Georgian-era medical Quackery and ‘Professional Medicine’. The template for the Victorian and Modern. From 'Tartars' to Corona.

A long term view and the almost inevitable rise of Medical totalitarianism and $cientism.

(William Hogarth’s, ‘The Quack’)

Longue durée

One striking feature of the modern totalitarianisms (real and nascent) centred on pandemics and climate, is that their ancestry goes deep into the past.  In the case of ‘airborne viral diseases and pandemics’, one can go back over 300 years to see where medical and drug totalitarianism began.  Modern Scientism, as evidenced with Corona or Climate, namely the alliance of government, corporations, propaganda, media and (false) $cience, has deep roots back to the Victoria and Georgian ages.  Much of ‘modern science’, which is used as a pretext for state intervention (Statism) and coercive governance is premised on faulty and unscientific Victoria and Georgian dogma – gospels that do not tolerate being challenged.  Climate nonsense for example can be dated back to the 1880s and unscientific theories on the role of carbon dioxide and ‘greenhouse’ gases (another myth).

In reading through the history of ‘medicine’ and the Georgian era (roughly 1714-1830), it is clear that Victorian ‘medicine’ (1830-1901), was simply a more professional and thorough extension of Georgian-era quackery.  Today’s pharmaceutical-drug industry, built on the foundations of the Victorian, is in large measure an industry producing unhealthy potions for profits – much as it was during the Victorian and Georgian periods. 

Plus ca change?

There are significant differences between the 3 eras including the medical-drug industry’s growth and size, the sophistication of techniques, the types of ingredients, the technology applied, the marketing and distribution systems deployed, along with the profits accrued.  However, everything we see today in the government-pharmaceutical complex, including graft, fraud, false claims, propaganda, death and injury, sick populations, and the general failures of modern medicine and drugs, is easily recognisable in the 18^th century.  The Corona fascism of 2020-2022, in which the corporate fascism of government and pharma was implemented on a global scale abetted by a beguiled, gullible and ignorant mass (Desmet’s ‘mass formation’) seems almost inevitable when viewing the longue durée of history.

Georgian Medical Orthodoxy ie Quackery

During the 1700s in England a ‘professional’ system and hierarchy around ‘medicine’ was established, which was copied by other nations.  First and most importantly there was the ‘College of Physicians’, secondly the ‘Incorporation of Surgeons’ and third, the ‘Apothecaries' Company’ (or drug dispensers in shops).  

In terms of practitioners, doctors were supposed to study at university, but many like Saint Edward Jenner simply bought their degree.  Those who practised medicine were called ‘physics’ (physician) and these comprised the notorious quacks such as Jenner and his ilk, who sold services and remedies at a price.  Surgeons existed, though most were simple and barbaric focusing on de-limbing, and were usually trained as apprentices, or at a university.  The apothecary was the store proprietor and the forerunner of modern apothecaries and pharmacies. 

Jostling around and within these 3 groups, were a wide range of naturopathic, homeopathic, ‘alternative’ and traditional practitioners.  Sage-women, midwives, nurses, cow-doctors, horse-doctors, chemists, grocers, itinerant pedlars, and more were all active, always for a fee.  For the average person living between 1714 and 1830, soliciting solutions and cures, there was precious little to choose from between the licensed and unlicensed dispensers of medical remedies.

The Quack

'Quack' was and is a term of abuse.  It is akin to heretic, idiot, criminal.  Georgian physicians used the term when describing those outside the 3 formal levels of medicinal hierarchy mentioned above.  The term indicated the man or woman to be a fraud, a cheat.  Dr Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary defines the quack:

A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. 2. A vain boastful pretender to physic, one who proclaims his own Medical abilities in public places. 3. An artful, tricking practitioner in Physic.

Most medical historians such as L.R.C. Agnew have viewed quacks in the same light:

I find it difficult to be objective about quackery – even quackery in seventeenth-century England. I do not like quacks; indeed, I despise them, and while I recognise that an occasional quack remedy or belief has been imported into orthodox medicine, I cannot evince the least sympathy for the breed, those crab lice that have feasted parasitically on the body medical since the very beginning of recorded medical history'.

