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n Let’s talk about sex.
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nOh, err,ndoes that make you a bit nervous? A bit uncomfortable? Not sure if you want tondo that?
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nGood!
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nBecause that’s exactly how the quack doctors worked. In ourntimes, we have much easier access to information that our ancestors could evernhave imagined. Ignorance is not bliss, as some would have us think.nIgnorance is dangerous. It is dangerous because it opens us up tonmisinformation. And the quacks provided misinformation – in spades.
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| Premature Decline in Man? |
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nJustnimagine for a minute that you are a Victorian youngster (not a ‘teenager’,nbecause teenagers did not exist back then. Well, they did, but that’s not whatnthey were called. The noun ‘teenager’ was not used until the early 1940s). Younare a young man or a young woman. And then your body starts doing strangenthings that it hasn’t done before. Things start appearing where they didn’tnappear previously. Stuff starts happening. What are you going to do? Is itnnormal – Am I normal? Who are you going to ask about all this?
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| Mother’s Little Helper |
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nNot Mamma ornPapa, surely not. Because it might not be normal, and then who knows what willnhappen next? A teacher? Not in Victorian England, you don’t. That’s not whatnteachers did. What about the Parson? Are you kidding? This might be sinful! Donyou really want to go to Hell? Well, obviously, the doctor. But wait. You paynto see the doctor. It’s not like today, where you just make an appointment andnturn up. No NHS.
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| Life Savers? |
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nThe Doctor (with a capital letter) is a highly respectednmember of society and you pay to see him. But you are a youngster, so wherenwill you get the money? And even if you do raise the funds, what if discoversnsomething – horrible? Where will he send you next? What might the treatment be?nCan you mention it to a friend, an older brother or sister maybe? Not likely,nwhat if they blab – who knows whom they will tell? Best keep quiet. Don’tnmention it and it might go away. So you live in ignorance, worrying andnfretting, and it keeps happening. You pick bits up, here and there, and maybe,njust maybe, someone has a quiet talk to you about birds and bees and flowers,nall of which probably just confuses you even more.
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| Roll Up, Roll Up |
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nAnd one day you see annadvertisement in a newspaper for a book about ‘problems’. It’s only a shilling,nand it’s written by a doctor, because it says so in the advert. Look, he’s gotnletters after his name – whatever they stand for. Or maybe, you plan to getnmarried and you want to know what that entails, so you send off a book aboutnmarriage, no harm in that, surely? Well, it all depends on whose book you buy.nAnd the quacks were very clever about how they marketed their books.
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| Dr Bate’s – True Marriage Guide |
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n The typical book starts with thenincontrovertible facts – the plumbing, as it were. There is a chapter on thenmale plumbing followed by a chapter on the female plumbing, all verynscientific, all very anatomical, all stuff you can’t argue with. It is plain,nstraightforward, descriptive information, with Latin names attached, preciselynas you would find in an anatomical textbook. There might even be pictures, allnnicely labelled, showing you exactly what is where. And this gains yournconfidence, as it’s all true and done – medically. Then follows moreninformation, maybe outlining what occurs during puberty, how conceptionnhappens, what pregnancy involves, again done medically, but with little germs ofn‘philosophy’ dropped in along the way.
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| Dr Larmont – Medical Adviser and Marriage Guide |
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nAt first, you hardly notice thesennuggets of wisdom, but they build up along the way, until they develop into ansystem of lies designed to alarm, startle or downright scare. There will benallusions to ‘fluids’, ‘emissions’ and ‘secretions’. Words like ‘morbid’,n‘nocturnal’ and ‘unnatural’ will be used. ‘Vice’, ‘solitary’ and ‘sin’ willnfollow soon after. And they’ve got you. Your mind harks back to the time thatn‘that’ happened. And there was also ‘that’ other time. You’ve done it tonyourself, you’re to blame, it’s your fault. So, now what?
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| Help is at Hand – Venereal Diseases with COLORED PLATES (yuk) |
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nLuckily, help is atnhand. The same nice people who sold you the book also sell the ‘cure’ fornwhatever ails you. You can conveniently buy it from them through the post, sonyou write off for the free diagnosis. Pretty soon, yet receive a reply, and anrequest for more details and a urine sample. So, you post that off too and bynreturn you get a reply – it’s lucky that you got in touch when you did! This isnan advanced case, in need of immediate treatment, otherwise madness or evenndeath is certain to follow soon. You travel to the doctor’s establishment,nwhere a large brass plate on the wall inspires confidence, and are shown into anwell-appointed sitting room. The genial doctor enters, asks some questions,nruns a cool hand over your brow and takes your pulse and requires a ‘warm’nsample for immediate analysis ‘by test-tube and microscope’.
