He gives little Tabby a great many Doses
For he says the poor creature has got the chlorosis, Or a ravenous pica, so brought on the vapours By swallowing Stuff she has read in the papers.31
Many newspaper owners, or their agents, were heavily involved in the patent-medicine business. By 1730 William Dicey and Robert Raikes were in partnership with Thomas Cobb and Benjamin Okell to sell Dr Bateman’s Pectoral Drops. John Newberry, the publisher of the first children’s magazine,† had a quarter-share in Dr Hooper’s Female Pills, and from 1746 he owned the rights to Dr James’s Fever Powders, which he advertised through the newspapers and also in the books he published: Goody-Two Shoes - which may very well have been written by Oliver Goldsmith - began, ‘CARE and Discontent shortened the Days of Little Margery’s Father. - He was forced from his Family, and seized with a violent Fever in a Place where Dr James’s Powder was not to be had, and where he died miserably.’33 At the end of the volume, the child-reader was reminded that the following could be purchased:
By the King’s royal Patent, And Sold by J. NEWBERY, at the Bible and Sun in St Paul’s Church-Yard.
1 Dr James’s Powders for Fevers, the Small-Pox, Measles, Colds, &c., 2s. 6d.
2 Dr Hoope’s Female Pills, 1s.
3 Mr Greenough’s Tincture for Teeth, 1s.
4 Ditto for the Tooth-Ach [sic], 1s.
5 Stomachic Lozenges for the Heart-burn, Cholic, Indigestion, &c, 1s. 6d.
6 The Balsam of Health or (as it is by some called) the Balsam of Life, 1s. 6d.
7 The Original Daffy’s Elixir, 1s. 3d.
8 Dr Anderson’s Scots Pills, 1s.
9 The Original British Oil, 1s.
10 The Alternative Pills, which are a safe, and certain Cure for the King’s Evil, and all Scrophulous Complaints, 5s. the Box, containing 40 Doses. - See a Dissertation on these Disorders sold at the Place above-mentioned. Price 6d.34
Those newspaper proprietors who did not own a medicine could still help to sell one: ‘Dr Benjamin Godfrey’s Cordiall’ was advertised in the Leeds Mercury in 1751, and ‘for the convenience of those who live in the country, it will be brought by the men who deliver the News to any place within the reach of this paper’.35 Even for those without a newspaper, or its distribution services, the new Post Office could provide similar business facilities: ‘The True Spirit of Scurvy-Grass’ was advertised for sale
By the new ingenious Way of the Penny-Post, any Person may send for it, from any part of the City or Suburbs, writing plain directions where to send it to them: if for half a dozen Glasses, they will be brought as safe, as if fetch’t by themselves, and as cheap as one. But who sends this way, must put a Penny in the Letter (besides Six Pence for each Glass) to pay the carriage back; for no body can think the profit great: therefore a Penny must be sent for every Parcel. None need fear their Money, in sending by the Penny-Post, for things of considerable value, are daily sent with safety by it, security being given for the Messengers. There are Houses appointed in all parts of the Town, to take in the Penny-Post Letters.*37
It was these advertisements that led, over the next century, to the formation of some of the great drug companies, for there was not much of a line to be drawn between patent medicines and ‘real’ medicines, between quacks and doctors. In the eighteenth century the University of Edinburgh’s Pharmacopoeia listed ‘spider’s webs, Spanish fly, pigeon’s blood, hoofs of elks, eggs of ants, spawn of frogs, dung of horse, pig and peacock, human skulls and mummies’ as valid ingredients for medical remedies.38 Dr Robert James patented an antimonial powder which one historian of medicine thinks probably hastened the death of both Oliver Goldsmith and Laurence Sterne ‘among others’, while many more promoted things like ‘medicinal chocolate’, or teething necklaces, or indigestion powders.39 A Rowlandson cartoon of 1789 shows the draper Isaac Swainson, who owned the rights to Velno’s Vegetable Syrup, being attacked by apothecaries and surgeons - not because Velno’s harmed people, or because it didn’t work, but because Swainson was taking business that they thought was rightfully theirs. (He claimed sales of 20,000 bottles a year, bringing him an income of £5,000.)40
It was hard to see the difference between these men and John Hunter, the famous surgeon and anatomist, who in 1984 wrote to Edward Jenner, the pioneer of smallpox inoculation: ‘Dear Jenner, - I ampuffing off 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 bookseller 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. If that mode will do, I will speak to some, viz., Newberry, &c. [to distribute it].’41
But while Hunter and Jenner are today considered to have been pioneers of medical science, Dr James Graham was a quack in any period, and he used newspapers and their advertising potential to its full. Born in 1745 in Edinburgh, he was a qualified doctor; by 1775 he had set up in Pall Mall and was advertising that, as a specialist in eye and ear problems, he had ‘cured or relieved 281; refused as incurable on their first Application, 317; after a short Trial (by desire) found incurable 47; dismissed for Neglect, &c. 57; country, foreign, and other Patients, events unknown, 381’. Perhaps the honesty of admitting he cured only a quarter of those who applied to him was a legacy of his training. But by 1779 he had opened the Temple of Health, and between 1778 and 1781 he was a regular advertiser in the Morning Herald, promoting himself and, more particularly, the ‘Temple’ with its ‘Celestial Bed’:
To their Excellencies the Foreign Ambassadors, to the Nobility, Gentry, and to Persons of Learning and of Taste.
THE CELESTIAL BRILLIANCY of the Medico-Electrical Apparatus in all the apartments of the Temple, will be exhibited By Dr GRAHAM himself Who will have the honour of explaining the true Nature and Effects of Electricity, Air, Music, and Magnetism when applied to the Human Body…Previous to the display of the Electrical Fire, the Doctor will delicately touch upon the CELESTIAL BEDS which are soon to be opened in the Temple of Hymen, in Pall Mall, for the propagation of Beings, rational and far stronger and more beautiful in mental as well as in bodily Endowments, than the present puny, feeble and nonsensical race of Christians…
Admittance to the Temple was 5s., while pamphlets outlining the cures that had already taken place could be bought for a mere 3d. At his lectures, ‘Vestina, the Rosy Goddess of Health’, stood by in attendance, helping ‘at the display of the Celestial Meteors, and of that sacred Vital Fire over which she watches, and whose application in the cure of diseases, she daily has the honour of directing’. (One of Graham’s unwitting claims on posterity was that ‘Vestina’ was none other than the soon-to-be Emma Hamilton, wife to Sir William Hamilton and mistress to Lord Nelson.) Infertile couples hoping to conceive were recommended Graham’s Treatise on Health (for 10s. 6d.), which gave advice on hygiene, on singing (which ‘softens the mind of a happy couple, makes them all love, all harmony’), and on ‘drinking of the divine balm, which for the benefit of the human race, I have concocted with my own hand, and which, however, costs only a guinea a bottle’.
If cleanliness, song and the divine balm all failed, then it was on to the Celestial