In reality Agnew is condemning all of medicine in the Georgian era.

Quacks are thus generally regarded as frauds. The problem with the word quack and its implication, is that it is impossible to separate the usual litany and gospel of the ‘approved’ saints, such as Saint Jenner of the cowpox stab, from the hated ‘quack’ of folk lore, with his entertaining costumes, soapbox orations and ridiculous remedies. 

Georgian and Victorian doctors were by definition ‘quacks’.  None of their remedies were proven valid.  None of their cures reduced disease or discomfort.  None of their articulations were scientifically valid or replicated.  These ‘professionals’ were just as fanatical, corrupt, sloppy, experimental and deluded as any snake oil salesman.

Quackery’s accreditations

The Georgian professionalisation of medicine and its Victorian echo, were anything but professional and organised.  Well known ‘doctors’ or ‘physics’ during the 18^th century spent little time in formal study.  A famous physic such as James Graham, who is now defined as a ‘sexologist’, was just a quack, famous for his ‘electro-magnetic-celestial-bed’ which ‘resolved’ just about any illness.  Graham had studied for a year or two at Edinburgh.  Other quacks picked up the moniker of ‘Doctor’ by buying their degrees from St Andrews University in Scotland, these included Edward Jenner, ‘Sir’ John Hill (actor, botanist), Ebenezer Sibly (astrologer, occultist), and William Brodum (invented a botanical syrup which ‘cured’ leprosy, coughing, syphilis and a variety of complaints).  All of them marketed their bona fide medical degrees to impress the poor and desperate, to sell products and remedies for profit.  Yet they were acclaimed ‘professional’ physics and even ‘scientists’.  Some like the quack Graham, are being resuscitated by revisionist historians as ‘visionaries’.

Modern objections

Surely, exclaims the Corona-believing, 5 times stabbed modern cult devotee of ‘the science’, these ‘real doctors’, healed and saved, while the quacks injured and killed?  No.  The Hippocratic injunction to do ‘no harm’ was ignored as it is today.  Eighteenth-century cures, whether regular or irregular, licensed or not, seem to have depended largely on luck, or nature's healing power, immune system strength (immunology was unknown in this era), or in the placebo effect.  Most used poisons such as opium for dulling pain, mercury for syphilis, or bark or antimony to reduce fever.  Willow bark was a medieval remedy and an effective naturopathic aspirin.  Today’s aspirin, suffused with synthetics, have been linked to cancer. 

But the modern will say, surely the recipes of the sainted physics were published, ‘peer reviewed’ and confirmed as ‘safe and effective’ by others?  No.  The driving motive for the physics or Doctor of Medicine was cash.  Many patented their nostrums, which entailed making the formula public.  The highly respectable late Stuart physician and scientist Nehemiah Grew took out a patent on Epsom Salts.  This was not uncommon. Saint Jenner in the late 18^th century would follow this course to patent and profit from his quackery of a cowpus injection against smallpox.  Jenner was active in a few areas of quack remedies.  His friend and former lodging mate John Hunter of the ‘Royal Society’ (of science, not medicine) wrote to the Saint on his new ‘tartar’ emetic (grinding down of bark antimony mixed with other chemicals used as a laxative):

Dear Jenner, – I am puffing of your tartar as the tartar of all tartars, and have given it to several physicians to make trial, but have had no account yet of the success. Had you not better let a book-seller have it to sell, as Glass of Oxford did his magnesia? Let it be called Jenner's Tartar Emetic, or anybody's else that you please.

Needless to say, the ‘cure-all tartar’ was a fraud, an emetic or nauseous mixture.  Jenner knew nothing about medicinal recipes.  But as Hunter advises, it was better to advertise its snake-oil guarantees to generate income, with catchy marketing slogans, than to actually demonstrate some medicinal purpose.  Nothing much has changed since 1780. 

