Quack Medicines
Quackery is as old as medicine itself but really took off in the eighteenth century. Quackery was a conscious effort to deceive customers into buying false or ineffective medicines as opposed to plain ignorance or erroneous science.
The word was derived from an old Dutch word ‘quacksalver’ or salve-seller. Americans used the term ‘snake oil peddlers’ for quacks. One such medicine was Baume de Fioraventi (after the seventeenth-century Italian doctor Leonardo Fioraventi), described by Wootton as a tincture of canella, cloves, nutmegs, ginger, other spices, bay berries, with myrrh, aloes and galbanum, etc., along with ⅙ volume of distilled turpentine. It was supposedly good for kidney disorders, rheumatism and improvement of eyesight, but Fioraventi was a notorious quack who also touted his philosopher’s stone or universal panacea.Dutch Drops or Haarlem Oil dates from 1672 and used the residue of distilled turpentine with oils of amber and cloves. It was used as a general preventive of illness. Godfrey’s Cordial of the eighteenth century was a similar general health preparation and comprised tincture of opium with sassafras, ginger, caraway, coriander and anise seeds, Venice Treacle and rectified spirits of wine. Warburg’s Tincture was an invention of Dr Carl Warburg of Austria in the mid-nineteenth century – his product developed a reputation for the treatment of fevers. The medicine was a tincture of quinine, camphor and aloes, with saffron, zedoary root and angelica. It became popular in India and there may have been some genuine beneficial effect against malarial fevers given the presence of quinine. Warburg made – and then lost – a large fortune from the drug. James Morison was a Scottish merchant who maintained in 1825 that his vegetable pills – best known as Morison’s Pills – could alleviate any conditions. They were made of aloes, rhubarb, cream of tartar, gamboge and myrrh and acted as a laxative; Morison made a lot of money from his pills but was also roundly scorned by many contemporaries.
Another famous one from around the same time was Gripe Water, a British invention of 1851 to treat babies’ teething pains and colic, that is still in use today, in a modified form. It contained sodium bicarbonate, dill seed oil, sugar, water, and alcohol – which was, of course, the reason for its effectiveness (and therefore popularity with parents). The alcohol content was removed in 1992/93. Ginger and fennel were added to some formulae.‘Indian’ (i.e. Native American) medicines became very popular in the USA in the late nineteenth century. Indian Medicine Shows were touring circus-like acts that promoted cure-all Indian liniments or Sagwa, often touted as semi-mystical potions used by the Kickapoo tribe. Native Americans were often employed as part of the shows. Snake oils were popular in the same era and the Texan Stanley Clark termed himself ‘The Rattlesnake King’, supposedly having learned his arts from Native American medicine men. Snake oil persisted for quite some time, but in 1917, analysis of the medicine found it contained light mineral oil, beef fat oil, capsicum, trace of camphor and turpentine, and Stanley was fined for fraudulent misbranding.9 Other fraudulent snake oils included Virex, Rattlesnake Bill’s Oil and Miller’s Oil.