and fearful billows lashing at our backs terribly, we were not able to rest ourselves even for a moment.

Eventually they were spotted by some ‘respectable’ people who sent for a set of rescue apparatus, but this relied on getting a rope out to the rock, and attempts proved futile. The rescuers tried attaching ropes to ducks and setting them off across the waves, but only one duck made it, and the survivors couldn’t catch it. Next they tried using a howitzer to fire balls with ropes attached, but to no avail.

Then the chief coastguard’s brother, Edward Hull, had the idea of carrying a long rope round the bay so that it would stretch from one promontory to the other, with a second rope hanging down over the rock. The first attempt was late on Sunday afternoon and as darkness fell the rescuers almost left off, but in desperation two people grabbed the rope and shouted to be hauled in. According to the Baron:

…[the rescuers] immediately did so, upon which we heard a splash but could see nothing, it being at this time dark.

After this melancholy occurrence, the remaining survivors were abandoned to a second night without food, water or shelter. The next day, using the long rope and a basket, those on land were finally able to get the staples of life – wine, whiskey and bread – onto the rock. The Baron writes:

I cannot find words sufficiently strong to express how grateful the wine was to my parched lips. Each having partaken of this seasonable relief, we all huzza’d, and waved our hats and caps, in token of gratitude for what we had just had, and in the hope of being speedily relieved.

The equipment had a cot designed to transport human beings, and by this method the 14 survivors were removed, one by one. First was the only woman, Mary Leary, but Baron Spolasco managed to be second in line and was taken to a nearby house. One of the others subsequently died of exhaustion.

Only a month later he wrote his Narrative, and used it as a way of increasing his fame and spreading the word about his medical practice. He went through with his plan of going to Bristol and started up with the same wild claims about miraculous cures. But his adventures had only just begun.

In the next post, the intrepid Baron gets arrested for manslaughter, charged with forgery, and falls under the satirical eye of Walt Whitman in 1850s New York.

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.

WANTED!
An industrious and strictly honest man in each
County in the State to take orders by samples for
Velpeau’s Magnetic Agents.
Salary first year $800, and small commission,
payable monthly. For full particulars address
Dr. M. Velpeau, 422½ Broadway, N. Y., sending stamp.

Source: The Sauk County Standard, (Baraboo, Wisconsin) 18 July 1855

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This advert might not leap out from the thousands of similar mid-19th-century US ads seeking salesmen for books, farming equipment, store goods etc., but the product behind it is quite unusual.

If the industrious and strictly honest man wrote for particulars, the reply wouldn’t tell him much about the job. Instead, it would ask him to send $2 for a sample of the product. Only on the arrival of the sample would he discover that he was expected to sell Dr Velpeau’s Magnetic Love Powders. At this point, most industrious and strictly honest men probably put the episode down to experience and went to look for a more reputable and less embarrassing business opportunity.

The particulars sent with the sample claimed:

These powders, properly administered, are warranted irrespective of age, circumstances or personal appearance, to win them the love or unchanging affections of any one they may desire of the opposite sex.

The enamoured person had to work out a way of getting the object of their affections to eat the powder, and then wait in anxious lovelorn anticipation until absolutely nothing happened. As one newspaper joked:

Only think of it! For two dollars, any enterprising young man – no matter if he is as poor as an editor, and as ugly as a baboon, can through the instrumentality of these powders, make himself “lord” of the most charming lass of “sweet sixteen” to be found within the limits of our friend’s agency, which comprises four counties!

Velpeau’s real name was J C Merrill – perhaps the pseudonym was an attempt to associate the powders with famous French surgeon Alfred Velpeau – and according to the New York Times, his scheme attracted up to 40 letters per day.

In late 1855, angry (and still single) customers began writing to the Mayor of New York to complain about ‘Velpeau’. Merrill was arrested for fraud but released when he promised to discontinue business and return the complainants’ money. Six weeks later, however, he was still selling the powders and pocketing the cash, so he was arrested again, charged with defrauding a variety of people, and locked up.

As for the spurned lovers, they presumably had to look for another way of attaining their goal – the obvious solution being to become richer, less ugly and more interesting.

