Spirits, her name Pennier, lives at No. 33 Ogle Street, Mary-le-bone,
near Portland-Chapel; her husband lives with the French Ambassador:
her case was too terrific to describe; her eyes and mouth distorted,
she was like a Lunatic in every sense of the word; she used to say
that it was not her voice that spoke, but the devil in her. In short,
her case was most truly distressing, not only to her family, but the
neighbourhood; she used to invite people in with apparent civility,
then bite them, and scratch like a cat; nay, she would beg a pin of
women, and then scratch them with it, &c., &c., &c.’
‘Mrs. De Loutherbourg, a lady of most exquisite sensibility and
tenderness, administered to this Mrs. Pennier; she daily amended, and
is now in her right mind, praising God, who has through his servant
performed such an amazing cure, to the astonishment of hundreds who saw
her and heard her.’
Mrs. De Loutherbourg’s system of cure was extremely simple, as this
example will show: ‘Mrs. Hook, Stable Yard, St. James’s, has two
daughters, born Deaf and Dumb. She waited on the Lady above mentioned,
who looked on them with an eye of benignity, and healed them. (I heard
both of them speak.)’
Her husband’s plan was rather more clumsy. He imposed hands. ‘A
News-Carrier at Chelsea cured of an Abscess in his Side. Mr. De
Loutherbourg held his hand on the Abscess half a minute, and it broke
immediately.’
Perhaps these cures were not permanent, for ‘Mr. De Loutherbourg told
me he had cured by the blessing of God, two Thousand since Christmas.
But, as our Lord said, of the ten healed, one only returned to thank
him; so many hundreds have acted, that have never returned to Mr. De
Loutherbourg.’
One of the most impudent of these quacks was named Benjamin Douglas
Perkins, whose father claimed to be the inventor of the metallic
tractors, which were rods made either of a combination of copper,
zinc, and gold, or of iron, silver, and platinum, and he explains, in
the specification to his patent, that ‘the point of the instrument
thus formed, I apply to those parts of the body which are affected
with diseases, and draw them off on the skin, to a distance from the
complaint, and usually towards the extremities.’
He charged the moderate sum of five guineas a set for these precious
instruments, and made a good thing out of them. He was a member of the
Society of Friends, and, as a proof that his charlatanism was believed
in, this benevolent society subscribed largely, and built for him the
_Perkinean Institution_, an hospital where the poor could be treated on
his system, free of cost.
He was an adept in the art of puffing, and his ‘Testimonials’ are
quite equal to those of modern times. I will only cite two. ‘My little
infant child was _scalded_ with hot tea on the forehead, about three
and a half inches in length, and three-fourths of an inch in breadth,
which raised a vesicle before I had time to apply anything to it. The
_Tractors_ were solely used, and the whole redness disappeared. The
Blister broke, &c.’
‘A lady fell from her horse, and _dislocated_ her ancle, which remained
several hours before it was reduced, by which it became very much
_swelled_, _inflamed_, and _painful_. Two or three applications of the
_Tractor_ relieved the pain, and in a day or two she walked the house,
and had no further complaint.’
Then also was Dominicetti, who, in 1765, established a house in
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, for medicated baths, but he hardly belongs to
the magnetisers. Then there was Katterfelto, but he, too, hovers on
the borderland of quackism--vide the following one of hundreds of
advertisements.[102]
‘By particular Desire of many of the First Nobility.
This PRESENT EVENING and TO-MORROW,
At late COX’S MUSEUM, Spring Gardens,
A SON of the late Colonel KATTERFELTO of the Death’s Head Hussars,
belonging to the King of Prussia, is to exhibit the same variety of
Performances as he did exhibit on Wednesday the 13th of March, before
many Foreign Ministers, with great applause.
MR. KATTERFELTO
Has had the honour in his travels to exhibit before the Empress of
Russia, the Queen of Hungary, the Kings of Prussia, Sweden, Denmark,
and Poland.
MR. KATTERFELTO’S
Lectures are Philosophical, Mathematical, Optical, Magnetical,
Electrical, Physical, Chymical, Pneumatic, Hydraulic, Hydrostatic,
Styangraphic, Palenchic, and Caprimantic Art.
MR. KATTERFELTO
Will deliver a different Lecture every night in the week, and show
various uncommon experiments, and his apparatus are very numerous, and
elegantly finished: all are on the newest construction, many of which
are not to be equalled in Europe.
MR. KATTERFELTO
Will, after his Philosophical Lecture, discover various arts by which
many persons lose their fortunes by Dice, Cards, Billiards, and E.O.
