Medical Meddlers, Mediums and Magicians E-Book

Dr Keith Souter

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 327

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The Victorians had a thirst for knowledge. This drove them to explore the unchartered corners of the world, plumb the unfathomable depths of science, discover evolution and create some of the engineering and architectural marvels of the world. Yet this open-mindedness also at times made them utterly gullible. Because of their closeness to disease and the ever-present threat of their own mortality, it was inevitable that they would be open to the claims of quacks who promised all kinds of panaceas, and to mediums who offered a means of communicating with the dead. So too did it make them eager for diversion and entertainment by the conjurers and illusionists of the great music halls. Strangely, it was through the magic-making skill of the conjurers that the activities of many of the tricksters and fraudulent mediums finally came to be exposed. Medical Meddlers, Mediums & Magicians is a box of delights for all students of Victoriana.

Leseprobe

For Jon, my son-in-law

&

In memory of my great grandfather, who for a time actually was a Victorian music hall performer.

Keith Souter

For my lovely boy, Kester.

Laura Matine

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing a book is never a solitary venture. There are always many people working away backstage who help in their different ways to get the show on the road.

The analogy of a show is entirely appropriate to this book, considering that many of the people described in this book were performers in one way or another. And so I begin my thanks with the late great David Nixon, whose television magic shows sparked off my lifelong interest in conjuring.

My agent Isabel Atherton is, I am sure, a conjuror herself, for she seems to produce book deals with the dexterity of a skilled prestidigitator. She worked her magic with this book and for that I give her my thanks.

Simon Hamlet was the senior commissioning editor at The History Press who accepted the book proposal and started the process of putting the show on stage. He was succeeded by Abbie Wood and then by Lindsey Smith, all of whom have been most helpful in refining the work and preparing it for its dress rehearsal. Mark Beynon, my editor, completed the grooming and helped prepare the book for its public appearance. I am grateful to them all.

A huge vote of thanks to the talented Laura Matine, who has so skilfully illustrated the book and captured the Victorian atmosphere so successfully. It has been a pleasure to work with her once again.

And finally, thanks as ever to my wife Rachel, who makes everything worthwhile.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Introduction

Part One: Medical Meddlers

1 A Majestic Medical Meddler

2 The Golden Age of Quackery

3 Water, Electricity and Fresh Air

4 Physiognomy

5 Phrenology

6 Dental Meddlers

7 Snake Oil, Hair Tonics and Carbolic Smoke

Part Two: Mediums

8 The Coming of Spiritualism

9 Psychic Phenomena and Séances

10 Materialisation

11 Ghost Hunters and Psychic Investigation

12 Theosophy

Part Three: Magicians

13 From Ancient Egypt to English Music Halls

14 The Egyptian Hall

15 The Great Illusionists

16 Pepper’s Ghost

17 The Tricks of the Trade

18 The Knight, the Handcuff King and the Electrical Wizard

Selected Bibliography

Copyright

AUTHOR’S NOTE

In deciding to write a book about the Victorian Age of Credulity I should explain that I have no intention of disparaging the people who lived during the reign of Queen Victoria. Indeed, I confess to being a huge admirer of the Victorian age.

When I was a youngster I devoured the works of Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Dickens painted the picture of the Victorian era up until his death in 1870, then Conan Doyle gave us Sherlock Holmes and the colourful world of the London underworld. While as a teenager I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the great detective, it was actually to be the path of his friend and confidant Dr John H. Watson that I followed as an adult, when I entered medical school to begin a career in medicine.

Yet I also had a fascination for all things to do with conjuring. As a 7-year-old such was my passion for the magic art that I joined the David Nixon Magic Club and proudly carried the membership card and wore the badge to show everyone. In the 1950s and ’60s David Nixon was the magician and I imagined that one day perhaps I would emulate him by performing feats of magic.

The David Nixon Magic Club membership card and badge.

