Quackery in upstate New York in 1835

I am very fortunate to have a wonderful collection of things to do with quackery: bottles, trade cards, broadsides, billheads, letters, diaries, and so on. I think the letters and diaries are among my favorites because they are very personal and heartfelt, often intended to be read by only the writer, in the case of diaries, or the person being written to, in the case of letters. So today I am going to share with you one of my favorite letters; I hope you'll enjoy it.

This letter was written on the 17th of July 1835 by Charles Shepard, M.D. to James B. Hunt, an attorney. (I have left the spelling and capitalization as it is in the original, but added red for emphasis.) Doctor Shepard was living in Adams, which is upstate New York on the east end of Lake Ontario; Mr. Hunt was living in Herkimer, New York, which is half way between Syracuse and Albany. Doctor Shepard was having a tough time getting his medical practice going because of all the pestiferous quacks all around him. From the tone of his letter, it doesn't sound like he and Mr. Hunt were particularly close friends, but Doctor Shepard apparently respected Mr. Hunt enough for him to reach out and seek his advice (sort of an early nineteenth century version of networking). Doctor Shepard was ready to move all the way to Michigan if Hunt would tell him just one thing about the largely untamed frontier - not whether Michigan's Indians or wolves or cold winters were dangerous, but whether it was free of quacks:

I am in the village of Adams in good health but low spirits attempting to get a living by the practic of my profession, which is of all others the most contemptable in this place. The medical faculty of this plac consists of five besides myself and they are a strange mass of Drunkardness infidelety quackery and foolishness as was ever met with. They are a disgrace to the profession and a pest to society. Still the people after being duped and gulled by this professional kind of a nondescrip will employ them because they can pay them in whiskey which makes it rather small business for those that dont drink it. I understand you have been to Michigan I hope you have found a place for me as I am Sorely sick of this. It will be a great while before I Shall do enough to support myself beside my debts which I Shall never pay if I have got to earn the money by the practice of medicine in this place - There is six physicians to 12 or 1500 inhabitants. The ride is very much circumscribed there being physicians all around us within four or five miles. Mr Hunt please write me a few lines as soon as convenient and give me a history of your town and your opinion of Michigan. Likewise give me your opinion as to what I had better do as I shall Starve here. Give my respects to the people at Herkimer.

It's a fantastic slice of history, but alas, only a slice. I wish I knew what happened to the good doctor; perhaps I will someday with more research and time. If any of you know anything about him, please let me know! Of course, what I'd really like to know more about is those quacks that made Doctor Shephard's life so miserable!

A Bottle By Any Other Name ...

I have been collecting bottles for a long, long time, and I've seen and read about many types of collections: based on a certain manufacturer, time period, location, etc.; most bottle collectors collect for color. For example, a collector may want to have every possible shade of brown that a certain bitters bottle comes in: brown, sand, wheat, amber, honey-amber, chocolate-brown, chocolate chip, etc. (okay, I made up the last one). Now I admit that it's a pretty sight to see one size and shape bottle displayed in a window in a progressive rainbow of hues, but here's what I don't get: a bottle label is often considered a deterrence to collectability. Huh?

That rationale is basically that you can't appreciate the pretty colors and age of the glass if there's this old label pasted over a part of the bottle. I understand what such collectors are saying, but I just don't feel that way at all, myself.

The label is HISTORY! It gives the bottle it's identity and often its character! MOST bottles did not have unusual shapes, colors, or embossing; all the proprietor could afford was the label. But those labels told the story! Whether it was a liquor bottle, a medicine, a cleaning solution, a flavoring extract, shoe gloss, or whatever, it gave the bottle its reason to exist! Labels tell who made the product, what it was, what it was for, where it was made, often clues to when, and much more. When it came to medicine bottles (obviously my favorite kind), it also listed what the medicine would cure. It was identification, instructions, and advertisement all in one!

Take this image for Dr. Abbott's Blood Purifying Sarsaparilla, made during the 1880s in Lynn, Massachusetts. The bottle is a common shape and the common aqua color (the brown you see is the dried residue of its contents). There is no embossing to tell any story. If the label wasn't on there, it would be considered a "junk" bottle by virtually every collector out there. Heck, even I wouldn't care about it. But the a-m-a-z-i-n-g label tells a story - WOW, what a story!

