The man who, without experience or education, undertakes to compound drugs, and, when compounded, to administer them as remedies for diseases of the human body, may justly be pronounced a dishonest adventurer, and an enemy to life and the fair proportions of his fellow-citizens. Quackery is an antient profession in London. Henry VIII. despised them, and endeavoured to suppress their nostrums by establishing Censors in Physick; but I do not profess to meddle with them before 1700.
"At the Angel and Crown, in Basing-lane, near Bow-lane, lives J. Pechey, a Graduate in the University of Oxford, and of many years standing in the College of Physicians, London; where all sick people that come to him may have, for sixpence, a faithful account of their diseases, and plain directions for diet and other things they can prepare themselves; and such as have occasion for medicines may have them of him at reasonable rates, without paying any thing for advice; and he will visit any sick person in London or the Liberties thereof, in the day-time, for 2s. 6d. and any where else within the Bills of Mortality for 5s.; and if he be called by any
person as he passes by in any of these places, he will require but 1s. for his advice."
The ridiculous falsehoods of Quacks have long been detested by the sensible part of the Community; but every thing that has been said and written against them avails nothing: thousands of silly people are yet duped, nay, are bigoted in their belief of the efficacy of nostrums. Be it my task to shew the reader a few of the contrivances and schemes of a Century, and to bring before him genuine effusions of impudence which have daily insulted and deceived the inhabitants of London.
"April 12, 1700.
A satisfactory experiment for the curious.
"If you please to pour one part of Sal volatile oleosum, or any other oily salts into a narrow-bottomed wine-glass, and near the like quantity of Stringer's Elixir, febrifugium martis, there will be a pleasant conflict: the elixir will immediately make a preparation of and precipitate those oily volatile salts into a fixed armoniac salt in the bottom, and receive the spirituous aromatic oily parts into itself, and yet retain its own virtues, colour, and taste. There is no other true and genuine elixir but Mr. Stringer's that is exposed to sale; for those called Elixir proprietatu and Elixir salutis, &c. are mere tinctures drawn by brandy or nasty spirits; but this is a perfect elixir or quintessence, whose perfect principles
of spirits, oil, and salt, are so inseparably united, that it can neither decay, putrefy, nor die, no more than the glass that contains it; and is so far from being a harsh corrosive, that it feels like oil, yet dries like a spirit, cleanses the skin like soap, and not only allays all putrefactive ferments in a moment, but immediately cures the most malignant fevers, takes away all sorts of corns and hardness in the skin, and makes the roughest hands smooth and white, only by anointing with it morning and night for a month together: which medicine with his other called Salt of Lemons, in despite of all opposers, will approve themselves nearest of affinity to an universal medicine."
In this admirable medicine the Londoner of 1700 had an internal and an external application, and materials to cleanse and soften the hands, which would at the same time enable him to walk the streets in comfort and ease, in defiance of corns and horny excrescences. Happy Londoners! possessing such men as Dr. Pechey and Mr. Stringer, aided by Dr. Case, whose unguentum panchrestum, prepared by the Spagyrick art, might justly be called the Golden Mine. This wonderful preparation cured by its sympathetical powers; in short, the Doctor found "it more infallible than the Zenexton of Paracelsus." This great Doctor was the means of informing us that Quacks were then in the habit of employing
persons to thrust bills into the hands of passengers in the streets. For example: "Your old friend, Dr. Case, desires you not to forget him, although he has left the common way of bills."