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Following the collapse of the Delahoyde and Lucett joint enterprise, James Lucett resumed practice on his own account. He continued to implement his 'process', promoting it as a unique cure for intractable cases of insanity. For two decades he pursued his activities, with varying success, at different locations in the London area. He maintained his public profile by extensive advertising, letters to newspapers and published pamphlets, extolling his unique 'discovery' and recounting claims of successful cures achieved. Accusations of quackery persisted along with other hostile criticism, particularly from medical men, which Lucett strongly challenged. Periodically he faced more serious difficulties due to legal infractions or financial hardships, but somehow Lucett survived most of these and persevered with his endeavours., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Quackery in medicine is as old as medicine itself. In times of crisis, desperate patients often believe extraordinary claims. In the annals of pain-killer quack medicine, snake oil, elixirs, nostrums and Indian liniments hold a special position. NYU College of Dentistry (NYUCD) has a collection of 234 bottles of such medicines dating from the mid-1800s through 1940. This paper is the fifth in a series of articles featuring "Elixirs of the Past" in which we bring to light six more samples with claims to traditional Chinese or American Indian medicine using snake oil: Virex Compound, Rattlesnake Bill's Oil, Electric Indian Liniment, The King of All Indian Oils, Millerhaus Antiseptic Oil and Celebrated Indian Lotion . The six examples are just a few quack medications linked to fraud, overdose, addiction or death. In 1906, Congress enacted The Pure Food and Drug Act and reinforced it with the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, to stop unsubstantiated medicinal claims and control the use of addictive and dangerous substances. The modern-day use of social media to advertise quack medicine is in some ways even more brazen than selling patent medicine a century ago., (Copyright 2021 © American Academy of the History of Dentistry.)

Quackery in medicine is as old as medicine itself. In times of crisis desperate patients often believe extraordinary claims. In the annals of pain killer quack medicine, elixirs, nostrums and liniments hold a special position. The College of Dentistry at NYU received a collection of 234 bottles of nostrums and liniments dating from approximately 1850 through 1940. In this paper, the FOURTH in a series of articles featuring "Elixirs of the Past" we bring to light four more samples claiming to have magnetic properties: Dr. J.R. Miller's Magnetic Balm, Havens' Electromagnetic Liniment, Headman's Magnetic Liniments , and Magnetic Cream . It goes without saying that none of these had any magnetic properties. In 1906, Congress enacted The Pure Food and Drug Act to prohibit exaggerated or unsubstantiated claims in the marketing and labeling of household products and to control the use of potentially harmful ingredients. The modern-day use of internet advertisements to make unsupported claims is in some ways even more brazen than the advertisements from a century ago., (Copyright 2021 © American Academy of the History of Dentistry.)

This article examines the activities of a well-known figure who, during his stay in Argentina, influenced life in Buenos Aires by cultivating his connections to medical science, the political sphere and the news media. The person in question was Fernando Asuero, an ear, nose and throat specialist from San Sebastián (Spain), whose activities in Buenos Aires in 1930 allow us to examine the conflicts within the healing arts, a field rife with competitors and numerous concurrent and opposing traditions. Using a biographical approach centered on a case study, this article shows that, at certain points, the disputes over cognitive monopoly ended up being debated within a courtroom.

This essay uses the case of the fin-de-siècle Vienna embryologist Samuel Leopold Schenk to analyze the factors at play in allegations of misconduct. In 1898, Schenk published a book titled Theorie Schenk. Einfluss auf das Geschlechtsverhältnis (Schenk's theory. Influence on the sex ratio). The book argued that, by changing their diet, women trying to conceive could influence egg maturation and consequently select the sex of their offspring. This cross between a scientific monograph and a popular advice book received enormous publicity but also spurred first the Vienna Medical Association and then the Senate of the University of Vienna to accuse Schenk of poor science, self-advertisement, quack medical practice, and wrong publisher choice. Formal proceedings against Schenk ended in 1900 with the unusually harsh punishment of early retirement. Schenk died two years later. I examine the elements of the case, from the science of sex determination and selection, to the growth of print media and advertising within the changing demographic and political landscape of Vienna. I argue that the influence of the public, via the growing media, upon science was the main driver of the case against Schenk, but also that the case would have had a more limited impact were it not for the volatile political moment rife with anti-Semitism, nationalism, and xenophobia. I draw the attention to the importance of setting cases of misconduct in the broader political history and against the key social concerns of the moment.