DR. ABBOTT'S

BLOOD-PURIFYING SARSAPARILLA

After years spent in the treatment of diseases, careful study and experiment, I am enabled to give to the world a medicine which I consider has no equal. Its composition is purely vegetable, and is designed to work chiefly upon the organs of digestion, assimilation, Liver, and Kidneys. It has also a specific action upon the heart. It increases the activity, and power of the Digestive organs, thus assisting nature in the digestion, assimilation, or transformation of our nourishment into a pure and vital fluid (the blood), which carries Vitality, Strength, and Vigor to every tissue. It has a cleansing and tonic effect upon the liver, by which bile is removed from the circulation. It produces an active and healthy condition of the kidneys, thus assisting in the removal of all wastes, and poisonous elements from the system. It also gives tonicity, force, and regularity to the tissues of the heart. There are also combined those principals which tends to overcome Constipation, Nervous Prostration, and to the extermination of Scrofulous, and Cancerous Humors, and is an excellent remedy for the cure of Dyspepsia, Sickheadached, Bronchitis, Catarrh, Rheumatism, Neuralgia, Jaundice, Dropsy, etc., diseases tending to Consumption, and of the Urinary, and Reproductive Organs, Female Weakness, Skin Affections, and all diseases arising from an impure state of the blood. Many valuable testimonials might be added, but a trial of the remedy is the only convincing proof of its true merit.

DIRECTIONS.

For an Adult, one Dessert Spoonful after meals, or sufficient quantity to gently relax the bowels; for Children, from five drops upward, according to age.

PREPARED SOLELY BY

C.S. ABBOTT, M.D., Lynn, Mass.

Can be procured of any Druggist, or direct from Manufacturer.

Price, $1.00 per Bottle, or six for $5.00

Now here's what some of you probably don't know: a small number of the extreme collect-for-color bottle collectors will remove the label so the light can show through the glass; I have been told this by one or two collectors who do so. That just stuns me. What a waste; what a tragedy. if they like colored glass so much, why don't they just collect colored lamp shades or learn to make stained-glass windows! Good grief. Thank goodness that such a collector would have no motivation to take the label off Dr. Abbott's Sarsaparilla - the bottle is boring glass - thank goodness. I've tried to imagine it in some bright, eye-popping color, but it just doesn't work for me. Dr. Abbott, your quack medicine bottle is plain and homely ... and one of the most treasured in my collection.

NEW FEATURE! INTRODUCING ............................ THE "AQUA" -- THE ALL QUACKED UP AWARD!!

Yes, it's true - Hollywood, Cannes, and Sundance are abuzz with the news. Move over Academy Awards, NFL MVP trophies, Golden Globes, and Baseball All-Star distinctions ... the newest spotlight in the sky is for the rare, the exciting, All Quacked Up Awards! Referred to by the cool people in the know as the AQUAs, they will be given out ONLY to the elite few ... the top 1% in their category: products meant to go in or on a human's body, but that really, really, really shouldn't (in my humble opinion)! They are the food, toiletries, medicines, or other products that prove that quackery is far from dead in the 21st century. These are the items that give us collectors and quack historians hope because there are still things to laugh at, be upset over, sickened with or just completely grossed out by. We are busy designing the perfect award to represent the AQUA, and we will reveal it to you soon!

In the mean time, our first award winner is SO deserving that we just had to honor it with our very first All Quacked Up Award. Drum roll, please ....................... Ladies & Gentlemen, I present to you the first winner of the All Quacked Up Award, the KFC Double Down Chicken Sandwich!!! (TA-DAH!). Please watch our video clip under the all new list of AQUA winners in the right column and be awed by their supreme achievement in totally earning the first AQUA!

Quackery in 1965

And so now we come into the modern era, the age of real knowledge and enlightenment because, hey, isn't that what we believe about the time in which we personally live? All those people who lived before we were born believed and slogged through superstitions, antiquated notions, and the dark forest of ignorance, but we are at the top of the evolutionary ladder; we are what they were all trying to be. We've got electricity, they had fire; we've got cell phones, they had to write letters; we have computers, they had pencils and paper. We have medicines and doctors performing at such an advanced level that we patients can't even comprehend it, but they're the best ever because they just are. These are modern times and clearly the best of times. Errr ... sure, in the days before we were born our ancestors thought the same thing of their doctors and medicines, but they were wrong and we are right because we've got the whole package today. We're at the apex; the pinnacle; top of the heap. How ignorant they; how brilliant we. Yeah, baby.

