Caroline Rance
Writer focusing on the history of medicine, especially patent remedies and fraudsters at thequackdoctor.com and thequackdoctor.substack.com
Also co-host of literature podcast @shewrotetoo.bsky.social
- In the new episode of @shewrotetoo.bsky.social I had a fascinating conversation with author @janerobinson.bsky.social about the subject of her latest biography - 19th-century educationalist and women’s rights campaigner Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon.
- In 1892, Lilian Murray (later Lilian Lindsay) was told she would be sure to give up her ambition to be a dentist because ‘you do not know what you are in for’:
- Dr Thomas' Eclectric Oil, originating in Buffalo, NY, in the 1840s, was a camphor and turpentine preparation for rubbing onto aching joints or taking internally for coughs and colds. Trade cards like this often had cute, funny or interesting pictures to encourage people to hang onto them.
- ‘Sagliftology’ was a health system launched in 1926 by Percy and Georgean Poole of San Diego, CA, who called themselves doctors because they had awarded themselves degrees from their own college. Sagliftology used trusses and corsets to prevent the internal organs sagging and getting congested.
- The first UK Dentists Register in 1879 included the names of more than 20 women - I'm trying to find out everything I can about them: #historyofdentistry #WomensHistoryMonth
- A tale of medicine and witchcraft in 1860s Wales 🏴 #historyofmedicine
- In 1850, a doctor suffered months of pain and all sorts of treatment from London’s top surgeons before a sharp-eyed servant spotted what was wrong … #historyofmedicine
- A story for Valentine's Day - in 1909, clairvoyant 'Professor Clyde Dupree' conned people out of hundreds of dollars with a love charm fraud.
- Happy Valentine’s Day from this nice 1940s squirrel.
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- ‘He did not like to go against his word, neither was he anxious to take the job in hand; but, by having a good supply of grog inwardly, he took his own pocket-knife, and tryed it first, which slipped down his throat with great ease.’ In 1799, sailor John Cummings started a dangerous party trick:
- At the beginning of the 20th century, weight-loss products like Figuroids were already pressurising people to be thin:
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- My substack article this week tells the sad story of Marion and Catherine Stewart, sisters who experienced a shared psychosis in 1860s Glasgow: thequackdoctor.substack.com/p/the-melanc...
- Medical fraudster Dr H H Kane sold a fake radium treatment in 1904:
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- Here's an inventive marketing message from the H E Bucklen Company of Chicago in the late 19th century. Bucklen was said to spend $100,000 a year on advertising. This excerpt is from ‘Dr King’s Lucky Book’ (1895), which included content about interpreting dreams, predicting future happiness, etc.
- Dr Harry H Kane, author of 'A Hashish House in New York: the Curious Adventures of an Individual who Indulged in a Few Pipefuls of the Narcotic Hemp' launched a cure for drug addiction in 1886 - but his 'Dr Buckland's Scotch Oats Essence' wasn't as wholesome as it sounded.
- A macabre advertisement for J Lawrence Hill's consumption cure from Jackson, MI, 1910. The treatment consisted of an oil of wintergreen chest rub, some sugar pills and a laxative. #histmed #quackery
- We had a flurry of snow here this morning but not enough to go and play in, unlike the chap on this 1880s trade card promoting Lutted's Cough Drops.
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- A cynical but still topical take from the December 1925 issue of the California and Western Medicine journal - the purported discovery of a weight loss injection coincides with the Paris dressmakers’ announcement that 100lb is the fashionable weight to be!
- A Happy New Year will be ensured if you take Bile Beans for Biliousness. These best-selling laxatives contained aloin, cardamom, peppermint oil and wheat flour, with a black gelatine coating. Ad from the Edinburgh Evening News, 27 Dec 1906. #histmed
- On this day in 1861, medical student Shephard Thomas Taylor recorded in his diary that the folks back home in Norfolk were unimpressed by London fashions in facial hair. #histmed #victorianera
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- ‘Business … and the compliments of the season’. An undertaker calls in to wish a sick man merry Christmas and a happy new year in this early 19th century satirical print. Image from @wellcomecollection.bsky.social
- Merry Christmas from Santa’s favourite cigarette brand, 1915.
- A self-peeling banana, exploding bubbles, feline electricity and more experiments from Victorian Christmas entertainment:
- An accumulation of tartar half an inch thick, a botched tooth extraction and a gum abscess the size of a walnut are among the cases related by Thomas Berdmore, surgeon-dentist to George III. #18thcentury #histmed
- Hall's Coca Wine - one of the numerous Victorian tonic drinks containing both alcohol and cocaine. #histmed #19thcentury
- Presenting Signora Josephine Girardelli, the fire-proof woman who entertained Regency audiences with her daring feats of heat resistance.
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- This 1895 Art Nouveau poster by Will H Bradley (1868-1962), was part of an advertising campaign for Narcoti-Cure, which claimed to cure nicotine addiction. The design shows that ‘the Devil is in all tobacco’, with the leaf-clad figure of Satan about to be vanquished by a Narcoti-Cure knight.
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- Death rides the storm ... a striking way to advertise Gowan's Pneumonia Cure in 1906. The product, made in Chicago, was a lard-based camphor rub for the chest, promoted as 'an easily absorbed food for the lungs.' It contained a bit of opium and quinine too. #histmed
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- William Grimstone, proprietor of Grimstone's Eye Snuff, grew his own ingredients in a herb garden in Highgate. In 1844, his horticultural expertise was put to the test when he tried to germinate some peas found in an ancient Egyptian tomb.
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- One of my favourite patent medicines is the Sa-Ta-Nic Tonic Laxative, introduced in about 1915 in Wichita, KS. Adverts claimed constipation was responsible for 90% of all diseases, so dealing with that would 'bring mental sunshine' and set you right. #histmed
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- This is the cover of an 1883 advertising booklet for 'Seven Barks', a remedy promoted in NYC for kidney and liver problems, malaria, rheumatism, pimples and more. The name referred to the bark on the wild hydrangeas from which it was supposedly made, but the dog pictures were a marketing winner.
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- This wonderful book cover graced Matthew Carrington Sykes’ 1903 work, The Curse, about alcohol abuse in British society. Dr Sykes argued that temperance campaigns were ineffective and even made things worse, because ‘A Briton is by nature the most stubborn member of all nations living in Europe.’
