The Quack Doctor

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 find another way of attaining their goal – the obvious solution being to become richer and better looking.

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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.

Source: The Graphic, 19 Feb 1881

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This is a product I really don’t know much about, but I just had to feature it on the site because I love the chap’s cheerfully unsympathetic response to his friend’s agony. And the agony of corns is not to be underestimated, judging by a case study from Thomas J Ashton in 1853. He reports on a maid-servant, aged 20, who had such a painful corn on her little toe that she cut it off.

Not the corn, the whole toe. Her method was to put a knife against the toe, like a chisel, and strike it hard with a mallet. The resulting haemorrhage occasioned some alarm to her mistress, who had her taken to hospital. She eventually recovered, but the healing was complicated by the fact that there was bone sticking out and, unlike with a normal amputation, no flap of skin left to cover the wound.

Bond’s Corn Cure was only advertised for a brief period in 1881, but was part of a long tradition of salves, plasters and unspecified wonder-cures that had appeared in the papers for more than 100 years. There was also a plethora of home remedies, but the usual advice from medical writers was to wear well-fitting shoes and use pads of linen or soft leather with a hole in them – much like the modern corn plasters.

Those crippled by pain, however, could get pretty desperate, and one option was to pay an itinerant corn-cutter to treat the offending area. Some of these practitioners were more skilled than others, and some were more honest than others. From the late 18th century, they were increasingly referred to as chiropodists, but the term met with a sneering response from the faculty, who saw it as a ludicrous attempt to make the occupation sound more scientific.

The paring of corns by a family member or by the patient themself carried a risk of drawing blood and causing septicaemia, but an additional risk with corn-cutters was that of being bled of large sums of cash.

An 1846 correspondent to the Lancet described how an earl of his acquaintance was fleeced by a chiropodist known to be preying on elderly wealthy customers. The earl, aged 78, had two troublesome corns and was willing to do anything to get rid of them – including agreeing to the corn-cutter’s demand of 10s. per corn.

The operation commenced; when it was over, the corn-cutter presented my friend with a paper on which were arranged 116 corns, or dark somethings which he designated such, and smilingly announced his claim of £58!

The earl paid up and, hugely embarrassed, didn’t admit the episode to his family for several weeks – whereupon they found it hilarious and told everyone, including the doctor who wrote in to the Lancet. His opinion on what he would have done in the same situation was: “I would have made the fellow eat up his corns, and then kicked him down stairs.”

But how was it physically possible for the chiropodist to extract 116 corns from the earl’s foot? Well, it was all part of a lucrative scam carried out by more than one disreputable corn-cutter of the time. At the beginning of the procedure, the chiropodist would smear a thick ointment over the foot. Within this were shavings from horses’ hooves, which could then be plucked out and displayed to the horrified patient. Some quacks used pieces of porcupine quill, according to the Lancet, but that seems to me a lot of trouble to go to when hoof-clippings were readily available.

With such dodgy practices going on, it’s no surprise that chiropody had a bad reputation, but there were ethical practitioners too, and by this time they were beginning to recognise the need for regulation. Lewis Durlacher, Surgeon-Chiropodist to the Queen, said of corn-cutters in the preface to his 1850 work, The Foot, its Pain and Penalties:

From such men the public, being unable of themselves to distinguish between the competent practitioner and the empiric, ought to be protected either by legislative enactments, or by medical bodies licensing those who make chiropody a part of their regular medical education.

In spite of Durlacher’s attempts, however, a professional body – The Society of Chiropodists – was not established in Britain until as late as 1912.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Source: The Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times, 31 December 1892

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I’ve decided to have a go at doing a podcast. It’s about 13 mins long and goes into much more detail than the post below, so if you’ve got time, do have a listen. If for some reason you desperately want to download it, you can do so here by right-clicking on the player thingy.

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The Electric Corset was sold by Cornelius Bennett Harness, proprietor of the Ammoniaphone. His Medical Battery Company’s main product was the ‘electropathic’ belt, which contained zinc and copper plates that were somehow supposed to generate a health-giving current.

The Electric Corset was magnetic rather than electric, because all it had was a magnetised steel busk (the plates at the front that attach together to fasten the corset). Harness was initially a distributor for the famous American invention, Dr Scott’s Electric Corset (which Lidian at The Virtual Dime Museum has blogged about here). By 1891, however, he was selling his own version out of his opulent premises in Oxford Street.