Tables, &c.’
He was a charlatan _pur et simple_, and to his other attractions he
added a performing black cat,[103] ‘but Colonel Katterfelto is very
sorry that many persons will have it that he and his famous BLACK
CAT were DEVILS but such suspicion only arises through his various
wonderful and uncommon performances: he only professes to be a moral
and divine Philosopher, and he says, that all persons on earth live
in darkness, if they are able, but won’t see that most enterprizing,
extraordinary, astonishing, wonderful, and uncommon exhibition on the
Solar Microscope. He will this day, and every day this week, show, from
eight in the morning till five in the afternoon, his various new Occult
Secrets, which have surprized the King and the whole Royal Family: and
his evening lecture begins this, and every night, precisely at eight
o’clock; but no person will be admitted after eight; and after his
lecture he will exhibit many new deceptions. His Black Cat will also
make her appearance this evening at No. 24, Piccadilly. His exhibition
of the Solar Microscope has caused him lately very grand houses; also
his wonderful Black Cat at night; many thousands could not receive
admission lately for want of room, and Katterfelto expects to clear at
least above £30,000, in a year’s time, through his Solar Microscope and
surprizing Black Cat.’
He also invented a sort of lucifer-match.[104] ‘Dr. Katterfelto will
also, for 2/6_d._ sell such a quantity of his new invented _Alarum_,
which is better than £20 worth of Phosphorus matches, and is better in
a house or ship than £20,000, as many lives may be saved by it, and
is more useful to the Nation than 30,000 Air Balloons. It will light
900 candles, pistols or cannons, and never misses. He also sells the
very best Solid, Liquid, and Powder Phosphorus, Phosphorus Matches,
Diamond Beetles, &c.’ Katterfelto died at Bedale, in Yorkshire, 25th of
November, 1799.
There also lived Dr. Graham, who was not heard of before 1780, and
he was an arch quack. About that year he took a mansion in the Royal
Terrace, Adelphi, which he fitted up sumptuously. It was inscribed
‘Templum Æsculapio Sacrum,’ and was called both the ‘Temple of
Health,’ and the ‘Hymeneal Temple.’ Here, in air heavy with incense,
he lectured on electricity and magnetism. He was a past master in
the art of puffing, and published several books in glorification
of himself. In one, called ‘MEDICAL TRANSACTIONS at the Temple of
Health in London, in the course of the years 1781 & 1782,’ he gives
a wonderful list of cures worked by his ‘Electrical Æther, Nervous
Æthereal Balsam, Imperial Pills, Liquid Amber, British Pills,’ and his
‘Bracing, or Restorative Balsam,’ which, in order to bring within the
reach of ordinary people, he kindly consented to sell at half-price,
namely, ‘that the bottles marked, and formerly sold at one guinea, may
_now_ be had at only half-a-guinea; the half-guinea bottles at five
shillings and threepence; the five shilling at half-a-crown, and the
two-and-sixpenny vials at _only one shilling and threepence_.’
In this book, too, are some choice specimens of poetry, all laudatory
of Dr. Graham, one of which is worth repeating, as a specimen--
‘_An_ ACROSTIC, _by a_ LADY.
D EIGN, to accept the tribute which I owe,
O ne grateful, joyful tear, permit to flow;
C an I be silent when good health is given?
T hat first--that best--that richest gift of heaven!
O Muse! descend, in most exalted lays,
R eplete with softest notes, attune his praise.
G en’rous by nature, matchless in thy skill!
R ich in the God-like art--to ease--to heal;
A ll bless thy gifts! the sick--the lame--the blind,
H ail thee with rapture for the cure they find!
A rm’d by the DEITY with power divine,
M ortals revere HIS attributes in thine.’
In this temple of ‘Health and Hymen’ he had a wonderful ‘Celestial
Bed,’ which he pretended cost sixty thousand pounds. He guaranteed
that the sleepers therein, although hitherto childless, should
become prolific; but it was somewhat costly, for the fee for its
use for a single night was one hundred pounds. Still, he had some
magneto-electric beds, which, probably, were as efficacious, at a lower
rate, only fifty pounds nightly. The title-page of a pamphlet on his
establishment is noteworthy.
‘IL CONVITO AMOROSO,
Or a Serio--comico--philosophical
LECTURE
on the
_Causes, Nature, and Effects of Love and Beauty_,
At the Different Periods of Human Life, in Persons, and
Personages, Male, Female, and Demi-Charactêre;
And in Praise of the Genial and Prolific Influences of the
CELESTIAL BED!