Jenner and his friends, when in their cups, would laugh and openly admit their fraud.  Many anecdotes of leading physicians such as the wealthy, Dr John Radcliffe record these charlatans happily admitting in their salons and pubs, that most of their medicine or therapy was useless (and yet they were thrilled to make vast revenues out of them).

Who are the quacks?

Satirists such as the great painter William Hogarth, and the sick and injured, tended to view Radcliffe and his associates together with unlicensed ‘quacks’, as Cox and Box, tarring both with the same brush.  If the ‘official’ quacks who were ‘unlicensed’, were guilty of showmanship and chicanery, what of the ‘regulars’ with their Latin mumbo-jumbo, their ancestor worship of Hippocrates and Galen, their carriages and spacious homes? One group of quacks was legitimised, the other demonised.  One was wealthy, the other constrained and struggling.

Robert Campbell in his influential handbook, The London Tradesman, offered the following disillusioned 'receipt to make a modern doctor':

To acquire this Art of Physic, requires only being acquainted with a few Books, to become Master of a few Aphorisms and Commonplace Observations, to purchase a Latin Diploma from some Mercenary College, to step into a neat Chariot and put on a grave Face, a Sword and a long wig; then MD is flourished to the Name, the pert Coxcomb is dubbed a Doctor, and has a License to kill as many as trust him with their Health.

Campbell’s observation redounds in the modern world.  In most ‘modern’ countries, ‘medicine’ or ‘hospitals’ rank at the top of causation of death and injury.  Drugs and only drugs confer health in the ‘modern age’. 

Even as a generalisation which masks complexity, it is fair to say that the leading quacks and practitioners of eighteenth century ‘medicine’ availed themselves of the physic of the ‘alternative’ practictioner as much as they attacked it.  In their attacks on ‘alternative’ or homeopathic medicine, a violence we see in full swing today, the ‘official’ medical establishment promoted quackery which outstripped the mercurial snake oil salesman of wagon and village lore. Some examples of ‘licensed’ drugs, which never worked, and usually injured, sometimes killing their host, include:

·       Dr Radcliffe's Famous Purging Elixir

·       Sintelaer's Royal Decachor

·       James Graham's Imperial Pills

·       Samuel Major's Imperial Snuff

·       Duke of Portland's Powder to treat that aristocratic disease, gout

·       Lady Moor's Drops

·       Oxon Pills for scurvy

·       Dr Boerhaave's Aurea Medicina

Many Georgian physics invoked religious healing, using such titles as the Pulvis Benedictus ('rather a miracle than a medicine'), the Anodyne Necklaces manufactured from the 'bones of St Hugh', and Fuller's Benedictine Medicine, or Dr. Trigg's Golden Vatican Pill.  

Make it sound scientific

Many ‘professional’ quacks used Latin and Greek in their titles and marketing.  There was the Elixir Magnum Stornachicum of Richard Stoughton, Dr Pordage's Pilulae Scorbuticae, Bromfield's Pilulae in Omnes Morbos, and Lockyer's Pilulae Radiis Solis Extractae.  No one would understand what they meant, the titles were designed to be authoritative and sound like ‘science’.  This is no different with today’s titling, marketing, the use of arcane Latin terms no one understands to present a ‘scientific’ claim, or the use of studies and links back to 19^th century ‘science’ as proof of some nostrum or other, an example being ‘germ theory’. 

Money

Many ‘alternative’ quacks become ‘professional’ quacks, and more than a few became wealthy.  The noted 18^th century ‘physic’ William Read, was deemed to be most industrious marketer of quack serums in his era.  He began life as a tailor, turned himself into a successful oculist, made a fortune, treated Queen Anne, was knighted in 1705 and entered high society. He was hardly a singular example.

Read’s fellow oculist, John Taylor, the quack who blinded both Bach and Handel, rose from a Norwich surgeon's son to become the most feted and corrupt operator in Europe, a sort of bandit-of-the-lancet.