This paper describes one possible origin point for fraudulent behavior within the American pharmaceutical industry. We argue that during the late nineteenth century therapeutic reformers sought to promote both laboratory science and increasingly systematized forms of clinical experiment as a new basis for therapeutic knowledge. This process was intertwined with a transformation in the ethical framework in which medical science took place, one in which monopoly status was replaced by clinical utility as the primary arbiter of pharmaceutical legitimacy. This new framework fundamentally altered the set of epistemic virtues-a phrase we draw from the philosophical field of virtue epistemology-considered necessary to conduct reliable scientific inquiry regarding drugs. In doing so, it also made possible new forms of fraud in which newly emergent epistemic virtues were violated. To make this argument, we focus on the efforts of Francis E. Stewart and George S. Davis of Parke, Davis & Company. Therapeutic reformers within the pharmaceutical industry, such as Stewart and Davis, were an important part of the broader normative and epistemic transformation we describe in that they sought to promote laboratory science and systematized clinical trials toward the twin goals of improving pharmaceutical science and promoting their own commercial interests. Yet, as we suggest, Parke, Davis & Company also serves as an example of a company that violated the very norms that Stewart and Davis helped introduce. We thus seek to describe one possible origin point for the widespread fraudulent practices that now characterize the pharmaceutical industry. We also seek to describe an origin point for why we conceptualize such practices as fraudulent in the first place.

This article examines the medical and political discussions regarding a controversial medicinal bark from Ecuador - cundurango - that was actively sponsored by the Ecuadorian government as a new botanical cure for cancer in the late nineteenth century United States and elsewhere. The article focuses on the commercial and diplomatic interests behind the public discussion and advertising techniques of this drug. It argues that diverse elements - including the struggle for positioning scientific societies and the disapproval of the capacities of Ecuadorian doctors, US abolitionist history, regional and local political struggles - played a role in the quackery accusations against cundurango and its promoters. The development and international trade of this remedy offer interesting insights into the global history of drugs, particularly how medical knowledge was challenged during a period when scientific medicine was struggling for hegemony. It explores how newspapers expanded "the public interest" in a possible cancer cure.

Radium has been distributed in a wide variety of devices during the early part of this century. Antique objects containing significant amounts of radium turn up at flea markets, antique shows, and antique dealers, in a variety of locations. These objects include radium in devices which were used by legitimate medical practitioners for legitimate medical purposes such as therapy, as well as a wide variety of "quack cures." These devices may contain anywhere from a few nanocuries to as much as several hundred microcuries of radium. In addition to medical sources, a large variety of scientific instruments utilize radium in luminous dials. These instruments include compasses, azimuth indicators, and virtually any object which might require some form of calibration. In addition, the consumer market utilized a large amount of radium in the production of wrist watches, pocket watches, and clocks with luminous dials. Some of these watches contained as much as 4.5 μCi of radium, and between 1913 and 1920 about 70 gm was produced for the manufacture of luminous compounds. In addition to the large amount of radium produced for scientific and consumer utilization, there were a number of materials produced which were claimed to contain radium but in fact did not, further adding to the confusion in this area. The wide availability of radium is a result of the public's great fascination with radioactivity during the early part of this century and a belief in its curative properties. A number of objects were produced in order to trap the emanations of radium in water for persons to drink in order to benefit from their healing effects. Since the late 20s and early 30s the public's attitude towards radiation has shifted 180° and it is now considered an extremely dangerous and harmful material. However, even as late as the 1950s, there were still some items produced containing radioactivity which today would be unthinkable. The "Buck Rogers Mystery Ring" of the 1950s was activated with polonium. With the shift in public attitudes towards radioactivity, and increasing problems in disposal of radioactive materials, the disposal of radium presents a particularly perplexing problem. The radium which was produced in the early part of the century is still around in various forms and is extremely difficult to dispose of. All objects discovered claiming to contain radium should be taken seriously and should be properly surveyed. They then should either be stored in some area where the environment is protected from the radioactivity or if a very small amount of radium is present, they may be disposed of through one of several commercial sources. Any significant amount of radium is extraordinarily difficult and expensive to dispose of and there are only limited sites which will accept these materials. No clear cut, uniform mechanism for the handling of radioactive materials which turn up outside of the usual institutional sources, is currently in place., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

