The Art of the Bone-Setter: A Testimony and a Vindication

by George Matthews Bennett

Of the older Bone-setters we find some extraordinary accounts, and evidently not penned by friendly hands. One of the most famous of the Bone-setters of the last century was Mrs. Mapp, of Epsom, who was the daughter of a Bone-setter named Wallin, of Hindon, Wiltshire. The accounts of her life and career, which have come down to us, are very contradictory. For instance, the London Magazine tells us that in August, 1736, the town was surprised with the fame of a young woman at Epsom, who, though not very regular in her conduct (so it was said) wrought such cures that seem miraculous in the Bone-setting way. The concourse of people to Epsom on this occasion is incredible, and it is reckoned she gets nearly 20 guineas a day, she executing what she does in a very quick manner. She has strength enough to put in any man’s shoulder without any assistance; and thus her strength makes the following story the more probable. A man came to her, sent, as is supposed by some surgeons, on purpose to try her skill, with his hand bound up, and pretended his wrist was put out, which upon examination she found to be false; but, to be even with him in his imposition, she gave it a wrench which really put it out, and bade him go to the fools who sent him and get it set again, or, if he would come to her that day month, she would do it herself. It is further stated that since she became famous she married one Mr. Hill Mapp, late servant to a mercer on Ludgatehill who, it is said, soon left her and carried off £100 of her money. Her professional success, however, says another account, must have gone far to solace her for matrimonial failure. Besides driving a profitable trade at home, she used to drive to town once a week in a coach-and-four, and return again bearing away the crutches of her patients as trophies of honour. She held her levees at the “Grecian” Coffee House, where she operated successfully upon a niece of Sir Hans Sloane. The same day she straightened the body of a man whose back had stuck out two inches for nine years; and a gentleman who went into the house with one shoe-heel six inches high came out again cured of a lameness of twenty years standing, and with both his legs of equal length. It does not appear that she was always so successful, for one Thomas Barber, tallow-chandler, of Saffron-hill, thought proper to publish a warning to her would-be patients. The cure of Sir Hans Sloane’s niece made Mrs. Mapp town talk, and, if it was only known that she intended to make one of the audience, the theatre favoured with her presence, was crowded to excess. A comedy was announced at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, called The Husband’s Relief; or the Female Bone-setter, and the Worm Doctor. Mrs. Mapp attended the first night, and was gratified at hearing a song in her praise, of which we give two verses as a specimen:

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 the doctress of Epsom has outdone you all.

Dame Nature has given her a doctor’s degree,

She gets all the patients and pockets the fee;

So if you don’t instantly prove it a cheat,

She’ll loll in a chariot whilst you walk the street.

Mrs. Mapp soon afterwards removed from Epsom to Pall Mall, but she did not forget her country friends. She gave a plate of 10 guineas to be run for at Epsom, and went to see the race. Singularly enough the first heat was won by a mare called “Mrs. Mapp,” which so delighted the doctress, that she gave the jockey a guinea, and promised to make it a 100 if he won the plate, but to his chagrin he failed to do so. The fair Bone-setter’s career was but a brief one. In 1736 she was at the height of her prosperity, yet, strange to say, she died at the end of 1737 in miserable circumstances, as set forth in a paragraph in the London Daily Post of December 22nd, 1737. The success and reputation of Mrs. Mapp has met with a parallel in our own day. Just at the time when Dr. Wharton Hood was showing the English surgeons how to imitate the practice and cures of the Bone-setter, the medical journals gave prominence to the doings and manipulation of a female Bone-setter named Regina Dal Cin, who had astonished the surgical world both in Italy and Austria. Dr. A. Joannides[1] describes her manipulations which he witnessed in company with many hundreds of medical men and students in the Ospedal Civico at Trieste. He says, “No case of reductions of the femur were witnessed by me. Many cases of muscular rigidity of the upper and lower extremities, and more especially of the small articulations, have been either completely and instantaneously cured or partially ameliorated. No attempt has been made in cases of old dislocations with fistulas or scars.” Her doings excited some attention even in this country. We are told that she was an intelligent looking woman, about fifty-five years of age, and that she had practised the art, which had been taught her by her mother and grandfather for about forty years at a place named Vittoria, in the province of Treviso. After the death of her mother, she joined her brother, who kept a public-house, where she exercised her skill on the lame and the crippled frequenters of the establishment, and effected a number of cures. A medical eye witness tells us that her activity, flexibility, and sensibility of the tips of her fingers, and her habit of incessantly talking to the patient whilst operating, are the qualities on which her success in operating depends. Gradually coming into notice among persons of various classes of society, she obtained a wide spread of reputation, and visited among other places, Venice, Trieste, Pesth, and Vienna. In each place crowds of patients, both belonging to the locality and coming from a distance flocked to her. She professed especially to treat deformities of the hip joint, even reducing dislocations of long standing, whether congenital or acquired. She does not operate except in the presence of a surgeon. This, according to one account of her, was a measure taken for her own safety, as she was once interfered with by the Austrian law for practising without a legal qualification. A Royal Commissary of the district of Vittoria, however, gave her permission to practice the reduction of human joints, and especially of femoral luxations, provided that she operated in the presence of a physician. The British Medical Journal devoted some space to Regina Dal Cin’s method of procedure which shows that she practised on similar grounds to the English Bone-setter, as detailed in these pages. We are told by the journal in question she first applies poultices for some days, for the purpose of softening the tissues; this having been effected to her satisfaction, she operates by rapidly performed process of manipulation. Professional opinion was divided as to her merits. Her supporters alleged that her cures, including the reduction of old dislocations, were genuine; that—as Dr. Schivardi of Milan observes—“science ought to be grateful to her for having amply demonstrated by a vast number of facts (1) that dislocations even of long standing can be cured without recourse to any great violence, or to the ponderous instruments hitherto deemed indispensable; (2) that small and modest apparatus suffice, after the operation, to keep the limb in its place—nay, are more efficacious than strong instruments; (3) that quiet and absolute repose for eight days, and moderate repose for other twenty days, suffices to enable Nature to bring to the new domicile given to the head of the joint all the materials necessary for the fabrication of the fresh ligaments required.” On the other hand her opponents, more or less, denied her cures, and considered her an impostor. Dr. Neudoorfer, apparently admitting some of her cures of ankylosed hip-joint, states that the method which she follows is nearly the same as the process of “apolipsis,” recommended and practised by him several years ago, for the removal of fibrous ankylosis. She paid a visit to Vienna, where her proceedings attracted a good deal of attention, and gave rise, to some degree, of controversy in medical circles. A specially appointed committee accompanied her in her visits to four patients, and their report was unfavourable to her pretensions, and resulted in the withdrawal of the permission given to practice in Vienna.