Quack medicine pamphlet

The Library has recently acquired a rare 18th-century pamphlet entitled An essay in favour of such public remedies, as are usually distinguished by the name of quack medicines. It is not dated but appears to have been printed in 1773. The English Short-title Catalogue records only one other copy, in the Countway Library of Harvard Medical School.

The anonymous author calls himself 'a country gentleman, formerly a practitioner in the science of physi', and was clearly not professionally qualified. He attacks the medical profession's prejudice against proprietary medicines as based on professional jealousy, but his stress on the altruistic motives of the owners of proprietary medicines seems rather optimistic. Proprietary medicines could actually be a very lucrative business and some of those involved were far from scrupulous.

An interesting factor mentioned is the rise of newspapers and the improvement of roads, which combined to make advertisements an efficient form of publicity. The book is itself an example of the contemporary distribution network. The title page lists booksellers in London, Cambridge, Oxford, Salisbury, Bath, Sherborne, Winchester, York, Newcastle and Leeds. With such a wide distribution why do so few copies seem to have survived? The answer must be that it was not the sort of book that found its way into libraries, or at least not into medical libraries. The identity of the author is at present a mystery, but perhaps further research may reveal his identity.

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John Symons - Curator, Early Printed Books collection
j.symons@wellcome.ac.uk