At the turn to the 19 th century, medicine in Germany became strongly influenced by the teachings of John Brown, who was a scottish physician. He had advocated a theory which regards and treats disorders as caused by defective or excessive excitation. His teachings were welcomed by natural philosophers like Schelling or Hegel. They modified it and integrated it into their systems of thinking. On the other hand Hufeland, who was one of the foremost physicians at that time, heavily opposed Brunonian System. This becomes evident in a fragmentary text that had been found only recently. In it he criticizes that these teachings were based on pure speculation and not on sound science as executed by Albrecht von Haller. It was meant ironically when he concluded that it thus resembled natural poetry. As viewed from today, evidence based medicine eventually established our modern ways for successfully diagnosing and treating disease. However, Hufelands disapproval appears to be still relevant. There are many people that even now advocate alternative ways and who consult quacks, healers etc., Competing Interests: Der Autor gibt an, dass kein Interessenkonflikt besteht., (© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.)

Phineas T. Barnum (1810-1891) and Gardner Q. Colton (1814-1898) both entered the laughing gas show business in Manhattan in 1844. With Horace Wells (1815-1848), Colton introduced inhaled nitrous oxide for dental anesthesia in December 1844. The Barnumesque nature of laughing gas exhibitions may have contributed to the initially negative reception of nitrous anesthesia as humbug. Colton continued laughing gas shows after 1844, and he performed in a Barnum forum in Boston in 1862. In 1863, Barnum encouraged Colton to establish a flourishing painless dentistry practice in Manhattan. Barnum designated himself to be the Prince of Humbug. He embraced humbug for entertainment purposes but decried medical humbug. Notwithstanding, Barnum explicitly evinced awareness of the power of the placebo response. Accordingly, the proneness of individuals to deem impersonal all-purpose assessments to be personally applicable is dubbed the Barnum effect. Barnum was indirectly connected to Painless Parker (1872-1952), a dentist who exploited sensational advertising and humbug and ran a circus., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

During the late nineteenth century, Spanish physicians had few chances to observe how hypnosis worked within a clinical context. However, they had abundant opportunities to watch lay hypnotizers in action during private demonstrations or on stage. Drawing on the exemplary cases of the magnetizers Alberto Santini Sgaluppi (a.k.a. Alberto Das) and Onofroff, in this paper I discuss the positive influence of stage magnetizers on medical hypnosis in Spain. I argue that, owing to the absence of medical training in hypnosis, the stage magnetizers’ demonstrations became practical hypnosis lessons for many physicians willing to learn from them instead of condemning them. I conclude that Spain might be no exception in this regard, and that further research should be undertaken into practices in other countries.

This article examines links between mid-Victorian opposition to commerce in popular works on sexual health and the introduction of a legal test of obscenity, in the 1868 trial R. v. Hicklin, that opened the public distribution of any work that contained sexual information to prosecution. The article demonstrates how both campaigning medical journals' crusades against "obscene quackery" and judicial and anti-vice groups who aimed to protect public morals responded to unruly trade in medical print by linking popular medical works with public corruption. When this link was codified, it became a double-edged sword for medical authorities. The Hicklin test provided these authorities with a blunt tool for disciplining professional medical behavior. However, it also radically narrowed the parameters through which even the most established practitioners could communicate medical information without risking censure.