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This Cut illustrates the manner of Using
DR. PIERCE’S
Fountain Nasal Injector
or
DOUCHE.
This instrument is specially designed for the perfect application of
DR. SAGE’S CATARRH REMEDY.
It is the only form of instrument yet invented with which fluid medicine can be carried high up and perfectly applied to all parts of the affected nasal passage, and the chambers or cavities communicating therewith, in which sores and ulcers frequently exist, and from which the catarrhal discharge generally proceeds. The want of success in treating Catarrh heretofore has arisen largely from the impossibility of applying remedies to these cavities and chambers by any of the ordinary methods. This obstacle in the way of effecting cures is entirely overcome by the invention of the Douche. In using this instrument, the Fluid is carried by its own weight, (no snuffing, forcing or pumping being required,) up one nostril in a full gently flowing stream to the highest portion of the nasal passages, passes into and thoroughly cleanses all the tubes and chambers connected therewith, and flows out of the opposite nostril. Its use is pleasant, and so simple that a child can understand it. Full and explicit directions accompany each instrument. When used with this instrument, Dr. Sage’s Catarrh Remedy cures recent attacks of “Cold in the Head” by a few applications.
Symptoms of Catarrh. Frequent head-ache, discharge falling into throat, sometimes profuse, watery, thick mucus, purulent, offensive, &c. In others a dryness, dry, watery, weak or inflamed eyes, stopping up or obstruction of nasal passages, ringing in ears, deafness, hawking and coughing to clear throat, ulcerations, scabs from ulcers, voice altered, nasal twang, offensive breath, impaired or total deprivation of sense of smell and taste, dizziness, mental depression, loss of appetite, indigestion, enlarged tonsils, tickling cough, &c. Only a few of these symptoms are likely to be present in any case at one time.
Dr. Sage’s Catarrh Remedy, when used with Dr. Pierce’s Nasal Douche, and accompanied with the constitutional treatment which is recommended in the pamphlet that wraps each bottle of the Remedy, is a perfect specific for this loathsome disease, and the proprietor offers, in good faith, $500 reward for a case he can not cure. The Remedy is mild and pleasant to use, containing no strong or caustic drugs or poisons. The Catarrh Remedy is sold at 50 cents, Douche at 60 cents, by all Druggists, or either will be mailed by proprietor on receipt of 60 cents. R. V. PIERCE, M.D., Sole Proprietor. BUFFALO, N.Y.

Source: The Indiana Progress 25 April 1872

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We’ve met Dr Ray Vaughn Pierce before as the promoter of the Pleasant Pellets. A big-business quack, he sold enormous quantities of his remedies, which included the Golden Discovery, the Extract of Smart Weed and the Vaginal Tablets.

For the treatment of catarrh, Pierce recommended Dr Sage’s Catarrh Remedy in conjunction with the Nasal Injector. Strangely enough, the business address for Dr Sage’s remedy was exactly the same as that for Pierce’s other products – the World Medical Association in Buffalo, NY.

An 1890s ad for the Catarrh Remedy included the following picture:

The ad continues:

“That’s what I call making glad the waist places,” said Smithson, as he put his arm around a lady’s waist. But Lilly won’t care much for this show of affection if Smithson doesn’t get rid of that disagreeable catarrh of his.

The waste/waist joke wasn’t very original, but I sympathise with both Lilly and her bunged-up beau.

Instructions for using the Nasal Douche appear in Pierce’s popular book, The People’s Common Sense Medical Adviser.

Before using the Catarrh Remedy, you had to clear out the nasal passages by taking one quart of soft water, dissolving two large tablespoons of salt into it, then heating it to body temperature – in other words ‘until it gives a pleasant, mild warmth to the inserted finger.’

The douche reservoir had to be elevated just above your head, then you would take the tube and put the nozzle into one nostril, up which the pressure would make the fluid flow in a ‘gentle stream.’

According to the book,

The douche should not be employed unless both nostrils are open and the flow is free. If the head is ‘stopped up,’ snuff up the warm liquid from the hand occasionally, until the passages are open and you can breathe freely through both nostrils.

In which case, one might be forgiven for wondering what’s the problem! If, however, you got this far, it was time to introduce Dr Sage’s Catarrh Remedy to the mixture. Once you were used to the Injector, you could put the reservoir on a higher shelf to create a stronger flow. The procedure should be carried out at least twice a day but preferably no more than three times. For anyone nervous about squirting liquid up their nostrils, reassurance was available:

Let no one entertain any feeling of timidity on commencing the use of this instrument, as its operation is perfectly simple and harmless, and, with the fluids which we recommend, is never attended with any strangling, choking, pain, or other disagreeable sensations.

If you didn’t use up all the liquid in the reservoir, you could pour it back into the bottle – but the book recommended that if the liquid had passed through the nasal cavity, it would contain the germs of the disease and therefore should not be used a second time.

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.