Seriously, I am so grateful for living at this time of history. Even though I know that there is still a lot about illness, medicine, and the human body to be learned, I have more faith in my doctor and pharmacist than I could ever imagine having in their counterparts 50, 100, or 150 years ago. My study of the pursuit of health in the 19th century has given me the gift of gratitude for what I enjoy today, no question about it. We still have to do our part, avoiding the traps of quackery and taking responsibility for our own health, but as I look at newspapers, magazines, television, the internet and the mirror, I realize that we are still a pretty gullible, silly bunch of beings. Case in point: the announcement this week by Kentucky Fried Chicken for their new breadless sandwich: cheese and bacon "sandwiched" between two pieces of fried chicken - are you kidding?!?!?!?! And you and I know people are going to buy them.

But I am getting off track. Today's definition of quackery comes from 1965. Benjamin F. Miller, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The Modern Medical Encyclopedia, focused on pretending for pay as the core of quackery:

Quack: A person who pretends to have medical knowledge and skill which he does not possess. In general, when people speak of quacks they are referring not to the many medical laymen who enjoy giving medical advice (usually unsound) to their friends but rather to persons who may have some medical education, or even experience in medical practice, but who are misguided, incompetent, or dishonest. A few quacks actually have the M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) degree and are licensed to practice. Other quacks lack the standard medical education and are not licensed. ... Many quacks specialize in making and selling useless or harmful patent medicines.

Interestingly, that definition suggests that those who do not get paid for their medical advice are not quacks. That makes me feel a little better. You see, it has always amazed me how often I am asked for my "medical" opinion about someone's condition, apparently because I have a pretty good knowledge of the human body and its functions. But what I know I learned from studying the history of quack medicine! Good grief! Countless times they have followed my observations and advice because it sounds, I guess, like I know what I'm talking about! Even when I point out to them that I have no formal medical training, they still seem so interested and respectful of my medical opinions and advice. I think the reason for that is mainly because of the combination of good-sounding information with the fact that it's free. How ridiculous is that? What they should do is find out what I do when I'm sick and miserable. I go to somebody who really seems to know what they're talking about ... my wife. Now there's an expert. Oh yeah, and she doesn't charge me, either.

Quackery in 1910

Hopefully people had figured out by the early 20th century how to recognize a quack, because they sure weren't going to learn much from the 1910 edition of the extremely popular Gould's A Pocket Medical Dictionary. Apparently the makers of the pocket-sized dictionary tried to keep its definitions as tiny as its pages. The problem with that plan was that, at least in the case of the words "quack" and "quackery," the reader was no better off reading the dictionary than he was when he had it stuffed in his pocket:

Quack: One who practices quackery.
Quackery: Medical charlatanism.
Charlatan: A quack.

Oh. Now I understand.

Quackery in 1861

In his 1861 A Book About Doctors, J. Gordy Jeaffreson also described all types of doctors; some he liked, but most he didn't, and he opined that quackery was practiced both by the healers who really believed they were doing good works and those obsequious sycophants who knew full well they were selling worthless medicines or spurious services solely to bilk money from a trusting, gullible customer:

The history of quackery, if it were written on a scale that should include the entire number of those frauds which may be generally classed under the head of humbug, would be the history of the human race in all ages and climes. Neither the benefactors nor the enemies of mankind would escape mention ...

He took his reader down memory lane, back to "the old days," an ancient, forgotten time that they had only heard about in books like his. He painted a pathetic picture of the hopeless, helpless person, suffering great pain or sickness, desperate for a cure, even if it cost every last penny (and it probably would):

... the multitudes who, worn with bodily malady and spiritual dejection, ignorant of the source of their sufferings, but thirsting for relief from them, have gone from charlatan to charlatan, giving hoarded money in exchange for charms, cramp-rings, warming-stones, elixirs, and trochees, warranted to cure every ill that flesh is heir to.