A supposed visitor to this ‘Electropathic and Zander Institute’ described it as follows:

It seemed to me that I was standing in a Temple of silence. Outside was the rush and roar of London life. Inside, all was calm and peaceful. The interior, in its blend of colours and graceful hangings, and its rich carpeting, reminds one of Oriental times. The attendants move so softly and speak so gently. Here and there, young women, in neat print dresses and caps, move gracefully about. You yourself feel hushed and awed, as if some magician were about to appear.

The excerpt is from the Pall Mall Gazette (August 5 1892), and continues in a gushing manner about the numerous diplomas on display in Mr Harness’s consulting room. Although presented as a feature article, the piece turns out to be an advert, and was an attempt to cover up the fact that the company was in trouble.

Earlier that year, a customer named Mr Jeffrey had consulted the company’s hernia specialist (a former salesman of Oriental furniture). He was prescribed an electropathic belt but later consulted a doctor and got fitted with a proper truss. He refused to pay the balance of £3 3s. on the useless belt. In July 1892 the company sued him but lost, and had to give back the £2 2s. he had already paid. Harness had occasionally got into similar situations over the past few years, but this was really the start of a slippery slope for his electropathic empire.

In reporting the case, the Electrical Review described Harness’s activities as ‘one of the grossest cases of misrepresentation of the present day.’

In response, Harness sent a circular to newsagents warning them that he would hold them responsible for these ‘malicious libels’ should they continue to sell the Electrical Review. Many, including W.H. Smith & Co., did stop selling it, so the periodical’s owners took Harness to court and were granted damages of £1000.

In October 1893, the Pall Mall Gazette stopped accepting advertisements from the Medical Battery Company and printed a series of articles headed ‘The Harness “Electropathic” Swindle’, which stated:

The Medical Battery Company has for years past been fattening on a system of fraud and imposture which is absolutely unequalled in the annals of swindling.

Harness himself (pictured below) it described as:

… a man of no pretensions whatever to scientific or medical knowledge, but [is] a common, illiterate and unscrupulous charlatan.’

The articles resulted in a lot of customers demanding their money back. In early November 1893, he and his business associate, Dr James McCully (originally a qualified physician but struck off the Medical Register), were arrested and charged with unlawfully conspiring to defraud.

Dr McCully was found not guilty but the jury couldn’t agree about Harness. The courts ordered that the company be wound up. Almost immediately, Harness tried to resurrect it as the Medical Electrical Institute and was allowed to do so on condition that it was under control of a qualified medic. The creditors and shareholders of the old company unanimously agreed that it should go ahead, and Mr Harness became manager of the new company on a salary of £600 a year.

The trouble was that in spite of considerable advertising, no one would buy the products. Within a few months he went bust. After that, Harness faded into obscurity, dying in 1921 at Christchurch.

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 brief interlude from the usual style of post today, as I’m still attempting to erase the Yankee Rubber Baby from my brain. The following letter was printed in The Monthly Gazette of Health in June 1821. A surgeon, not the most modest fellow in the world, gives an explanation for quackery – it’s all the fault of tightwad patients…

I am in practice as a consulting surgeon, and admire the spirit with which you lash quackery, both regular and irregular; but you must allow me to shew that patients themselves are the cause of Empiricism, as I think I shall convince you and your readers, by the following instances.

I have attained considerable celebrity, and in some particular complaints, can justify my pretensions to a niche in the Temple of Fame, by affording instant and permanent relief. This I feel great pride and pleasure in performing, whenever such cases occur. One, amongst many, was a gentleman, who came from the West Indies on purpose for my advice, called on me in his carriage, was cured on his second visit, and paid me, with abundance of compliments, a fee, which of course I could not look at till he had departed, when I found it was ОNЕ POUND!

Another, a very old gentleman, who was relieved in the same speedy manner, and was equally LIBERAL! but probably, he means to remember me in his will.

I could give you many instances where my conduct has been thus honourable, although I might have kept these patients under my care for months, and then have cured them; yet so inconsiderate, and I will even say dishonourable has been their conduct. I do not mean to assert that I am more honourable than all other professional men, for I hear the same tale from many who have ability to relieve, but who, like me, have thus suffered for their generous behaviour. Men of no principle in the profession will guard against their patients’ parsimony; and those of no ability will of necessity oblige their patients to be visited frequently; but I would wish to ask you and your readers, whether the treatment I have described, and which professional men are often subjected to, does not hold out an incentive to quackery and imposition? I certainly think that a person of fortune, receiving speedy and permanent relief from a distressing complaint, at the hands of a man who has devoted a large portion of his life, and considerable expence, to acquire competent abilities, should offer a reward proportionate to the benefit the patient derives; and if this plan were more generally adopted, empiricism would receive its death-wound. I am, Sirs, Yours, &c.

AN OLD SURGEON.

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.