Having always had a strong sense of history I have researched the history of science and medicine and the history of magic for many years. I studied about the sleep temples of ancient Greece, the Roman hospitals, the anatomy teaching schools of Georgian England. I read about the great magicians of the past; I studied their books, their shows and strove to learn their secrets. Yet between these two areas of study I found myself becoming fascinated by the Victorians’ approach to death and their interest in the occult and spiritualism.

As I immersed myself in a study of the Victorian age it became increasingly clear that people at that time were incredibly open to new ideas and were often extremely credulous. This credulity extended across all areas of life, but especially so in the areas of medicine, belief and entertainment. There were practitioners who were willing to prey on people’s gullibility. These were the Medical Meddlers, Mediums and Magicians of the Victorian Age of Credulity.

While there may not seem to be an immediate link between these three groups, on closer inspection there is. You could say that within all three groups there were people who deliberately set out to deceive and to profit from their deception. Magicians, as entertainers, were honest about their deception. They were illusionists, actors playing the part of magicians and wizards. Out and out quacks and fraudulent mediums were anything but honest, for they preyed on people’s weaknesses. As we shall see in this book, there were overlaps of all three groups in many instances.

In my opinion, the magicians come out of this little study with the greatest dignity, for as professional deceivers themselves they were often responsible for unmasking and exposing those who claimed to have powers that they did not. In an age of credulity they used their skills to educate and to discredit dishonest swindlers.

This book is the fruit of those studies, which has been simmering along in the back of my mind for far too long. So welcome, I hope that you enjoy the journey back into the days of Victorian yesteryear when the world was a more mysterious and intensely exciting place to live.

Keith Souter

INTRODUCTION

Before We Lift The Curtain Or Attempt To Part The Misty Veil

An introduction to credulity

Before we start on our journey it would make sense to consider some of the reasons why the Victorians were so willing to believe in the claims of quacks and the table knocking that they heard during séances, and be convinced that the illusionists who performed in the theatres and music halls were capable of actual magic.

A small group at a séance.

During the Victorian age the thirst for knowledge and discovery seemed insatiable. Built upon the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment it was a great age ruled over by Queen Victoria and, until his death, her husband Albert, the prince consort. In all areas of life pioneers were pushing back the frontiers of knowledge and improving transport, communication, engineering and architecture. Steam power, gas, electricity, anaesthetics and aseptic surgery promised to make the world a better and safer place to live in. Perhaps most significantly, Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution and published his ground-breaking book On the Origin of Species, which shook the very foundations of religion and belief.

The expanding British Empire meant that maps were continually being redrawn in order to show the spread of pink, showing the extent of the empire upon which the sun never set. People were proud and patriotic. Yet it was also a time when children were sent up chimneys, down mines and made to work unbearably long hours when they should have been playing or learning. It was a time when we had workhouses, appalling slums and prisons where both men and women were sent to do hard labour. This huge inequality in society stimulated men and women to do their utmost to bring about social reforms. It was a slow process.

It is perhaps because there was so much change going on and so many discoveries being made that people were open to all sorts of ideas. The truth is that although advances were being made in many sciences, medicine lagged behind. The germ theory of disease was not proposed until late in the nineteenth century, so there was fertile ground for all manner of theories about health. Medicine was a very inexact science and until 1858 the medical profession was totally unregulated.

Medical meddlers or out and out quacks peddled all manner of potions, nostrums and elixirs to cure all sorts of ailments, from baldness to impotence, from piles to gangrene, and from syphilis to death itself.

Death was of course always on people’s minds, since there was incredibly high infant mortality, there were epidemics and there were casualties from the many wars that were fought to extend and protect the empire’s dominions. Mediums and clairvoyants preyed on the recently bereaved in séance parlours and village halls and seemed adept at parting the misty veil between the world of the living and the dead. They talked with the departed and produced ghostly phenomena or even manifested the spirits themselves.

CREDULITY

Not all of the people who practiced outré medical arts were quacks and charlatans. Neither were all of the mediums deliberate frauds. Certainly the vast majority of conjurors and illusionists never claimed to be anything other than entertainers, yet there are common threads linking the three areas. The backdrop against which they were all played was that of human credulity.