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| Dr F Hollick – The Marriage Guide |
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nYou do thennecessary and the doctor goes away, only to return shortly, with a look ofngrave concern all too evident on his face. It is, he tells you with greatestnregret, just as he suspected. The tests have proven positive. You neednspecialised treatment and you need it now. And so it begins. You make anpayment. You make another payment. You need some rare, very special remedy. Sonthat’s another payment. And the worst part about all this is, there’s nothingnwrong with you. You’ve been duped. But you don’t know that. Because then‘Doctor’ has told you, and you’ve read his book. And even if you doubt him,nwhat can you do? Go to the police? And tell them, what? That you’re one ofn‘them’ – one of ‘them’ that does ‘that’? To yourself?
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| Dr F B Courtenay – Revelations of Quacks and Quackery |
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nThese humbugs were astonishinglyncommon, precisely for these reasons. The Medical Authorities did what theyncould, and tried to alert the public. One of the leading figures in thenanti-quack movement was Dr Francis B Courtenay, who wrote a series of lettersnto The Medical Circular, which were also collected into a pamphletncalled Revelations of Quacks and Quackery, under the pseudonym Detector,nwhich ran to several editions. Courtenay gave real-life accounts of thenpractices of the quacks and gave real-life examples of the consequences ofntheir frauds.
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| Dr Hollock’s Aphrodisiac Remedy |
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nOne case was that of a young Oxford lady, ‘pretty, clever andnaccomplished‘, who was engaged to be married. She bought one of the Philosophynof Marriage books and was shocked to discover that a condition from which shenwas suffering slightly (leucorrhoea – a common enough complaint, often causednby hormonal imbalance) was considered to be a bar to marriage. She had nonfriends in which she could confide, and thought it her duty to break off thenengagement, which she did, and entered a decline from which it was thought shenwould never recover.
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| Courtenay – Suicide of a Corporal of the Guards |
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nAnother sorry case was that of Lance-Corporal GeorgenAshford of the Coldstream Guards, a lively and popular soldier who bought ancopy of The Warning Voice, which he then read constantly. His demeanournchanged, to the alarm of his comrades in arms, and he became withdrawn andnsullen. One morning, he took his rifle, placed the stock on the floor, leanednover from his bunk, put the barrel in his mouth and blew his brains out. At theninquest, it was found that he had bought, for £1 5s, a homeopathic medicine,nwhich he took three times a day. He had asked companions for information on thenquickest way to die and had been heard to mutter that he was ‘… a ruined mannfor life.’ It was concluded that he had taken his own life ‘… whilst inna state of unsound mind.’
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| Dr Henry Smith – The Warning Voice |
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nA third example is that of James Miles of Gravesend,nwho committed suicide in January 1865. He had been a valued worker, abstemiousnand conscientious, twenty-four years old and happily married, until he began toncomplain about headaches and stomach pains. One afternoon, he kissed his wife,nshook her hand, wished her goodbye, lit his pipe and went out. He went down tonthe canal, jumped in and drowned himself. A policeman found two quack pamphletsnin Miles’s pocket, and more, with letters, in a tin at his home. A Dr De Roosnhad written thirty letters in ten months, pressing him for money and impressingnhow important it was that he kept up his treatment. One of De Roos’s pamphletsnhad the word ‘suicide’ prominently printed around its border.
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| Punch April 1865 endorses Courtenay’s campaign |
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nWhat wasnimportant is that Courtenay actually named names. He included the names of thenquacks, their addresses and their aliases. He gave examples of their frauds,nand warned what to beware of. He urged other doctors to mention these quacksnand their ruses to every single one of their male patients, and told them to passnthe message on to their sons, nephews and brothers. He exhorted the clergy tondo the same from their pulpits, as a duty to the flocks in their care.nCourtenay’s work was very well received, covered widely in the popular pressnand his cause was loudly spread. Punch, correctly, pointed out that a ‘normal’npublication could not publish the names of the quacks for fear of libel suits,nbut Courtenay was deliberately provoking them by publishing his findings in an‘specialised’ medical journal, whose authority and readership they would notndare to cross.
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nI’d like to say it worked. That all the quacks packed up andnfound proper jobs. But I can’t. They are still out there, flogging colourednwater and sugar pills to the ignorant. And it’s not just medicine – remember mynold chum, Michelle, from Microsoft. I had another call from one of herncolleagues just the other day, offering to clean up my laptop for me. BecausenAndy (or whatever passes for a pseudonym in India these days) was an expert andnknew about laptops. And I’m not an expert – or so Andy thought. Except I wasnworking with computers before Andy was a twinkle in his Daddy’s eye, andnshowing other people how to use them for more years than I care to remember.nAnd, I’d had my little encounter with Michelle. So, whether it’s your MannParts, your Lady Bits or your Shiny Things, just remember – someone, somewhere,nis willing to part you from your money because you don’t know enough aboutnthese things. Be careful out there.
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