Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked / Disease and Death in the Pot and Bottle

by Anonymous

The sanction and encouragement given to quacks and quackery in this country have long and loudly been stigmatized by foreign writers as a national opprobrium to Britain; and it must be allowed very justly. The increase of these vermin and pests of society has long been a disgrace to the legislature and government of the country. “They manage these things,” as Sterne says, “better in France.” How careful our neighbours are of the health of their community may be gleaned from the following paper lately read before the Royal Academy of Medicine, at Paris:—

“1st. That for several centuries, by the vigilance of the administration, in concert with the most distinguished medical men, the strongest efforts have been made to rid society of the pestilence constantly springing up from secret remedies. 2dly. That the most favourable circumstances are at present combined to free them from the tribute of money and life, which, on no consideration, ought longer to be tolerated.”

It is to be hoped that our government will be influenced by like motives and follow the glorious example of our neighbours. If they want precedent,—the great bugbear of improvement either in morals, politics, law, religion, or even common sense, in our error-ridden nation, history furnishes us with sufficient examples. But, while those methods and laws are being planned and prepared, let us, in the mean time, resort to the good old practices of correcting and punishing the jugglers of the present day.

In the reign of Edward VI. one Gregg, a poulterer, in Surrey, was set in the pillory at Croydon, and again in the Borough of Southwark, during the time of the fair, for cheating people out of their money, for pretending to cure them with charms, by only looking at the patient, and examining his water. In the reign of James I., an order of council, founded on the statute of Henry, granted to the College of Physicians, was issued to the magistrates of the city of London, for the apprehension of all reputed empirics, to bring them before the censors of the College, in order to their being examined as to their qualifications to be trusted either with the lives or limbs of the subject. On that occasion several mountebanks, (among others, Lamb, Read, and Woodhouse,) water casters, ague charmers, and nostrum venders, were fined, imprisoned, and banished. This wholesome severity, it may be supposed, checked the evil for a time; but in the reign of William III. it became again necessary to put the laws in force against those vermin; in consequence of which many of them were examined, and confessed their utter ignorance even of reading and writing. Some of the miscreants were set in the pillory, and some were put on horse-back with their faces towards the horses’ tails, whipped, branded, and banished.

In Stowe’s Annals is to be found an account of a water caster being set on horse-back, his face towards the horse’s tail, which he held in his hand, with his neck decked with a collar of urinals, and being led by the hangman through the city, was whipped, branded, and afterwards banished. One Fairfax, in king William’s time was fined and imprisoned for doing great damage to several people, by his aqua celestis. Antony, for his aurum potabile; Arthur Dee, for advertising remedies which he gave out would cure all diseases; Foster, for selling a powder for the green-sickness; Tenant, a water doctor, who sold his pills for 6l. each; Ayres, for selling purging sugar plumbs; Hunt, for putting up bills in the streets[T] for the cure of diseases; and many others, were all punished, and compelled to relinquish their malpractices.

But it is not only the interloping quack—the irregular and illegitimate charlatan and self-dubbed doctor that does mischief and destroys the health of the public, but the “regular” and legitimate pretender to medical knowledge, or as they have been significantly and appropriately termed by Dr. Morrison, the “roturiers,” or dabblers in physic, often do not much less mischief. The following extract from the Manual for Invalids is so much to the purpose, that the wider its circulation can be promoted, the greater good will be produced to society at large.

“In the restoration of health, the poor often try the efficacy of the wine vaults and the medical wisdom of the druggist, who flourishes greatly in low neighbourhoods, in the metropolis, and even in some large provincial towns. These men, whose solitary qualification for this honest mode of existence has been commonly an apprenticeship behind the counter, have often placed in imminent peril many a valuable life. Sometimes it has occurred that a shrewd boy, employed to clean bottles and sweep out the shop, has received an intuitive call, and has felt himself fully qualified for the important office of recovering and regulating the health of many invalids. The writer has a knowledge of a general practitioner of this description who was received behind a druggist’s counter in the manner before related, and perhaps, learning audacity from his late employer, has obtained, through the medium of puffing friends, a surreptitious reputation, and is cried up by those worthies as a very skilful, even a “delightful” and “fine” man, particularly for nervous invalids, and more especially for the disorders of women and children.”

Thousands and thousands of the population of this blessedly gifted country in medical science, are killed by this disgraceful quackery of the drug-shop, and the iniquitous drug-jobbing of apothecaries. What murders, what numerous murders have those men to answer for by their careless and injudicious use of powerful medicines—calomel and opium! But perhaps they console their unfeeling and selfish hearts with the miserable subterfuge that they are merely removing that portion of the increasing population which is the great bugbear, that is hourly threatening to eat up Mr. Parson Malthus and his believing disciples by wholesale.