Credulity means the willingness to believe in something or in someone based on fairly scant evidence. While it can be considered as a good quality, more often people regard it as a weakness. Children naturally tend to be trusting in their parents and their family, but they have to be taught to be wary of strangers. This is sensible, since not everyone is trustworthy. Adults who remain credulous could be vulnerable to others who may gain some advantage by wilfully deceiving them.

People do vary in their credulity. It is a complex matter that has many elements. Although it is an artificial gradation you can virtually divide people into four types – sceptical, open-minded, willing dupe, or totally gullible. I am sure that you will recognise friends and family who fall into one or other group.

Credulity can also vary in any individual from time to time. Belief in a god is an example. When people are bereaved they are more likely to seek solace in religion, in the belief that the deceased will not simply cease to exist. Similarly, faced with illness that will not respond to medication they may accept the assurance about some other treatment from someone who seems knowledgeable, or from someone who received benefit from that treatment.

A gambler may be an out and out rationalist, yet when having a flutter he may ask Lady Luck to help him. People believe in lucky charms, talismans and good-luck tokens.

In the Victorian age we knew less about the laws of science or about the causes of illness. People may have felt less secure about reaching their allotted life span, and they were less sure that illnesses were not under the control of deities or spirits. The world was an altogether more mysterious place and many more things were possible.

PLAUSIBILITY

This goes hand in hand with credulity. Plausibility means whether something seems to be possible or acceptable.

When someone tries to persuade you to use a particular treatment then the way they explain its benefits will be extremely important. If they can persuade you that it sounds plausible then there is a good chance that it will work.

If someone gives a good explanation of the way in which the living and the dead can both exist then you may be persuaded to attend a séance. You may be willing to accept all that you see and hear at the event.

A medical theory or a philosophy, if it seems in accord with known science and the currently accepted understanding of the way that things work, will seem more plausible. This was the case with phrenology, the study of character through analysis of the contours of the lumps and bumps on the skull. It seemed plausible based on the Victorian understanding about the brain and the huge interest in anthropology that was generated by explorers and those who followed Darwin’s theories about evolution. Similarly, homoeopathy, the system of medicine based upon the principle of treating ‘like with like’, seemed intensely credible. Interestingly, of the two practices, phrenology (which seemed most plausible) died out while homoeopathy still thrives around the world, albeit continually dogged by controversy.

SUGGESTIBILITY

This is an interesting phenomenon that links credulity with plausibility. In normal consciousness we use various mental mechanisms that together make up our critical faculty. We use this in order to balance our credulity with what seems to be plausible.

In a hypnotic trance, one goes into a relaxed state in which the critical faculty ceases to operate at a normal level. For example, if you are given a pencil to hold when you are fully conscious, and told that the pencil will gradually get hotter and hotter, then your critical faculty will tell you that this is not plausible because pencils have no means of getting hotter of their own accord. If you are then put into a light hypnotic trance and again handed the pencil with the same suggestion that it will get hotter and hotter, then you probably would feel it getting hotter and hotter until you could no longer hold it. The pencil has not become hot, of course, rather your critical faculty has ceased to work so that you do not criticise the suggestion and it seems to be plausible. The result is that you respond to the suggestion.

This is not to say that during Victorian times people were hypnotised into thinking that things would work. There are other circumstances in which suggestibility increases. One such condition is in crowds united for a single purpose. An audience will often accept the illusion of the magician. A group listening to someone expound about the merits of a patent treatment at a medicine show may respond to the suggestions given. Similarly, people attending a séance may enter a trance-like state and suspend their critical faculty, so that they become open to all manner of things that they see and hear.

THE PLACEBO EFFECT

This is highly relevant to our consideration about medical meddlers. A placebo is an ineffective drug or treatment that somehow makes the patient feel better. The world comes from the Latin placere, meaning ‘to please’.