As Delivered by HEBE VESTINA,
The Rosy Goddess of Youth and of Health!
from the
_Electrical Throne! in the Great Apollo-Chamber_,
At the TEMPLE of HYMEN, in LONDON,
Before a glowing and brilliant Audience of near Three Hundred Ladies
and Gentlemen, who were commanded by VENUS, CUPID, and HYMEN! to
assist, in joyous Assembly, at the Grand Feast of very FAT THINGS,
which was held at their Temple, on Monday Evening, the 25th of
November, 1782; but which was interrupted by the rude and unexpected
Arrival of his Worship MIDAS NEUTERSEX, Esq^{re.} ... just as the
Dessert was about to be served up.
Published at the earnest Desire of many of the Company, and to
gratify the impatient and very intense longings of Thousands of
Adepts, Hibernian and British;--of the Cognoscenti;--et de les
Amateur ardens des _delices exquise_ de Venus!
To which is subjoined, a description of the Stupendous Nature
and Effects of the Celebrated
CELESTIAL BED!’
The ‘VESTINA, or Goddess of Health,’ was no mean person. She began
life as a domestic servant, and was named Emma Lyons. She was a
good-looking, florid, buxom wench, and, after having played her part as
priestess at the ‘Temple of Health and Hymen,’ became the wife of the
dilletante Sir William Hamilton, English Minister at Naples, and was
afterwards notorious for her connection with Lord Nelson.
Graham wrote in 1790, ‘A short Treatise on the All cleansing--all
healing--and all invigorating Qualities of the SIMPLE EARTH, when long
and repeatedly applied to the naked Human Body and Lungs, for the safe,
speedy, and radical Cure of all Diseases, internal as well as external,
which are, in their Nature or Stage, susceptible of being cured;--for
the preservation of the Health, Vigour, Bloom, and Beauty of Body and
of Mind; for rejuvenating the aged and decaying Human Body;--and for
prolonging Life to the very longest possible Period, &c.’
For the benefit of those who would try the doctor’s earth-cure, I
extract the following: ‘I generally, or always, prefer the sides or
tops of hills or mountains, as the air and the earth are the more
pure and salubrious; but the air and earth of ordinary pasture
or corn-fields, especially those that are called upland, and even
good clean garden-ground, or the higher commons, especially fallow
corn-fields, are all salutary and good.
‘As to the colour and nature of the earth or soil, I prefer a good
brown or reddish blooming mould, and light, sandy, crumbly, mellow and
marrowy earth; or that which feels when I am in it, and crumbling with
my hands and fingers, like bits of marrow among fine Flour; and that
which has a strong, sweet, earthly smell----’
So that my readers now know exactly what to do.
He had a fairly comprehensive idea of modern hygiene, as will be seen
from the following extract from ‘General Instructions to the persons
who consult Dr. Graham as a Physician’:
‘It will be unreasonable for Dr. Graham’s Patients to expect a complete
and a lasting cure, or even great alleviation of their peculiar
maladies, unless they keep the body and limbs most perfectly clean with
very frequent washings,--breathe fresh, open air day and night,--be
simple in the quality and moderate in the quantity of their food and
drink,--and totally give up using the deadly poisons and weakeners
of both body and soul, and the cankerworm of estates called foreign
Tea and Coffee, Red Port Wine, Spirituous Liquors, Tobacco and Snuff,
gaming and late hours, and all sinful, unnatural, and excessive
indulgence of the animal appetites, and of the diabolical and degrading
mental passions. On practising the above rules--on a widely open window
day and night--and on washing with cold water, and going to bed every
night by eight or nine, and rising by four or five, depends the very
perfection of bodily and mental health, strength and happiness.’
He wrote many pamphlets, some of them on religious matters, and the
fools who patronised him paid him large fees; yet his expenses were
very heavy, and his manner of living luxurious, so that we experience
but little wonder when we find the ‘Temple of Health’ sold up, and that
Graham himself died poor--either in, or near, Glasgow.
Early in the century there were (in surgery) two noted quacks, namely,
Dr. (afterwards Sir William) Read, and Roger, or, as he called himself,
Doctor, Grant--both oculists. Read originally was a tailor, and Grant
had been a tinker and Anabaptist preacher. The list of cures of both
are marvellous--Grant even advertising in the _Daily Courant_, of July
20, 1709, that he had cured, in five minutes, a young man that had been
born blind. But at that time, when people believed in their sovereign
being able to cure scrofula by touching the patient with a gold coin, a
little faith went a long way.