Then Jeaffreson adds to this painting of words the sinister swindler - the traveling quack (boo! hiss!), standing on his makeshift stage in front of his peddler's wagon (more boos and catcalls). A small crowd of hapless locals, suffering from all kinds of aches, pains, and yucky feelings inside them, have gathered in front of the stage, watching and listening with awe and hope that this stranger's cure might just do the trick. They are caught in the spell of the spell-binding quack, who carefully reads their faces for the next startling fact he should tell, the next promise he should make:

The scene, from another point of view, is more droll, but scarcely less mournful. Look away from the throng of miserable objects, for a few seconds, who press around the empiric's stage; wipe out for a brief while the memory of their woes, and regard the style and arts of the practitioner who, with a trunk full of nostrums, bids disease to vanish, and death to retire from the scenes of his triumph. There he stands - a lean fantastic man, voluble of tongue, empty-headed, full of loud words and menaces, prating about kings and princes who have taken him by the hand and kissed him in gratitude for his benefits showered upon them - dauntless, greedy, and so steeped in falsehood that his crazy-tained brain half believes the lies that flow from his glib tongue.

Finally, author Jeaffreson tells his audience, that in fact, nothing has really changed; history was repeating itself, right there in America at the dawn of the Civil War; the only difference being that the wealthy were being sucked in, too:

Are there no such men amongst us now - not standing on carts at the street-corners, and selling their wares to a dingy rabble, but having their seats of exchange in honored places, and vending their prescriptions to crowds of wealthy clients?

Isn't it great that we can be sitting here in 2009 and looking back at the silly people who willingly gave their money to money-grubbing quacks and kooks? Good thing we are finally such an advanced civilization - nothing like that could ever happen to us now ....

Quackery in 1858

An 1858 medical dictionary defined the quack, not on the basis of education or sex, as they had done 20 years earlier with Elizabeth Mott, but on the basis of their method:

Quack: A term applied, by way of derision, to a person who professes to cure all diseases by a single remedy (or in accordance with a single dogma); also to remedies which are sold under the protection of a patent.

Daniel King, M.D., had a lot more to say about quacks. In the same year, he wrote a whole book on the subject, Quackery Unmasked, in which he excoriated several types of doctoring that were being done at that time. As far as Doctor King was concerned, the common element between homeopaths, water cure doctors, Thomsonians, female physicians, Indian doctors, chrono-thermalists, and natural bone-setters was quackery. He tried hard to discredit the alternative forms of medicine and branded the healers as quacks and their patients as desperate dupes. He was a mid-nineteenth century muckraker, but a half-century ahead of his time:

All experience shows that mankind are ever more ready to believe pleasant falsehoods than disagreeable truths. Quackery takes advantage of this proclivity, and therefore caters for the universal appetite. A perfect quack is a most obsequious sycophant - his medicines are always exactly what the patient wants. They are never disagreeable, are perfectly safe in all cases, and always certain to cure. These are what every sick man wants, and therefore strives with all his might to believe ... whenever any positive benefit has resulted ... it has been accomplished through ... the mind (rather than through the body). ... All (quacks) pretend to (have) new and very important discoveries - all are bitterly hostile to the regular profession - all boast of their wonderful success and rapid increase, and all are only so many different views in the same great panorama passing rapidly along, never to return.

Obsequious sycophant? Good grief; no wonder people called them quacks instead.

Quackery in 1838

Elizabeth Mott didn't care that there were no medical schools that would allow women to attend. She went ahead and became a doctor by teaching herself and learning from her doctor husband. Most doctors in 1838 were old-school fuddy-duddies who dismissed this female physician as somewhere between a quack and a kook. So it should come as no surprise that she didn't think much of them, either. She ignored their taunts and ridicule and wore their accusation of being a quack as a badge of honor:

Everything differing from the old school is termed quackery? What is quackery, then, but improvement?

You go, girl.

Quackery in 1803

First of all, there's really no such thing as a quack doctor. There are people who pretend to be doctors, but dignifying them with the word "doctor," even after the word "quack," is still disparaging the good name of real doctors. Calling them "quacks" is a very good descriptor, though. The quack of a duck is loud and annoying and completely incomprehensible to anyone, except perhaps those who are a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

But the problem has always been that these medical pretenders don't quack loudly enough. Their victims - the good, honest, ignorant, and desperate - are too often all too ready to take off their clothes, open their wallets, and swallow mystery liquids, powders, and pills for a person who is better qualified to make license plates than to be doctors. Why is that? Because those little quackers are so good at their real craft - deception. Quacks are either deceiving their victims or themselves.

