The Quack Doctor

Source: Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 3 April 1823

Much of the evidence on this one is anecdotal, but the proprietor of the Balm of Zura, Dr A. Lamert, certainly sounds quite a character.

Lamert was the son of a London-based German quack who dabbled in ophthalmology before moving on to selling a Nervous and Rheumatic Balsam and treating venereal disease.

While Lamert senior worked solely from his Spitalfields address, his son branched out, setting up a dispensary in Bristol and travelling the country, announcing in each town’s newspaper that the lucky denizens were to be favoured with a visit. In the first four decades of the 19^th century he went far and wide, taking in Derby, Ipswich, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Falmouth, Exeter, Manchester and plenty of other places in between. While at Ipswich in 1811 he received some anonymous hate-mail with a Bury postmark. His dad advertised in the Bury and Norwich Post offering a 30 guinea reward for identifying the culprit, but the residents of Bury appear to have remained silent.

Lamert Jnr was the ostentatious variety of quack who flaunted his wealth and took every opportunity to publicise his miraculous cures. The Citizen (October 1 1829) described him as:

…a fearfully dashing gentleman, all powder, with a black servant, and drives a beautiful pair of greys. Vive la quackery!

…while the Medical Adviser in 1824 was typically indignant:

All Devonshire, and the next fifty counties, does not produce so arrant a humbugger as this: he is powdered from the occiput to the coccygis,—from one shoulder to the other —from the cape of his coat to the buttons of his waist,—a curricle a-la-Jordan, an eyeglass,—a bamboo, and a copper face. Thus he parades about, all outside, while if you tapped him upon the head it would sound like a drum, —so hollow, so empty, so brainless is the wight.

(‘a-la-Jordan’ refers to the proprietors of the Cordial Balm of Rakasiri.)

One of Lamert’s innovative ways of increasing his fame was to attend the theatre and, during the performance, instruct a servant to call out that he was wanted for some medical emergency.

‘These interruptions,’ grumbled the Medical Adviser, ‘always happen when some interesting part of the play is going on.’

Lamert’s theatrical connections, however, were not confined to sitting in the audience. In his youth he had sung at the Royalty Theatre in Whitechapel, but after being pelted with oranges, he changed his career path and went on to follow in his father’s footsteps as a quack.

His arrogance might have made him capable of drawing attention, but this was often from pranksters rather than admirers. In 1848, (after Lamert’s death) an anti-quackery lecturer called Mr Richardson told of a student going to consult the doctor, pretending to be deaf. Lamert, assuming he would not be heard, ‘made some very free remarks on the character of the student’, who soundly thrashed him and went on his way.

The Medical Adviser (who, once they had it in for a quack, didn’t tend to let up), tells the tale of a dissatisfied customer who – not quite literally – gave Lamert a taste of his own medicine. The patient had wasted £5 on the Balm of Zura and received no benefit, so he took the empty bottle along to a tavern where Lamert was regaling the drinkers with a song. When the doctor ‘had occasion to absent himself a short time from the company,’ the joker pissed in the bottle and topped it up with brandy and water. On Lamert’s return he complained to him that his last purchase of Zura had gone sour.

As the doctor tasted the mixture, a couple of the tavern-goers were ‘necessitated to quit the room, to give vent to their risible titillation.’ Then someone pretended to get angry that the sour mixture might be poisonous, so Dr Lamert drank the whole bottle in proof of its safety, to the hilarity of all concerned.

They let him in on the joke and the original prankster ‘prudently decamped’ in the face of his wrath.

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

Source: The Times, 8 August 1817

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image: Le Baume d’Acier by Louis Leopold Boilly. Courtesy of the US National Library of Medicine.