Western literature has focused on medical plurality but also on the pervasive existence of quacks who managed to survive from at least the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Focal points of their practices have been their efforts at enrichment and their extensive advertising. In Greece, empirical, untrained healers in the first half of the twentieth century do not fit in with this picture. They did not ask for payment, although they did accept 'gifts'; they did not advertise their practice; and they had fixed places of residence. Licensed physicians did not undertake a concerted attack against them, as happened in the West against the quacks, and neither did the state. In this paper, it is argued that both the protection offered by their localities to resident popular healers and the healers' lack of demand for monetary payment were jointly responsible for the lack of prosecutions of popular healers. Moreover, the linking of popular medicine with ancient traditions, as put forward by influential folklore studies, also reduced the likelihood of an aggressive discourse against the popular healers. Although the Greek situation in the early twentieth century contrasts with the historiography on quacks, it is much more in line with that on wise women and cunning-folk. It is thus the identification of these groups of healers in Greece and elsewhere, mostly through the use of oral histories but also through folklore studies, that reveals a different story from that of the aggressive discourse of medical men against quacks.

The educational opportunities and qualifications, corporate structures and regulation that had become accepted features of the Irish medical profession in the era of Charles Lucas were the fruits of a slow process of professionalization initiated by a handful of Irish medics who, from the 1620s, began tackling poor standards of medical practice in an era of medical pluralism. This paper begins by reviewing the standard of practice in early seventeenth-century Ireland. Through the examples of Thomas Arthur, M.D. and John Clavell, a self-styled medic, differences in the approaches adopted by university-trained physicians and unorthodox practitioners are highlighted. The succession of significant steps taken in this professionalization process are traced, with particular emphasis on the failed attempt to establish a Royal College of Physicians in Dublin during the mid-1620s and the importance of the influx of English physicians in the 1650s for the creation of permanent corporate structures and regulation.

One century ago, patients dreaded a diagnosis of head and neck cancer, fearing not only the progression of the disease but also the prospect of surgery. A cadre of charlatans preyed upon these fears to make a profit. We unearth the tale of Benjamin Bye, an Indianapolis doctor peddling the Combination Oil Cure. His collection of creams applied to the face offered unsuspecting patients a painless cure of their head and neck cancer. Bye eventually came under the fire of muckrakers as well as the federal government. Not long thereafter, Bye's practice was declared fraudulent, and the US Postmaster General refused to send his products. Bye's story recalls a time in which curative options were few and fear of malignancy was pervasive. Today, as our treatment armamentarium grows, we are reminded to critically assess efficacy, honestly discuss options with patients, and ensure that charlatanism remains a shadow of the past., (© American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery Foundation 2014.)

Samuel Holden Parsons Lee practised medicine at a time when the germ theory of disease had not yet been proposed and antibiotics remained undiscovered. In 1798 he served selflessly as the only physician in town who was willing to battle the Yellow Fever outbreak of New London, Connecticut. Because he practised at the dawn of the age of patent medicine, unfortunately his name also came to be associated with medical quackery. We argue that his contributions have been grossly underestimated. He compounded and vended medications - including bilious pills and bitters - that were gold standards of the day. Moreover, one preparation for treatment of kidney stones led to his sub-specialization in this field and was met with such success that its sale continued for nearly 100 years after his death. While a talented medical man, Lee also had a knack for business, finding success in trading, whaling and real estate., (© The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.)