The placebo effect is a fascinating phenomenon, possibly the most fascinating phenomenon in medicine. For some reason (possibly for many reasons, including those that we have just considered) an individual will respond to an inactive agent in a very positive manner. Nowadays placebos are used in scientific trials, usually double-blind trials, in which neither the patient nor the doctor knows whether they are being given an active agent or a placebo. This sort of trial is used to assess whether a drug (the active agent) is superior to the placebo, i.e., better than nothing. The problem is that a placebo response can occur in anything between 25 and 70 per cent of cases. The frequently reported placebo response is 30 per cent, but it depends upon many factors. In general, the more dramatic the treatment, the greater the placebo response. It is also thought that the more the treatment is ‘sold’ by the enthusiasm of the practitioner the greater the placebo effect will be.

ILLUSION

Magicians specialise in the art of illusion. Essentially they present an effect that seems to operate by unseen means, by the power of magic. It is, however, just a trick. The point is that the observer sees the effect and draws his or her own conclusion. For example, a woman may be sawn in half. The audience sees it happen, yet everyone knows that it cannot possibly have occurred without fatal consequences to the magician’s assistant. The mind therefore interprets it as either a feat of magic, or of a skilful illusion.

We lay a great deal of importance upon what we see. In the context of a magic show you would accept the illusion as a magic trick. In the context of a medicine show it could be a very different conclusion. If you see someone hobble on stage on crutches and receive some treatment, be that a swig of elixir, a massage or some other treatment, before standing up straight and throwing away the crutches, then you could be forgiven for accepting what you saw as reality rather than a trick.

In the darkened room of a séance a ghostly manifestation would seem to be more real than a similar manifestation on a magician’s stage.

The context of the illusion and the manner in which it is presented will have a different impact upon individuals. The showmen, medical meddlers and mediums of the Victorian age had an awareness of this.

HOW LEGENDS SPREAD

Word of mouth has a very powerful effect on people. Once something or someone gains a reputation it can spread like wildfire. This was certainly the case with many of the medical meddlers who gained fame (or infamy) and fortune in days gone by. News about Dr Elisha Perkins and his tractors literally crossed the Atlantic and made him a fortune. Dr Ward’s drops similarly made him a rich man. People flocked to hear Mrs Maria Hayden, the American medium, when she came to London in 1852.

The most famous magic illusion is the ‘Indian Rope Trick’. In his book The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick, Peter Lamont tracks down the origin of the legendary illusion and explains how it grew in the telling.

All successful medical meddlers, mediums and magicians have to be aware of the importance of self-publicity if they want to become legends.

SELF-DELUSION

In psychiatry a delusion is defined as a false, fixed belief that is impervious to reason. It is not a normal state. It usually occurs as part of an underlying mental condition. A self-delusion is not necessarily a symptom of a mental condition. It can quite simply be a state whereby someone comes to believe in a system or theory that they practice. They come to believe that their system or theory is correct and that any effect anyone derives from its application is due to their ability to use the system, or is a validation of the system itself.

That is to say that someone could practice a type of medicine using a set of gadgets like the tractor rods that had been made by a supposed expert, such as Dr Elisha Perkins (who we shall consider in Chapter 2 The Golden Age of Quackery), and attribute results to the tractors, and not to the other factors that we have looked at in this introduction.

I do believe that this was the case with some of the practitioners of the various methods or philosophies that we will meet in the book. While some were utter rogues, others were credulous dupes. Essentially, there are likely to have been two types of practitioner (of both quack medicine and mediumship): those who knowingly deceived and those who were self-deluded as to the reason why they enjoyed their success.

AND FINALLY

I must clarify, however, that as to the question of whether or not the spirit does survive death I make no pronouncement either way. Nor do I have any view on modern-day spiritualism. I am sure that today, just as during the Victorian era, there are many people who are totally convinced that this is a reality and that contact with spirits is quite genuine. My only concern is with the fraudulent practices that unscrupulous mediums used during the Victorian age to dupe people who desperately wanted to believe.

And so now, let the curtain rise and the show and the séance begin!