But quackery was not confined to the masculine gender--the ladies
competed with them in the field. Notably Mrs. Map, the bone-setter of
Epsom, of whom Mr. Pulteney writes so amusingly to Swift on December
21, 1736: ‘I must tell you a ridiculous incident; perhaps you have
not heard it. One Mrs. Mapp, a famous she bone-setter and mountebank,
coming to town with a coach and six horses, on the Kentish road, was
met by a rabble of people, who, seeing her very oddly and tawdrily
dressed, took her for a foreigner, and concluded she must be a certain
great person’s mistress. Upon this they followed the coach, bawling
out, “No Hanover w----! No Hanover w----!” The lady within the coach
was much offended, let down the glass, and screamed louder than any of
them, “She was no Hanover w----! she was an English one!” Upon which
they cried out, “God bless your ladyship!” quitted the pursuit, and
wished her a good journey.’
This woman sprang into notoriety all at once. The first authentic
account of her is on page 457 of the _London Magazine_ for 1836, under
the date of August 2: ‘The Town has been surprized lately with the fame
of a young woman at _Epsom_, who, tho’ not very regular, it is said,
in her Conduct, has wrought such Cures that seem miraculous in the
Bone-setting way. The Concourse of People to _Epsom_ on this occasion
is incredible, and ’tis reckon’d she gets near 20 Guineas a Day, she
executing what she does in a very quick Manner: She has strength enough
to put in any Man’s Shoulder without any assistance; and this her
strength makes the following Story the more credible. A Man came to
her, sent, as ’tis supposed, by some Surgeons, on purpose to try her
Skill, with his Hand bound up, and pretended his Wrist was put out,
which upon Examination she found to be false; but, to be even with him
for his Imposition, she gave it a Wrench, and really put it out, and
bad him _go to the Fools who sent him, and get it set again_, or, if he
would come to her that day month, she would do it herself.
‘This remarkable person is Daughter to one _Wallin_, a Bone-setter of
_Hindon, Wilts_. Upon some family Quarrel, she left her Father, and
Wander’d up and down the Country in a very miserable Manner, calling
herself _Crazy Salley_. Since she became thus famous, she married one
Mr. _Hill Mapp_, late servant to a Mercer on _Ludgate Hill_, who, ’tis
said, soon left her, and carried off £100 of her Money.’
She was not long making her way in the world, for we read in the same
magazine, under date, September 19, 1736: ‘Mrs. _Mapp_, the famous
Bone-setter at _Epsom_, continues making extraordinary Cures. She has
now set up an Equipage, and this Day came to _Kensington_ and waited on
her Majesty.’
The _Gentleman’s Magazine_, under date of August 31, 1736, gives a
similar account of her private life, adding that her husband did not
stay with her above a fortnight, but adds that she was wonderfully
clever in her calling, having ‘cured Persons who have been above 20
years disabled, and has given incredible Relief in most difficult
cases.’
‘Mrs. _Mapp_ the Bone-setter, with Dr. Taylor the Oculist, being
present at the Playhouse in _Lincoln’s Inns Fields_, to see a Comedy
call’d the Husband’s Relief, with the Female Bone-setter, and Worm
Doctor; it occasioned a full House, and the following
EPIGRAM.
‘While _Mapp_ to th’ Actors shew’d a kind regard,
On one side _Taylor_ sat, on t’other _Ward_:
When their mock Persons of the Drama came,
Both _Ward_ and _Taylor_ thought it hurt their _fame_;
Wonder’d how _Mapp_ cou’d in good Humour be--
_Zoons_, crys the Manly Dame, it hurts not _me_;
Quacks without Arts may either blind or kill,
But _Demonstration_ shews that mine is _Skill_.
And the following was sung upon y^e Stage:
You Surgeons of _London_ who puzzle your Pates,
To ride in your Coaches, and purchase Estates,
Give over, for Shame, for your Pride has a Fall,
And y^e Doctress of _Epsom_ has outdone you all.
What signifies Learning, or going to school,
When a Woman can do without Reason or Rule,
What puts you to Non-plus, and baffles your Art,
For Petticoat-Practice has now got the Start.
In Physick, as well as in Fashions, we find
The newest has always its Run with Mankind;
Forgot is the bustle ‘bout Taylor and Ward,
Now _Mapp’s_ all y^e Cry, and her Fame’s on Record.
Dame Nature has giv’n her a Doctor’s Degree,
She gets all y^e Patients, and pockets the Fee;
So if you don’t instantly prove her a Cheat,
She’ll loll in her Chariot while you walk y^e Street.’[105]
At this time she was at her acme--but if an anonymous writer in the
_Cornhill Magazine_ for March, 1873, p. 82, is to be believed, she died
December, 1837, ‘at her lodgings near Seven Dials, so miserably poor,
that the parish was obliged to bury her.’
