Epigram.

‘While Mapp to th’ Actors shew’d a kind regard,
On one side Taylor sat, on t’other Ward:
When their mock Persons of the Drama came,
Both Ward and Taylor thought it hurt their fame;
Wonder’d how Mapp cou’d in good Humour be—
Zoons, crys the Manly Dame, it hurts not me;
Quacks without Arts may either blind or kill,
But Demonstration shews that mine is Skill.

And the following was sung upon ye Stage:

You Surgeons of London who puzzle your Pates,
To ride in your Coaches, and purchase Estates,
Give over, for Shame, for your Pride has a Fall,
And ye Doctress of Epsom has outdone you all.

What signifies Learning, or going to school,
When a Woman can do without Reason or Rule,
What puts you to Non-plus, and baffles your Art,
For Petticoat-Practice has now got the Start.

In Physick, as well as in Fashions, we find
The newest has always its Run with Mankind;
Forgot is the bustle ‘bout Taylor and Ward,
Now Mapp’s all ye Cry, and her Fame’s on Record.

Dame Nature has giv’n her a Doctor’s Degree,
She gets all ye Patients, and pockets the Fee;
So if you don’t instantly prove her a Cheat,
She’ll loll in her Chariot while you walk ye Street.’[105]

At this time she was at her acme—but if an anonymous writer in the Cornhill Magazine for March, 1873, p. 82, is to be believed, she died December, 1837, ‘at her lodgings near Seven Dials, so miserably poor, that the parish was obliged to bury her.’

In No. 572 of the Spectator, July 26, 1714,[106] is a very amusing article on the quacks of Queen Anne’s time:

‘There is scarce a city in Great Britain but has one of this tribe, who takes it into his protection, and on the market-day harangues the good people of the place with aphorisms and receipts. You may depend upon it he comes not there for his own private interest, but out of a particular affection to the town. I remember one of these public-spirited artists at Hammersmith, who told his audience that he had been born and bred there, and that, having a special regard for the place of his nativity, he was determined to make a present of five shillings to as many as would accept of it. The whole crowd stood agape and ready to take the doctor at his word; when, putting his hand into a long bag, as everyone was expecting his crown piece, he drew out a handful of little packets, each of which, he informed the spectators, was constantly sold at five shillings and sixpence, but that he would bate the odd five shillings to every inhabitant of that place; the whole assembly immediately closed with this generous offer, and took off all his physick, after the doctor had made them vouch for one another, that there were no foreigners among them, but that they were all Hammersmith men.

‘There is another branch of pretenders to this art, who, without either horse or pickle herring,[107] lie snug in a garret, and send down notice to the world of their extraordinary parts and abilities by printed bills and advertisements. These seem to have derived their custom from an eastern nation which Herodotus speaks of, among whom it was a law that whenever any cure was to be performed, both the method of the cure, and an account of the distemper, should be fixed in some public place; but, as customs will corrupt, these, our moderns, provide themselves with persons to attest the cure before they publish or make an experiment of the prescription. I have heard of a porter, who serves as a Knight of the post[108] under one of these operators, and, though he was never sick in his life, has been cured of all the diseases in the Dispensary. These are the men whose sagacity has invented elixirs of all sorts, pills and lozenges, and take it as an affront if you come to them before you have been given over by everybody else. Their medicines are infallible, and never fail of success; that is, of enriching the doctor, and setting the patient effectually at rest.

‘I lately dropt into a coffee-house at Westminster, where I found the room hung round with ornaments of this nature. There were Elixirs, Tinctures, the Anodyne Fotus, English Pills, Electuaries, and, in short, more remedies than I believe there are diseases. At the sight of so many inventions, I could not but imagine myself in a kind of arsenal or magazine, where a store of arms was deposited against any sudden invasion. Should you be attacked by the enemy sideways, here was an infallible piece of defensive armour to cure the pleurisy; should a distemper beat up your head-quarters, here you might purchase an impenetrable helmet, or, in the language of the artist, a cephalic tincture; if your main body be assaulted, here are various kinds of armour in case of various onsets. I began to congratulate the present age upon the happiness man might reasonably hope for in life, when death was thus in a manner defeated, and when pain itself would be of so short a duration, that it would just serve to enhance the value of pleasure.

