THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



83 



suiting from calcining Qgg shells and 

 garden snails. An alkaline vegetable de- 

 coction and some pills made from cal- 

 cined snails and some burned vegetable 

 drugs comprised the "cure." Horace 

 Walpole is said to have taken this awful 

 mess in the belief that it helped him. 

 Lime water would have been just as 

 efficacious. 



THE QUACKS WHO TREATED BEASTS 

 AND BISHOPS AUKE 



The Taylors, known as the Whitworth 

 Doctors, inventors of the Whitworth Red 

 Bottle and the Whitworth Drops, flour- 

 ished at Whitworth during the same pe- 

 riod. The original Taylor was a farrier, 

 who was also an unqualified veterinarian. 

 He died in 1802. His young brother, 

 his sons, and their descendants all prac- 

 ticed surgery, mostly irregularly, although 

 some of them were qualified. The older 

 brothers applied horse remedies to hu- 

 man beings, treating man and beast alike. 

 People came to these ignorant men from 

 every quarter of England, crowding the 

 small village near Rochdale. Duchesses 

 and princesses and bishops — all came to 

 the Whitworths ; rarely the "Doctors" 

 went to London. 



The fame of the Whitworths still lin- 

 gers in rural England and the sale of the 

 "remedies "continues. 



Nostrum makers have not confined 

 their attention to the humble citizen. 

 Some of the most notorious quacks have 

 been favored by royalty. John Ward, 

 who manufactured Ward's Pills and 

 Ward's Drops and many other remedies 

 in Paris and London, had no medical 

 training, but included among his patients 

 Lord Chesterfield, Gibbon the historian, 

 Fielding the novelist, and was so well 

 thought of by George II that the King 

 opened a dispensary at Whitehall and 

 paid Ward to treat poor patients there. 

 When, in 1748, a bill was introduced in 

 Parliament to restrict the practice of 

 medicine, the act contained a clause spe- 

 cifically exempting Ward from its penal- 

 ties. 



Queen Charlotte on one occasion asked 

 General Churchill if it was true that 

 Ward's medicines once made a man mad. 

 "Yes, Madam," said Churchill ; "his name 



A DRAWING WHICH DEPICTS THE ADMIN- 

 ISTRATION OE A BEZOAR TO CURE A 

 VICTIM OE POISONING 



An illustration from "Hortus Sanitatis," 

 published in 1491. "Mad-stones," which only 

 a few years ago were applied to "draw out the 

 poison" from mad-dog bites, were direct tradi- 

 tional descendants of these Bezoar stones of 

 the ancients. 



is Mead." Richard Mead was the regu- 

 lar physician to the King. 



The history of nostrum making in 

 America, of the fortunes builded on it, 

 and the frauds practiced on the credu- 

 lous public, has been well told by other 

 writers — so well told that as a nation we 

 are ceasing to be the greatest nostrum 

 users in the world. 



The alcohol medicines, the cocaine 

 medicines, the opium medicines, and their 

 less actively harmful associates, the sar- 

 saparillas, etc., have had their day, and 

 their use has declined in every section of 

 the country. The Council on Pharmacy 

 of the American Medical Association 

 holds the members of that influential 

 body to a strict code of requirements in 

 the matter of the kind of drug com- 

 pounds they prescribe, and even com- 

 pounds not advertised to the public must 

 nowadays toe the ethical mark. 