In No. 572 of the _Spectator_, July 26, 1714,[106] is a very amusing
article on the quacks of Queen Anne’s time:
‘There is scarce a city in Great Britain but has one of this tribe,
who takes it into his protection, and on the market-day harangues
the good people of the place with aphorisms and receipts. You may
depend upon it he comes not there for his own private interest, but
out of a particular affection to the town. I remember one of these
public-spirited artists at Hammersmith, who told his audience that
he had been born and bred there, and that, having a special regard
for the place of his nativity, he was determined to make a present of
five shillings to as many as would accept of it. The whole crowd stood
agape and ready to take the doctor at his word; when, putting his hand
into a long bag, as everyone was expecting his crown piece, he drew out
a handful of little packets, each of which, he informed the spectators,
was constantly sold at five shillings and sixpence, but that he would
bate the odd five shillings to every inhabitant of that place; the
whole assembly immediately closed with this generous offer, and took
off all his physick, after the doctor had made them vouch for one
another, that there were no foreigners among them, but that they were
all Hammersmith men.
‘There is another branch of pretenders to this art, who, without
either horse or pickle herring,[107] lie snug in a garret, and send
down notice to the world of their extraordinary parts and abilities
by printed bills and advertisements. These seem to have derived their
custom from an eastern nation which Herodotus speaks of, among whom it
was a law that whenever any cure was to be performed, both the method
of the cure, and an account of the distemper, should be fixed in some
public place; but, as customs will corrupt, these, our moderns, provide
themselves with persons to attest the cure before they publish or make
an experiment of the prescription. I have heard of a porter, who serves
as a Knight of the post[108] under one of these operators, and, though
he was never sick in his life, has been cured of all the diseases in
the Dispensary. These are the men whose sagacity has invented elixirs
of all sorts, pills and lozenges, and take it as an affront if you
come to them before you have been given over by everybody else. Their
medicines are infallible, and never fail of success; that is, of
enriching the doctor, and setting the patient effectually at rest.
‘I lately dropt into a coffee-house at Westminster, where I found the
room hung round with ornaments of this nature. There were Elixirs,
Tinctures, the Anodyne Fotus, English Pills, Electuaries, and, in
short, more remedies than I believe there are diseases. At the sight
of so many inventions, I could not but imagine myself in a kind of
arsenal or magazine, where a store of arms was deposited against any
sudden invasion. Should you be attacked by the enemy sideways, here
was an infallible piece of defensive armour to cure the pleurisy;
should a distemper beat up your head-quarters, here you might purchase
an impenetrable helmet, or, in the language of the artist, a cephalic
tincture; if your main body be assaulted, here are various kinds of
armour in case of various onsets. I began to congratulate the present
age upon the happiness man might reasonably hope for in life, when
death was thus in a manner defeated, and when pain itself would be of
so short a duration, that it would just serve to enhance the value of
pleasure.
‘While I was in these thoughts, I unluckily called to mind a story of
an ingenious gentleman of the last age, who, lying violently afflicted
with the gout, a person came and offered his services to cure him by a
method which, he assured him, was infallible; the servant who received
the message carried it up to his master, who, inquiring whether the
person came on foot or in a chariot, and being informed that he was
on foot: “Go,” says he, “send the knave about his business; was his
method infallible as he pretends, he would, long before now, have been
in his coach and six.” In like manner I concluded that, had all these
advertisers arrived to that skill they pretend to, they would have
no need, for so many years successively, to publish to the world the
place of their abode, and the virtues of their medicines. One of these
gentlemen, indeed, pretends to an effectual cure for leanness: what
effects it may have had upon those who have tried it, I cannot tell;
but I am credibly informed that the call for it has been so great,
that it has effectually cured the doctor himself of that distemper.
Could each of them produce so good an instance of the success of his
medicines, they might soon persuade the world into an opinion of them.
‘I observe that most of the bills agree in one expression, viz.,
that, “with God’s blessing,” they perform such and such cures: this
expression is certainly very proper and emphatical, for that is all
they have for it. And, if ever a cure is performed on a patient where
they are concerned, they can claim a greater share than Virgil’s IAPIS
in the curing of ÆNEAS; he tried his skill, was very assiduous about
the wound, and, indeed, was the only visible means that relieved the
hero, but the poet assures us it was the particular assistance of a
deity that speeded the whole operation.’