Joshua ('Spot') Ward (inventor of yet another fraudulent ‘balsam’ ointment), enriched himself from the profits of his emetic, engaged in philanthropy building hospitals, and through his connections had his own medicines designated regulation issue for the navy.  He became friends with Gibbon and King George II and due to his connections, received special exemption from having his preparations inspected by the College of Physicians.

William Hunter the anatomist, unlicensed and a naturopath, won fame and fortune from his anatomy school and related techniques and elixirs. 

William Battie, the ‘psychiatrist’ made huge profits from his privately run lunatic asylum while serving as President of the College of Physicians.  He developed medicine and patents used within asylums. He was more interested in the commercial developments of medicinal cures then in prevention.

Nathaniel Godbold, promotor of a successful 'Vegetable Balsam', started life as a baker, and eventually cleared £10,000 a year (over a £ 1 million in today’s currency), from the sale of his potion, buying a large country house for £30,000. 

Medicine was simply a commercial endeavour for many.  Today it is the same. 

Low success rates

The professionalisation of medicine – mostly to make profits and keep out competition – did little to address death rates.  The writings of Daniel Defoe and others, the diaries of contemporary doctors, the laments of sufferers and victims, the ‘Bills of Mortality’, all indicate the complete lack of effectiveness.  Epidemic fever, puerperal fever, the gastro-enteric diseases of infancy, measles and, increasingly, tuberculosis and in cycles, smallpox, raged unchecked.  Most are in essence ‘nuisance’ afflictions, easily cured with common sense, hygiene and homeopathy. 

As 18^th century politician and writer Dudley Ryder complained: If one could get off only with the charge of the physic it might be tolerable, but to fill one's belly and load one's stomach with useless medicines is dangerous.

Nothing is professional about it

During the Georgian and Victorian eras, it was impossible to see where alternative-medicine-quackery stopped and where licensed-quackery began.  The professionalisation’ of medicine, begun in the 18^th century and deepened in the 19^th century, had more to do with keeping out unlicensed competition and making profits, then health care or reducing the ‘Bills of Mortality’.  Indeed, on a per capita basis, death from virulent diseases markedly increased from 1714 until the early 20^th century.  The quackery of vaccines, injections, inoculations, and the wide assortment of magic pills did little to nothing to improve health. 

These professional ‘health’ organisations, developed during the 18^th and 19^th centuries and funded by the state, used their positions of power, contacts, connections, camaraderie amongst that elite to promote their own products and profits.  Employing the extensive influence of newspaper and handbill advertising, they were able to control ‘medicine’ and manufacture profits, whilst experimenting on live humans with recipes that were not scrutinised nor analysed by others.  As with Corona, the dead and injured from the potions, the vaccines, the methods employed were ignored by the ‘professional societies’.  The same excuses used today to explain away drug and medical failure were first employed 300 years ago.  Many of the words and phrases are the same.  Georgian and Victorian medicine, much like today, was about money, power and control.

Is the ‘modern world’ much better?

Poisons such as carbolic acid, opium and mercury were and still are, openly lanced into the human body.  During the Georgian and Victorian eras, there was little regard for the actual cause of the disease.  Almost without exception ‘physicians’ were interested in selling a ‘cure’ for a profit, which often made the victim worse.  This of course was addressed by further serums – all at a price. 

When looking at the development of ‘professional’ medicine during the Georgian period, its quackery, low success rates, professional and data fraud, experimental mendacity, lack of scientific method, disregard of causation, along with its ignorance on sanitation and basic hygiene, lack of concern about cleanliness in hospitals, the use of poisoned toxic injections, the lust for endless profits and power, and the general abuse of common sense, we see echoes of our world. 

In our ‘modern’ society hospitals and medicine are top killers, surgery, drugs and injections are promoted regardless of injury or death, causal factors are unknown or hidden, and selling serums for profit is the main objective.  Holistic, natural health management, natural immunity and ‘doing no harm’ are disregarded as quaint theorems disconnected from profit and power.  An obvious question is, ‘How is the modern world of ‘professional medicine’, that much different from the Georgian or Victorian?  Did we not just extend and deepen the Georgian-Victorian medical industry and business model, based on $cience, or $cientism?’