PART ONE

MEDICAL MEDDLERS

1

A MAJESTIC MEDICAL MEDDLER

In consideration whereof, and for the ease, Comfort, Succour, Help, Relief, and Health of the King’s poor Subjects, Inhabitants of this Realm, now pained or diseased: … It shall be lawfull to every person being the King’s subject, having knowledge and experience of the nature of Herbs, Roots and Waters, or of the operation of same …, to practice, use and minister in and to any outward sore, uncome, wound, apostemations, outward swelling or disease, any herb or herbs, oyntments, baths, pultes and amplaisters, according to their cunning, experience and knowledge in any of the diseases.

Herbalist’s Charter King Henry VIII, 1542

King Henry VIII was fascinated by potions.

Throughout the history of medicine the majority of doctors have based their practice upon the accepted knowledge of the day. Those who do not subscribe to this approach but use unorthodox methods inevitably face being ridiculed by their peers or disparaged as quacks. The word ‘quack’ actually comes from ‘quacksalver’, derived from the Dutch kwakzalver. Originally it was used to describe a peddler in ready-made remedies, but eventually it became used as a blanket derogatory term for anyone who made extravagant claims about their expertise or their treatments.

Another derogatory term that was applied was ‘mountebank’. The origin of this was from the idea that unlicensed peddlers of medicine and nostrums would mount a bench or small stage at fairs or markets in order to extol about their remedies or their skill.

Of course, no one would ever have proudly claimed themselves to be a quack. Over the years, however, within the ranks of those who have been proclaimed quacks there are to be found many eminent people who did good work and whose inclusion was the result of professional jealousy. Such is the case of the great Dr Ignac Semmelweis (1818–65), a Hungarian physician who saved thousands of women from puerperal fever, an almost always fatal condition in the early nineteenth century, when he advocated that all doctors should wash their hands between conducting post-mortem examinations and visiting the midwifery suites. The orthodox profession was outraged at his audacity and he was effectively forced to leave Vienna.

Equally, there are many who attained fame and fortune in the sure knowledge that they were professing information they did not possess, and who offered treatments that they knew to be well-nigh useless.

But before we delve into the murky waters of medical meddling and the world of quack medicine, we need to look a little at the way that medicine has evolved.

HIPPOCRATES – THE FATHER OF MEDICINE

Hippocrates of Cos (460–377 BC) was a priest physician of the cult of Aesculepius. He was the first doctor to attempt to put medicine on a theoretical basis rather than attributing illness to demonic possession or the displeasure of the gods. He formulated the Hippocratic oath and wrote a body of work that is known as the Corpus Hippocratum.

THE HUMORAL THEORY

Hippocrates taught the Doctrine of Humors. This became the dominant theory in medicine until the Renaissance. Essentially, it was believed that there were four fundamental humors or body fluids which determined the state of health of the individual.

These humors were blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Aristotle had taught that the humors were associated with the four elements of air, fire, earth and water, which in turn were associated to paired qualities of hot, cold, dry and moist. Thus, earth would be dry and cold, water would be wet and cold, fire would be hot and dry, and air would be wet and hot.

The Doctrine of Humors.

GALEN OF PERGAMMON

Claudius Galenus (AD 131–201), known to history as Galen, was a Greek physician who practiced as a physician to a gladiatorial school and was later personal doctor to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. He developed the Doctrine of Humors further and taught that a proper balance of them was necessary for health. An excess of any humor could be treated by reducing a quality, or by reducing a humor, e.g. bleeding the patient or giving enemas, or treating with various Galenical drugs. An example of a Galenical would contain cucumber, which has cooling properties, because it naturally contains salicylates.

The individual’s temperament could also be discerned according to their balance of humors. Thus, sanguine individuals were perceived to have excess blood, choleric individuals had excess yellow bile, melancholics had too much black bile and phlegmatics had excess phlegm. As a philosophical system it had much to commend it and seemed perfectly plausible.