BEAUTY, HEALTH, and a PEARLY SET
of TEETH, may be preserved to old age, by
the use of BUTLER’s VEGETABLE RESTORA-
TIVE TOOTH-POWDER, a specific for the Tooth
Ach, and its cause, the Scurvy in the Gums.
Of the Properties of this Tooth-Powder.
Its detersive property is just sufficient to clear
away those destructive particles of acid which ge-
nerally adhere to the Gums, and in the interstices of
the Teeth ; healing soreness in the former, and pro-
moting a new Enamel of pearly whiteness, where it
has been injured or corroded.
These distinguishing Characteristics of its sanative
effects and superiority have procured it the unbounded
approbation of the Queen, the Princesses, the Em-
press of Russia, the Duchesses of York, Bedford,
Gordon, Devonshire, Rutland, Lees, and most of the
English and Foreign Nobility, many of whom recom-
mend it with admiration, as a necessary appendage
to the Toilet: it imparts a firmness and beautiful
redness to the Gums–to the Breath the most de-
lectable sweetness, and if used constantly as direct-
ed, will render the Teeth firm and white, and pre-
vent the Tooth-ach from returning to those who
have been liable to its most baneful effects.
Sold by Mr. Butler, No. 4, Cheapside, corner of
St. Paul’s, London, in boxes at 2s. 9d. each, duty
included; also, by Mrs. Jones, at the Office of this
Journal, Spiers, Butler, Munday, and Slatter, Tre-
achers, and Merrick, Oxford; Mercer, Abingdon;
Norton, Henley; Marshall, Wycombe; Loggin,
Aylesbury; Beesley, Banbury; and most Medicine
Venders and Perfumers in every Town.

Source: Jackson’s Oxford Journal, Saturday 18th Feb 1815 

 (Image from Gray’s Anatomy, 20th US Edition 1918.)

There’s a sub-species of urban myth specifically related to “the olden days,” and one of its pronouncements is that everyone before about 1950 had appallingly rotten teeth. That’s if they were lucky enough to have any teeth at all.  I have a vague memory of a primary school lesson where we learnt that those funny olden-days folk used to hold a candle up to their mouths to burn out the worms that were supposed to cause tooth-ache. No doubt this was true in certain places at certain times, but in general I take this kind of stuff with a bucketful of salt.  All those museum-exhibit skulls with reasonable sets of teeth are anomalies, right? They must have belonged to those heretics who didn’t believe the Earth was flat.

Of course there have always been people with bad teeth, and of course there were a whole lot more of them before fluoride toothpaste and regular dental check-ups  - but everyone, EVER? Even before sugar became a readily available commodity? What was the evolutionary point of teeth if they never worked?

This advert from the sugar-loving Regency period suggests that even those with the grottiest of gnashers had hope. Though frankly I still can’t accept the idea of Mr Darcy breathing rancid fumes over Lizzie.

To be had of Messrs. TREWMAN and SON, Exeter.
TO SWEETEN the BREATH, cleanse the
MOUTH, preserve and whiten the TEETH, and
cure GUM BOILS, the Preparation of NEWTON’S RES
TORATIVE TOOTH-POWDER, from the recipe of the
late SIR RICHARD JEBB, M.D. has been most success-
ful ; It is particularly recommended to be used in all cases
where the Teeth and Gums are in a bad state, where the
enamel is impaired, the Teeth very loose or partly decayed,
or the Gums spongy, sore or apt to bled ; symptoms which
proceed from Scurvy, and which this Powder will never fail
to remedy. It is a certain, safe, and speedy cure for the
Tooth ach, and and extremely efficacious in arresting the pro-
gress of disease, where fragments of unsound Teeth remain
in the head, causing violent pain, and imparting their
noxious contagion to the adjoining teeth.
    Newton’s Tooth Powder is sold by all Dealers in Me-
dicines and Perfumery throughout the Kingdom ; in
Exeter; by Messrs. Trewman and Son, Hedgeland, Evans,
Lee, Williams and Dyer, Hill, Curson, Ware, Pearse, Mus-
grave, Dymonds, and Newton; Nott, Croydon, Forward,
Teignmouth; Rogers and Williams, Honiton; Jarman,
Exmouth; Quick, and Frost, Tiverton.

Source: Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, Or, Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser, Thursday 19th January 1815.

Notes: Line 10 - ”bled” instead of “bleed” is as in original. Line 13 – Tooth ach (or, more often, tooth-ach) was a common spelling during this period.

Trewman and Son, you’ll notice, owned the newspaper as well as being the agents for this remedy. It was normal for provincial newspaper printers to be the stockists for medicines made in London.

The “late Sir Richard Jebb” was a genuine doctor appointed physician to the Prince of Wales in 1780 and, briefly, to George III in 1786. He died in 1787, so it’s rather doubtful whether he could have had any approval over the recipe of this 1815 medicine.