Notes on sources.
Every year for the past decade or so, until COVID came along, I've taught a course for postgraduate students in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. Or, more precisely, half a course: the ceramics and glass components of an artefacts module. Every year, when introducing the course, I'm very clear about how I expect the students to approach websites in their search for material for their assessments:
With Extreme Caution
So here I am, hoist with my own petard.
The internet teems with sloppy or wishful thinking, and fiction dressed up as fact. Sometimes very smartly dressed up and oozing gravitas. On the other hand there are many gems out there, but it can take work and critical thinking to sort the wheat from the chaff.
The truth about this blog is that (a) I'm not a professional historian - although I do have a modest track record in academic research, mostly in other disciplines - and (b) this website is not independently edited or reviewed (1).
So you might want to know whether I'm a swivel-eyed loon resorting to a blog to circulate otherwise unpublishable drivel, or not.
I'm not. But then I would say that, wouldn't I? ("... and what about Dunning-Kruger?" I hear you ask).
On the plus side I do have the already-mentioned track record in research both scientific and historical, and am reasonably well aware of the pitfalls lying in wait for the careless and the unwary. I've also spent an unfeasible amount of time and energy over the past 40-something years finding, studying, researching and (I have to confess) fondling 18th and 19th century glass and ceramic containers of the kinds largely dealt with in this blog.
For anyone who's interested, here are some further brief notes that might help:
Firstly, the starting point for research for these pages is always either an object of some kind or, when considering generalities, a type or group of objects. Some items are from my own collection but many belong to others, their owners having allowed me to record them in detail for a research project that will, eventually, result in a book.
After that it's down to one or both of two types of information source: primary, and secondary. Primary sources are essentially first-hand sources. Once in a blue moon I get lucky and find something that's handwritten: letters, recipes, and so on. More often however they are printed: original advertising, labels, pamphlets, pharmacopoeas, and similar for the medicines, while for people it is census returns, birth, marriage, and death records, court records, rate books, and similar.
It's also worth pointing out that an object such as a bottle or pot can also be thought of as a primary source. The very existence of a bottle datable to the early 19th century and embossed "Cordial Balm of Gilead prepar'd by Dr Solomon, Gilead House near Liverpool" provides a host of information, and starting points for further investigation.
Secondary sources include books, research articles and others that were written after the event and by people who didn't themselves take part in the events.
It must always be borne in mind that both types of sources often come with an agenda or point-of-view built in, and each can be unreliable in various ways and to varying degrees. For example, among primary sources, advertising has an obvious agenda, but even a census return relies upon honesty on the part of participants and accuracy on the part of transcribers. Secondary sources, even when dealing with the same sets of facts (Note: alternative facts don't count), may be biased towards interpretations of those facts that suit the author's wider world view or some other agenda.
The subject of patent medicines and medical quackery is a fascinating and sometimes emotive one, and has attracted plenty of attention both in recent years and historically. From the hugely influential The Great American Fraud by Samuel Hopkins Adams, to the writing of Roy Porter, and Caroline Rance's 'Quack Doctor' blog and book, and any number of other books and articles online and off, many stories have already been told. Many of those will bear revisiting here, albeit from slightly novel angles, but much of what is presented on these pages is new.
Regardless of whether something here is new research or a frequently told story revisited, I'll try to make sure that the main sources, at least, are referenced at the foot of the page in question but also, especially for frequently cited sources, on the References page (pet peeve: great information, unreferenced and unverifiable). For articles and advertising in historical newspapers and periodicals, publication title and date will be cited, but usually only on the relevant page: I expect there will eventually be enough of them to make compiling them all in one place a bit unwieldy (2).
There will, of course, also be opinion, generalisation, hypothesising, and the occasional flight of fancy, but hopefully always easily identifiable for what it is, and also at least reasonably well informed and supportable.
Ironically, given the 'internet' comments above, there are plenty of links to other websites in these pages. Often these will be to pages from, for example, Wikipedia that provide useful brief summaries of particular topics for anyone interested. Whenever a link is provided it will have been, at the very least, read beforehand and will be checked again at intervals in the future. But if anyone finds dead links, or links to sites / pages with glaring errors of fact then please let me know.
Finally, there are plenty of places to find further information and guidance on reliability and credibility of sources. Here are a couple that might be useful starting points:
Jeremy Kemp, August 2020.
(1) Any medical historians, medics, pharmaceutical chemists or toxicologists (Mercury! Antimony! All kinds of other weird stuff!) who might like to help out occasionally with fact checking and research, please get in touch. Your assistance will be gratefully received and fully acknowledged.
(2) So far my 'database' (in fact a searchable Word doc) of newspaper advertising includes over 1400 issues covering most years from 1700 to 1900, and it grows with each bit of research I do. Research for any one medicine will typically utilise at least a couple of dozen newspaper issues, on top of other sources, an impractical number to cite in detail here. Eventually the database will be made generally available, through this website or elsewhere.