RENAISSANCE MEDICINE

This period saw a spate of scientific discoveries which would gradually discredit the humoral theory. The study of anatomy had been carried out erratically over the centuries, mainly because dissection was considered by the Church to be a desecration and an abomination. Nevertheless, in 1543 Andreus Vesalius of Florence published the world’s first anatomically correct treatise on anatomy. This set off a serious study of the body that culminated in William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood in 1616. Doctors began to realise that blood circulated, but there was no equivalent circulation for the other supposed humors.

Then in 1625, Santorio Santorio, a friend of Galileo, invented the thermometer. This really proved to be the nail in the coffin of the humoral theory since for the first time it could be demonstrated that people with hot or cold constitutions in fact both had the same temperature.

One would have thought that the Doctrine of Humors would just disappear at that point. This was not to be, since its simplicity and plausibility could be put to great use by the medical meddlers during the age of quackery that would follow.

Now let us backtrack a little to the days of the Tudors to consider one of the greatest medical meddlers.

KING HENRY VIII AND THE QUACK’S CHARTER

Medicine in Tudor England was a hotchpotch of medical practice. In 1518 King Henry VIII (1491–1547) conferred a royal charter to found the College of Physicians in London. This was the first attempt to regulate medical practice, albeit only loosely. The College of Physicians was permitted to license physicians to practice.

In 1540 he gave another royal charter to form the Company of Barber-Surgeons, which would eventually become the Royal College of Surgeons in 1800. Its function was to license surgeons.

By granting these two charters, King Henry VIII had effectively given the physicians and the surgeons the social status and recognition that they had sought. The physicians thought themselves to be socially superior to the surgeons, who in turn thought themselves to be superior to the apothecaries and other people who plied a trade. An effect of these charters, however, was that it was seen to give the physicians and the surgeons a monopoly on the preparation of medicines. Poor people could not afford the expensive preparations containing precious metals and minerals that the physicians and surgeons prescribed. Interestingly, Henry had some sympathy for them, for he himself was a medical meddler.

In 1542 he granted the Herbalist’s Charter, which allowed herbalists, or anyone with knowledge to do so, the right to prepare herbal remedies. Since this effectively gave anyone the right to practice medicine without any interference from the physicians or surgeons, it was derided by the medical profession as being the Quack’s Charter.

Undoubtedly, Henry’s interest in herbal preparations derived from self-interest. He suffered from leg ulceration for many years. Whether it was a varicose ulcer or a syphilitic ulcer has been debated by historians for many years. Whichever it was, he clearly tried to treat it himself. Indeed, he is known to have been experienced in compounding ointments and making plasters.

He actually collaborated with several doctors and wrote a book on the subject, containing 130 prescriptions. Many of them actually acknowledge that they were ‘devised by the King’s Majesty’. One prescription for a plaster ‘Resolved Humor If There Is Swellgnje In the Legges’.

Another was devised ‘for the King’s Grace to coole and dry and comfort the member’. It is likely that this and other similar ones were created by him to soothe and salve the king’s own intimate person, his sexual life being an important part of his very being.

King Henry VIII had set the scene with this charter. The real medical meddling was soon to start.

2

THE GOLDEN AGE OF QUACKERY

Before you take his drops or pills,

Take leave of friends and make your will.

Satirical caution about Joshua Ward’s ‘Pill and Drop’, 1760

The Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 could be said to mark the beginning of the Golden Age of Quackery. It was a period that lasted for over a century and a half and quite naturally merged into what I describe as the Victorian Age of Credulity.

After the puritanical rule of the Commonwealth between 1647 and 1660, during which time even Christmas celebrations had been banned, there was a general relaxing of social strictures. Many doctors started actively seeking patients and building their practices. They were not alone, however, for this was England where it was perfectly legal after King Henry VIII Herbalist’s Charter to practice medicine under Common Law. Accordingly, they found themselves in competition with many unqualified practitioners, many of whom came to England from abroad, claiming that they had been granted royal patronage by King Charles while he had been in exile.