Dr. William Buchan, whose extremely popular book, Domestic Medicine, was found in almost as many late 18th and early 19th century homes as the Bible, explained that it was often just too hard to tell the difference between doctors and quacks because they both kept secrets from their patients - the quack with his secret ingredients and the doctor with his ancient Latin and mysterious prescription symbols:

The appearance of mystery in the conduct of physicians not only renders their art suspicious, but lays the foundations of Quackery, which is the disgrace of Medicine. No two characters can be more different than that of the honest physician and the quack; yet they have generally been very much confounded. The line between them is not sufficiently apparent; at least is too fine for the general eye. Few persons are able to distinguish sufficiently between the conduct of that man who administers a secret Medicine, and him who writes a prescription in mystical characters and an unknown tongue. Thus the conduct of the honest physician, which needs no disguise, gives a sanction to that of the villain, whose sole consequence depends upon secrecy.

Maybe there's something we can learn today from this two-century old book: quacks are still quacks and they still find suckers:

No laws will ever be able to prevent quackery, while people believe that the quack is as honest a man, and as well qualified, as the physician. ... it is the ignorance and credulity of the multitude, with regard to Medicine, which renders them such an easy prey ... .

Don't just count the diplomas and certificates on your doctor's wall. Don't just assume that his fancy office, or your big bill, is evidence that he's a qualified doctor. The AMA encourages you to do so. No real doctor will protest your desire to protect yourself and your family. Check them out before they check you out.

"Quack is Quack, and Cure is Cure, and never the Twain shall meet"

Everyone knows quackery when they see it, right? So why is there so much confusion about it, even today? Well, I think a quack or quack medicine is a lot like art in a gallery. You can stare at something and blurt out, "Isn't that hideous?" and your friend immediately agrees, but then you both realize you're looking in opposite directions at different pieces in the room.

Quackery, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. You may think that TV evangelist healer is a quack - a pretentious fraud - but your spouse is moved to tears by the miracle they just witnessed. Every time I take Waldryl (the Walgreen knock-off of Benadryl) my runny nose seems to dry up right away, but my son is equally convinced that those little pink pills are a rip-off because they never seem to do anything for him.

In the days ahead, I will be sharing how others have defined quackery, so get prepared for a bumpy ride. For today, I am going to share with you what Mark Twain thought of one healer whom he decided was a quack. I read about this three years ago, not in a great history book or on some detailed television documentary, but on eBay. Somebody was offering for sale an authentic letter from Mark Twain, America's greatest humorist. The starting bid was $9,900 and, call me wimpy, but recognizing that was more than my net worth, I didn't even bid. But I drooled a lot. And now I can tell you I am the proud owner of the actual photocopy of the virtual image of the authentic letter of Mark Twain. Close enough.

In 1905 a West Coast medicine seller named J. H. Todd wrote to Twain, offering to sell him T. Duffy's Solution, The Elixir of Life - a Blood Purifier, Antisceptic, Disease Destroyer, and "Giver of Life Everlasting." A four-page brochure for the medicine explained that the elixir was "A THOUSAND TIMES MORE PURER than the Water and MATTER," and that this marvelous fluid absorbed "all Unsanitary, Foul and Diseased Matters, as foul water, foul air, diseased and putrid flesh or blood, and foul gases of Malarious Nature," purifying them "by its PURITY of PURIFIEDNESS ... ." The elixir cured dandruff, appendicitis, blood poison, 8 diseases starting with the letter "C," diabetes, diarrhea, female diseases, hemorrhaging, poison oak, tape worm, cat, dog, and horse mange, and as you would guess, a whole lot more. I assure you, there were people that bought The Elixir of Life - but Mark Twain was not one of them.

In his $9,900 letter, Mark Twain ripped up this medicine seller as only Mark Twain could. I'm going to let Mark do his own talking:

The person who wrote the [brochure] is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, & scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. ... A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed & I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, & enter swiftly into the damnation which you & all the other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned & do so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

Ummm, I think Mr. Twain was calling Mr. Todd a quack.

Let's see what you think in the days ahead.