‘While I was in these thoughts, I unluckily called to mind a story of an ingenious gentleman of the last age, who, lying violently afflicted with the gout, a person came and offered his services to cure him by a method which, he assured him, was infallible; the servant who received the message carried it up to his master, who, inquiring whether the person came on foot or in a chariot, and being informed that he was on foot: “Go,” says he, “send the knave about his business; was his method infallible as he pretends, he would, long before now, have been in his coach and six.” In like manner I concluded that, had all these advertisers arrived to that skill they pretend to, they would have no need, for so many years successively, to publish to the world the place of their abode, and the virtues of their medicines. One of these gentlemen, indeed, pretends to an effectual cure for leanness: what effects it may have had upon those who have tried it, I cannot tell; but I am credibly informed that the call for it has been so great, that it has effectually cured the doctor himself of that distemper. Could each of them produce so good an instance of the success of his medicines, they might soon persuade the world into an opinion of them.

‘I observe that most of the bills agree in one expression, viz., that, “with God’s blessing,” they perform such and such cures: this expression is certainly very proper and emphatical, for that is all they have for it. And, if ever a cure is performed on a patient where they are concerned, they can claim a greater share than Virgil’s Iapis in the curing of Æneas; he tried his skill, was very assiduous about the wound, and, indeed, was the only visible means that relieved the hero, but the poet assures us it was the particular assistance of a deity that speeded the whole operation.’

There was another female quack in 1738, one Mrs. Stephens, and in the Gentleman’s Magazine for that year, p. 218, we read that ‘Mrs. Stephens has proposed to make her Medicines for the Stone publick, on Consideration of the sum of £5,000 to be rais’d by Contribution, and lodged with Mr. Drummond, Banker. He has receiv’d since the 11th of this month (April) about £500 on that Account.’ She advertised her cures very fully, and she obtained and acknowledged, as subscriptions from April 11 to the end of December, 1738, the receipt of £1,356 3s. (Gentleman’s Magazine, 1739, p. 49). And the subscribers were of no mean quality; they included five bishops, three dukes, two duchesses, four earls, two countesses, five lords, and of smaller fry a vast quantity. But this did not satisfy her; she had influence enough to get a short Act of Parliament passed in her favour (Cap. 23, 12, Geo. II., 1739), entitled:

‘An Act for providing a reward to Joanna Stephens upon a proper discovery to be made by her for the use of the publick, of the medicines prepared by her for the cure of the stone.

‘Whereas Joanna Stevens (sic) of the City of Westminster, spinster, hath acquired the knowledge of medicines, and the skill of preparing them, which by a dissolving power seem capable of removing the cause of the painful distemper of the stone, and may be improved, and more successfully applied when the same shall be discovered to persons learned in the science of physick; now, for encouraging the said Joanna Stephens to make discovery thereof, and for providing her a recompence in case the said medicines shall be submitted to the examination of proper judges, and by them be found worthy of the reward hereby provided; may it please your Majesty, that it be enacted, etc.

‘£5,000 granted out of the supplies for the discovery of Mrs. Stephens’s medicines. Treasury to issue the said sum on a proper certificate.’

A committee of twenty scientists investigated her medicines, and reported favourably on them. They were trifold. A powder, a draught, and a pill—and what think you they were made of? The powder was made of egg-shells and snails, both burnt; the draught was made of Alicante soap, swine’s cresses burnt, and honey. This was made into a ball, which was afterwards sliced and dissolved in a broth composed of green camomile, or camomile flowers, sweet fennel, parsley, and burdock leaves, boiled in water and sweetened with honey; whilst the pill was compounded of snails, wild carrot seeds, burdock seeds, ashen keys, hips and haws, all burnt to blackness, and then mixed with Alicante soap! These were the famous remedies for which a grateful nation paid such a large sum!!!