KING CHARLES II AND DR GODDARD’S DROPS

One respected physician by the name of Dr Jonathan Goddard (1617–75), one of the first fellows of King Charles II’s recently created Royal Society in 1660, was not a quack, but he did profit most handsomely from some shrewd business practice with the king, which today would be regarded as highly unethical.

Dr Goddard had been a Member of Parliament, an army surgeon during the Civil War and personal physician to Oliver Cromwell. He was to become a Professor of Physick at Gresham College. He had invented a secret elixir which he marketed as ‘Goddard’s Drops’, advocating their use for virtually everything. King Charles II was clearly impressed with them, for the Treasury warrant book for 16 March 1698 records a payment of £60 ‘to Peter Hume Esq. without account for the purchase of a quantity of Doctor Goddard’s Drops which by the King’s commands are to be sent as a present from his Majesty to the Queen of Sweden’.

His majesty was indeed so impressed that he paid Dr Goddard the sum of £6,000 for the secret formula for his wonderful drops. As it turned out the drops were little more than sal volatile – simple smelling salts.

QUEEN ANNE AND HER OCULIST

The last Stuart ruler to be crowned was Queen Anne (1665–1714). Coming to the throne at the age of 18, she was not a well woman. Indeed, she actually had to be carried to her coronation because she was suffering from gout. In addition to this she had poor vision all of her life and was often treated by her favourite oculist, one William Read, who in fact was an unmitigated medical meddler or mountebank.

Read was born in Aberdeen and started his working life as a tailor. He was apparently uneducated and barely able to read or write. Despite this, however, he practiced throughout the north of England as an itinerant oculist or eye specialist. Gaining some reputation and some success with his potions and eye washes he moved to London where he set up a practice in the Strand.

One of his handbills proclaimed that he had twenty-one years of experience and that he could treat glaucoma, a condition caused by increased pressure in the eye, could couche cataracts and deal with all manner of suffusions.

History tells us that Queen Anne was extremely impressed by his ministrations and in 1706 knighted him for his services that he had astutely given free to soldiers and seamen.

In that same year he published a book entitled A Short but Exact Account of all the Diseases Incident to the Eyes With Causes, Symptoms, and Cures, also Practical Observations upon some Extraordinary Diseases of the Eyes. There were two editions of the book published. Some of it was actually quite accurate, which is not surprising considering that it was all copied from a book published in 1622 by Richard Bannister, a surgeon and oculist of London!

A section about anatomy and physiology were no more than copies of ancient texts. All in all, the book clearly had not been written by anyone with any knowledge of the anatomical discoveries that had been made about the eye by contemporary anatomists. In the main it was a boastful account of his successes with his quack treatment, which he called ‘Styptick Water’.

Although he became very successful and very wealthy, his secret eventually came out and he was lampooned in the pamphlets of the day:

Her majesty sure was in a surprise Or else was very shortsighted When a tinker was sworn to look after her eyes And the Mountebank Read was knighted …

When he died in 1715, his wife, Lady Read, continued his work with his Styptick Water. Queen Anne’s heir, the Hanoverian King George I, consulted her, but was not impressed with her skills. He gave her a pension and immediately appointed another oculist, Robert Grant. Like Read, he had started life in quite a different trade. He had been a cobbler and somewhere along the way he lost an eye. Perhaps that stimulated him to proclaim himself an eye specialist, for he had no medical qualification whatsoever.

JOANNA STEPHENS AND HER MEDICINE FOR THE STONES

One of the great health problems which caused excruciating pain in past centuries was the agony of bladder stones. Poor diet and dehydration from avoiding the drinking of water and taking wine, beer or porter instead would have made stone formation in the urinary tract a definite possibility. The treatment involved ‘cutting for stone’, a procedure that filled patients with horror, yet which filled the pockets of the workaday surgeon. Then, in 1735, along came Joanna Stephens and her secret cure for stones.

Joanna Stephens was the daughter of a Berkshire gentleman. In about 1720 she compounded a remedy made from baked eggshells with a decoction of soap and other secret ingredients, with the specific purpose of dissolving kidney and bladder stones. Not surprisingly, people were willing to try anything that would keep them away from the surgeon’s knife. Her results were reported to be amazing.