Thomas-Nicolas Larcheret, teacher in singing, declamation, guitar or lyre and violin, author of music and books, but also inventor of the universal elixir by his name, is a good example of quack of the 19th century. His book Larcheregium ou Dictionnaires spéciaux de mon élixir, ainsi que toute ma doctrine et de mes adhérens (Larcheregium or special Dictionaries of my elixir, as well as all my doctrine and my adherents), published in 1819, deserves a deep study to show the most frequently used arguments by the ones who emphasize the value of their secret remedy. The opportunities are there to present themselves as victims of medical authorities, experts and authorities as a whole, that do not recognize the value of their product. The only acceptable judge for them is the experience reported by the patients who are able to demonstrate the efficacy of the product since they do buy it (probably at a very high price). From this viewpoint, the book of Larcheret is a good example of turning the authorities down and of diatribe against physicians and pharmacists. It is also the demonstration that, even with the Empire's new regulations against secret remedies and quacks, they will still persist for a large part of the 19th century in France.

This chapter examines the medical texts, or "Materia Medica", held by Sir Walter Scott in his library at Abbotsford. While the vast majority of Scott's medical texts are antiquarian, his library also contains rare tracts and ephemera relating to the medical practice of the infamous quack, Dr James Graham (1745-94), and the Burke and Hare controversy of 1828 and its aftermath. Examining Scott's holdings of medical texts in relation to his own health and that of his family and friends, it is argued that the lack of contemporary medical self-help texts in his library is striking and indicative of his stoical attitude towards health, despite his clear interest in medical culture.

In 1948 the New South Wales government instituted an inquiry into the claims of John Braund – a 78-year-old self-described ‘quack’ – that his secret treatment had cured 317 cancer sufferers. The ‘Braund controversy’, as it became known, was one of Australia’s most prominent cases of medical fraud. This paper examines that controversy and its effects on cancer philanthropy, medical research, and especially on legislation regulating treatment providers up to the present. With the Braund controversy in mind, the New South Wales (NSW) parliament struggled to develop legislation that would protect patients and punish quacks but also allow for serendipitous, unorthodox discoveries. Recent decades saw new elements added to this calculus – allowing a wide-ranging health marketplace, and allowing patients to choose their therapies. This paper argues that the particular body of law legislatures used in regulating cancer treatment and how regulations were framed reflected the changing context of healthcare and illustrates the calculus legislatures have undertaken in regulating the health marketplace, variously factoring in public safety, serendipitous discovery, the authority of orthodox medicine, patient choice, and economic opportunity.

This article examines for the first time the theologically based medical ethics of the late sixteenth-century English Calvinist minister William Perkins. Although Perkins did not write a single focused book on the subject of medical ethics, he addressed a variety of moral issues in medicine in his numerous treatises on how laypeople should conduct themselves in their vocations and in all aspects of their daily lives. Perkins wrote on familiar issues such as the qualities of a good physician, the conduct of sick persons, the role of the minister in healing, and obligations in time of pestilence. His most significant contribution was his distinction between "lawful" and "unlawful" medicine, the latter category including both medical astrology and magic. Perkins's works reached a far greater audience in England and especially New England than did the treatises of contemporary secular medical ethics authors and his writings were influential in guiding the moral thinking of many pious medical practitioners and laypersons.

The origins of obesity can be traced back at least 25 000 years. In the Stone Age, in the Middle Ages, and in the 17th century overweight indicated prosperity,power, and fertility, but already Hippocrates described obesity as a disease in the Antique. The first academic papers dealing with adiposity were published in the times of the Industrial Revolution.In the 19th century a pharmaceutical treatment boom against overweight emerged- people had to deal with quackery and dangerous remedies like amphetamines that flooded the market.Bariatric surgery was introduced in the 20th century- to days gold standard is the RYGB operation. Dealing with morbid obesity and its comorbidities is nowadays one of the serious problems in the field of public health.