But the prescribing druggist, the drugging apothecary, and the soi-disant surgeon are not the only regular and legitimate quacks; we have quack physicians, who by the remittance of the enormous sum of £15 to a Scotch university are entitled, legally and professionally, to tack the wonder-working cabalistical initials M.D. to their names, and are then entitled to kill the king’s liege and loving subjects, “secundum artem,” with licensed and legitimate potion, pill, and draught; who to return obligations to their “pals” the apothecary and surgeon, prescribe draughts by the quart and the gallon—bleeding, blistering, and purging, ad infinitum. By these mystified and jabbering doctors, whose little-or-no wisdom consists in foolish words of little or no meaning, and dog Latin, or disputes about precedence and the receipt of fees, the laws of vital existence and the astonishing functions of the animal economy, are understood by hearsay and inspiration!

This statement of the general ignorance of the medical profession is not exaggerated. “Five sixths of the medical profession,” says Dr. Morrison, in Medicine No Mystery, “know little or nothing of the science of life.” The cause of this lamentable ignorance arises from the abominable and disgraceful system of medical education in vogue, according to which the bought and sale prices of the current drugs, and the art and mystery of dispensing medicines often constitute the whole and sole knowledge of those who are entrusted with the health and lives of their fellow-creatures; in whose bungling and self-interested practice hearsay and precedent supply the place of experience, and by whom signs and symptoms are mistaken for causes. Another cause is the deplorable deficiency of the public in the knowledge of medicine. Were the principles of medical science to form a part of general education, the public would be enabled to select well educated and honest medical men, and escape the fangs and delusions and murderous acts of quacks and impostors, whether interlopers, or those who are enrolled in one or other of the medical institutions of London. It really seems an anomaly in the pursuit and attainment of knowledge that a man should conceive it necessary to be able to judge whether his shoe or his cravat is made in a good and workman-like manner, but of that science which treats of himself, and with which his health, his life, and all his comforts are so intimately and seriously connected, he should be in the most abject state of ignorance, and, unhappily, not hesitate to avow that ignorance! But while it is an incontrovertible truth that the community in general should have some knowledge of medicine, in order to enable them to judge of the qualifications of their medical attendants, (to the attainment of which knowledge popular medical writings, such as Dr. Kitchener’s Art of Invigorating Life; Sir John Sinclair’s Code of Health and Longevity, Dr. Reece’s Medical Guide, and the Oracle of Health and Long Life, or Plain Rules for the Preservation and Attainment of Sound Health and Vigorous Old Age, and a few others, are calculated to afford the most effectual help;) it must be deeply regretted by every well disposed member of society, to observe books got up by rash and inexperienced persons, professing to give directions for the management of health, which are filled with the crudest and the falsest instructions, the nature and consequence of which are decidedly destructive of health, if not of life itself. And what must add to that regret, is that the title-page and covers should be blazoned with the professed sanction and recommendation of a late eminent medical practitioner. But surely that gentleman could never have read, among many other dangerous fooleries and extravagancies, the silly and monstrous instructions to sleep with open windows, to swallow as much salt as possible, &c. &c. &c. or if he did read them, it is but an act of courteous feeling towards him to suppose that he did not comprehend their purport. Another circumstance deserving reprobation respecting the means which have been taken to get that ill-judged little book into circulation has been the profuse and repeated attempts of a portion of the public press to give it notoriety and circulation. It certainly savours a little of presumption, that those who have not made the science of medicine a study or a profession, should venture to give opinions of the merits or demerits of a work professing to treat of the momentous subjects of health and life. These remarks are not made in any petulant feeling. I believe the author to be a well-intentioned though a misguided man, and as he hints that he published his work with the hope of adding to his income from the profits, I sincerely wish that he had chosen a subject for which he may be more competent, as then I should have been relieved from the necessity of making these remarks, in the expression of which a sense of public duty has alone actuated me. It gives me, however, great satisfaction to draw the public attention to the masterly abstract of Cornaro’s Treatise appended to the book, and which, from its disparity of style, is evidently written by another person. It is no extravagant praise to say that the public is under infinite obligations to the able and experienced writer who made that valuable addition to the book. Comaro’s works may now be read with advantage by every one, as it is freed from the disagreeable prosings, tautologies, and incongruities which pervade that work. It is to be hoped that the proprietor of the book will favour the community with its publication in a separate form.