Her cause was championed by Dr David Hartley, who was later to become famous as the originator of the Associationist school of psychology. He suffered from recurrent bladder stones and experimented with the treatment. He wrote a series of papers explaining why eggs were used (since the shells were made of calcium carbonate, which when heated would produce lime, which had been used for the treatment of stones since the days of the Roman writer Pliny) and why soap was needed (because the lime constipated and the soap would counter this). He sincerely believed that Joanna’s secret cure would be of incredible benefit to the public. This cry was taken up by the Hon. Edward Carteret, the Postmaster General. Soon other dignitaries attested to its value and Joanna was asked to reveal her secret which was obviously of ‘great importance to mankind’. She agreed to do so, for the price of a mere £5,000.

A public subscription was started, which fell short of her fee, but she held firm. Parliament was petitioned and duly agreed to pay her. As agreed, she handed over her secret recipe, which was duly printed in the London Gazette. The ingredients consisted of bird and snail shells, carrot seeds, soap, honey and various traditional herbs.

Joanna took the money and lived comfortably and quietly ever after. Her wonder remedy gradually fell from favour, its magic having disappeared when the contents were no longer secret.

MESMER AND ANIMAL MAGNETISM

One of the most charismatic and dramatic figures to grace the annals of medical history was Dr Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815). He went to university in Vienna to study divinity, philosophy and law, but changed course and took up the study of medicine. In 1766 he graduated, his doctoral thesis being entitled De influxu planetarum in corpus humanum – The Influence of the Planets upon the Human Body.

In this he postulated that the whole universe was filled with a magnetic fluid and that the planets exerted an influence upon the human body through their effect on this invisible fluid. He believed that this energy could be harnessed by gifted individuals like himself to correct imbalances in patients. He called this phenomenon ‘animal magnetism’. It was the start of an amazing, if highly controversial, career in medicine that many of his peers considered to be the ultimate in quackery.

Animal magnetism.

Mesmer opened consulting rooms in Vienna and soon built up a lucrative practice that attracted some of the crowned heads of Europe, the nobility and many of the most influential people of society. At first he believed that this animal magnetism had to be channelled through metal rods, like magnets, in order to influence people. Then, as more people sought his aid, he manufactured a huge drum made of oak filled with water and iron filings, which he called his ‘baquet’. Metal rods and wires protruded from the drum and were held by patients against the parts of the body that ailed them. Magnetised metal plates could also be held or placed over painful or paralysed parts. Mesmer would then enter the room, which hummed with violin music, stare into the patients eyes and make passes over their bodies with a metal rod that he carried like a wand, or touch them with it.

The results were nothing short of astonishing. People fainted or seemed to have fits with such frequency that the room was known as the ‘hall of convulsions’. Anyone so affected could generally be guaranteed a cure. Often they would be carried by servants to a side room and ministered to until Mesmer came to give them individual treatment. His patients included Mozart, the Empress Maria Theresa and, most significantly, a blind pianist, Marie Therese Paradis, who had been blind since birth. This last case he cured – much to his cost!

There were two problems. First, when this young girl could see, the seeming magic that surrounded her also disappeared. While people marvelled at her ability to play by touch alone, they were less impressed by her ability now that she could see. In addition, she received state benefits because of her disability, which would be withdrawn if she could see. The result was that her parents demanded that Mesmer should stop treating her. When he did so, she of course relapsed.1 His critics were quick to seize on this, saying that he had merely implanted suggestions into her mind that she could see when she had not seen anything at all. Others claimed that he had seduced her. At any rate, his reputation was badly affected and he moved to Paris in 1778.

In Paris Mesmer realised that all of the accoutrements, like the baquet and the metal rods, were not necessary, so he abandoned them. Now he believed that he himself was acting as a conductor for the animal magnetism and that he could ‘mesmerise’ patients with the power of his mind alone. There he also gathered critics, presumably through professional jealousy.