Around 1850, Isaac L. Pulvermacher (1815-1884) joined the ranks of so-called "galvanists" who had, for nearly a century, been touting the shocks and sparks of electricity as a miracle cure for all ills, including neurological complaints such as palsy and hemiplegia. The famed authors, Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), in France, and Charles Dickens (1812-1870), in England, although contemporaries, apparently never met or corresponded. But during their lives, they both became aware of Pulvermacher and his patented Hydro-Electric Chains, claimed to impart vigor and cure nearly every complaint. Pulvermacher's chains made a cameo appearance in Madame Bovary (1857), Flaubert's controversial (and most successful) novel. Among Dickens's last letters (1870) was an order for I. L. Pulvermacher and Company's "magic band." Since the Victorian age, electrical and magnetic cures, for better or worse, continue to be products of both the medical profession and quackery., (© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This essay discusses the question of health in the Kingdom of Hungary during the Age of Enlightenment. It explores the relationships and tensions between central theories of medical police and the local expectations of government administrators, as well as those between academic or official knowledge and implicit or alternative knowledge about health. The reigns of Maria Theresia and Joseph II marked the moment at which particular kinds of folk and practical knowledge about healing became visible and above all legible. This is to be seen in the enormous rise in book production, which in itself represented an 'approved knowledge' that found legitimation in new academic and bureaucratic institutions, such as the reformed medical faculty of the University of Vienna, the newly-founded medical faculty at Tyrnau, the establishment of a health department within the Hungarian Statthalterei, as well as in the emission of royal legislation supporting the agendas of the new enlightened science of 'medical police'., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This article examines the career and reform agenda of Christopher Merrett as a means of evaluating the changing conditions of medical knowledge production in late seventeenth-century London. This period was characterised by increasing competition between medical practitioners, resulting from the growing consumer demand for medical commodities and services, the reduced ability of elite physicians to control medical practice, and the appearance of alternative methods of producing medical knowledge - particularly experimental methods. This competition resulted in heated exchanges between physicians, apothecaries, and virtuosi, in which Merrett played an active part. As a prominent member of both the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians, Merrett sought to mediate between the two institutions by introducing professional reforms designed to alleviate competition and improve medical knowledge.These reforms entailed sweeping changes to medical regulation and education that integrated the traditional reliance on Galenic principles with knowledge derived from experiment and artisanal practices. The emphasis Merrett placed on the trades suggests the important role artisanal knowledge played in his efforts to reorganise medicine and improve knowledge of bodily processes.

Joseph Toynbee (1815-1866) is considered one of the fathers of modern otology. He spent his whole life in London, studying and describing the anatomy and pathology of the main diseases of the ear. This paper presents some of the motivations behind Toynbee's decision to specialise in otology, by examining several of his letters published under the signature 'J. T.' in The Lancet between 1838 and 1839. Frustrated by the weakened state of aural surgery in Britain, and by the popularity of several 'quacks aurists' (including John Harrison Curtis, William Wright and Alexander Turnbull), Toynbee insisted that the study of the ear needed to distance itself from quackery and rebuild itself upon a scientific foundation. This paper evaluates several exchanges between Toynbee and Curtis, Wright and Turnbull.

The intellectual movement of inquiry by direct observation and inductive reasoning to acquire new knowledge matured in the Enlightenment. In medicine, personal observation as the prime mover of investigation began in anatomy, and gradually extended into studies of function, site of disease, and composition of body fluids. This led to the generation of new information on renal structure, function, and urine composition in health and to some extent in disease. Studies on the dissected, injected, and teased kidneys have left us with many of the eponymous renal structures described by Eustachio, Bellini, Malpighi, and Ferrein. Subsequent studies by Haller of the renal circulation and scrutiny of the separation of serous fluid from blood in the renal cortical glandular components established the beginnings of renal physiology. The movement to integrate chemistry into medicine championed by Boerhaave, which launched studies of urine composition in diabetes, urolithiasis, and gout led to the exploration of a chemical basis of other diseases. Albuminous precipitate in the urine of a dropsical case was described by Cotugno, but its association with kidney disease went unappreciated. Most of the new information on the kidney was communicated to and discussed in the increasing number of new scientific societies that were being formed, and transmitted to the eager members of the learned bourgeoisie of the period in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert., (© 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)