Quackery and patent medicines.
"A water of no worth nor value"
In 1630 Nicholas Knapp, of Massachusetts Bay Colony in the New World, was fined five pounds for "taking upon him to cure the scurvy by a water of no worth nor value" which he "solde att a very deare rate" (1). Similar sentiments would be voiced, to little effect, about scores of panaceas and nostrums, on both sides of the Atlantic, for the next 300 years (2).
From the itinerant mountebank selling his cures for ailments real or imagined from a fairground stage or a wagon in the marketplace to international businesses selling dozens of widely advertised 'medicines' via hundreds of retailers to thousands of customers, the sale of nostrums and cure-alls in the 18th and 19th centuries was a free-for-all in which success could bring fame, notoriety, and enormous wealth. Many, maybe most, of the pills, potions, elixirs and lotions that tried to elbow their way into the market with claims to cure the incurable fell by the wayside almost immediately, but some survived in the marketplace for years, decades or, in a handful of cases, centuries.
Very few patent medicine proprietors or peddlers suffered the fate of Nicholas Knapp. Although, as we shall see, coming into conflict with the law wasn't unheard of, the over-the-counter sale of - often ineffective and sometimes actually dangerous - remedies for any and every complaint, by anyone from a butcher or grocer to a printer or publican, was both lucrative and commonplace in a way it's difficult to fully comprehend now.
By the middle of the 18th century the term 'patent medicine' (3) was commonly used, in Britain at least, for this whole class of 'secret remedies' (4). Few were actually patented, with the recipes often being closely guarded secrets, although almost invariably details did leak out eventually.
The trail of evidence these panaceas and cure-alls left behind for us to follow is sometimes vanishingly faint, perhaps known only from a single damaged bottle dredged from an obscure resting place and, against the odds, rescued from destruction by a collector, archaeologist or passer-by. Other trails are broad, represented by tens of thousands of containers recovered from sites all around the country or even the world, and enough advertising and other printed material to fill entire libraries.
It is these trails that this blog is about.
1. An event frequently recounted. See, for example, J.H.Young (1961) The Toadstool Millionaires, pp 16-17, where his name is spelled Knopp. Credible genealogical information can be found at www.geni.com/people/Nicholas-Knapp/6000000003055016394 (accessed 23rd February 2020).
2. The main focus of this blog is patent medicines in Britain, but the story would be incomplete without considering other countries, chief among them the United States. This is for two reasons:
Firstly, patent medicines of the kinds dealt with here first came to prominence during the second and third quarters of the 18th century, years during which the American colonies were just that: colonies of Britain, ruled from Britain, with a colonial culture derived largely from Britain and an economy in large part controlled by Britain. That culture and economy included British patent medicines. The dominance of British patent medicines in America continued for decades after the colonies became the independent United States. The east coast of the United States is in fact one of the most prolific sources of 18th and early 19th century British patent medicine bottles, rivaling the British isles themselves.
Secondly, while the trans-Atlantic trade in patent medicines during the 18th and early 19th centuries was almost entirely from east to west, over the course of the second half of the 19th century this pattern was reversed, with British patent medicines in North America being largely displaced by home-grown American brands, some of which rapidly expanded their markets to Britain and Europe. Well before 1900 several American patent medicines were familiar features of the British patent medicine scene, among them Warner's Safe Cure, Radam's Microbe Killer, Dr Kilmers Swamp Root Kidney Liver and Bladder Cure, Dr Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery, Mother Siegel's Syrup, and many more. These became a part of the British patent medicine story.
3. For an excellent summary of what patent medicines were (and, according to some, still are) see J. Aronson (2009) Patent medicines and secret remedies, BMJ 2009; 339. (accessed 20th February 2020)
4. In 1909 and 1912 the British Medical Association published 'Secret Remedies' and 'More Secret Remedies', both subtitled 'What they cost and what they contain', two books which pretty much did what it said on the tin: exposed the overpriced and frequently ineffective nature of most patent medicines.
