Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in English Medicine

Roy Porter

Tempus, £19.99, pp 256

ISBN: 0 7524 1776 2

Rating:

Quacksfirst appeared in 1989 with the more precise title Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1650-1850. This reissue of a classic work greatly benefits from being illustrated with an extensive series of monochrome and coloured contemporary prints. Quackery, after all, was a highly visual art.

The 17th century definition of a quack as someone who “pretends to have medical skill or knowledge” is pejorative and remains in common use. It conjures up an image of the pre-modern medical world as being neatly divided between physicians and surgeons practising their vocation and disreputable businessmen selling their proprietary pills to a gullible public. Porter, however, will have no truck with such an anachronistic reading of events. As he correctly points out, medicine in the early modern period should be seen as an occupation rather than a vocation, and both “regular” medical practitioner and quack were subjected to the vagaries of market forces. It is therefore not surprising that one of Porter's chief findings is that there was a far greater convergence of attitudes and activities of “physicians” and “quacks” than has hitherto been acknowledged.

Robert James is a case in point. The fact that James was DM(Oxon) did not stop him marketing his highly popular (and lethal) “febrifuge” powders to such luminaries as Oliver Goldsmith and Laurence Sterne. Whether we like it or not, the portrayal of medicine throughout the ages as a “noble profession” owes more to Victorian propaganda than to sound historical scholarship.

I particularly enjoyed Porter's analysis of quack culture drawn from contemporary publicity material. Quackery was pure theatre. The quack would move from town to town and would often appear to the local populace on a raised stage, decked out in eyecatching garb. At his side would be a clown whose job was to draw up a crowd and amuse it with tomfoolery. Testimonials from “satisfied customers” would be hung up as proof of efficacy. The quack's speech to the crowd would stir the emotions with its “damn'd unintelligible gybberish” (as one contemporary put it), promising a cure for all ills. Likely as not, the remedy would stir the bowels.

Porter presents a highly readable account of how regulars and quacks eked out a living—or, in some cases, got rich—over what historians call the “long 18th century.” It offers a reminder that the history of “medicine as business” needs just as much attention as the history of “medicine as profession.”