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Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in Medicine
If the thought of visiting the doctor or having a spell in the hospital gives most people pause to contemplate their mortality, then such thoughts must pale when compared to the experiences of our ancestors. They were largely at the mercy of a medical fraternity renowned more for the eccentricity of their cures than their efficacy. From the pisse prophets who would gaze upon a patient’s urine to establish the most accurate diagnosis, to the pushers of such remedies as “Walkers Jesuit Drops” to cure venereal disease, Quacks is a thrilling history of opportunists, charlatans, conmen, some deludedly sincere doctors, and—ultimately—of our own enduring credulity.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Roy Porter
223 books125 followersRoy's books cover several fields: the history of geology, London, 18th-Century British ideas and society, medicine, madness, quackery, patients and practitioners, literature and art, on which subjects (and others) he published over 200 books are articles.
List of works can be found @ wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Porter )
List of works can be found @ wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Porter )
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 7, 2015
Interesting if sometimes a bit repetitive analysis of "quacks." Porter does a good job showing how overlapping the world of "quacks" and "legitimate" medical professionals was. He also explains how people decided who to seek out and why.
June 28, 2021
in progress
List of illustrations 6
Acknowledgements 9
Preface 11
1. Quackery 15
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3.
4.
5.
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8. 193
List of illustrations 6
Acknowledgements 9
Preface 11
1. Quackery 15
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8. 193
August 27, 2010
This was an entertaining history of the men and women who were labeled as quacks in Britain during the 17th to the early 19th centuries. The term "quack" was applied to men and women who were accused of practicing medicine (Physic) in bad faith, those who traveled from town to town and gave public performances and demonstrations, sold nostrums that proclaimed to cure numerous unrelated diseases from 'Rheumatick Defluctions' to 'Wind Cholick' to 'Ptisick or shortnesse of breath', advertised widely in newspapers, or made outrageous claims about their clientele (many claimed to be the personal physician to kings and queens throughout Europe), their cure rates and the efficacy of their medicines.
However, Porter shows us that several practitioners who were labeled as quacks received medical degrees from Oxford, Cambridge or other renowned schools, and nearly all subscribed to the same medical theories and treatments used by the regular physicians. Many of the standard medical providers also used the same techniques as the quacks, such as advertising, frequent use of nostrums to purge the body of toxins that were the cause of illness, and frequent self promotion. The success of quackery was also aided by the lack of regulation, as neither the courts nor town officials sought to enforce standards on practitioners until the early 19th century, and by the state of medical knowledge in the 17th and 18th centuries, which was dominated by theories beliefs rather than proven fact.
Quackery slowly fell out of fashion in the early and mid 19th century in England, as alternative medical movements such as homeopathy, naturopathy and medical botany took hold, and as allopathic (standard) medical practice became more regulated and restricted.
"Quacks" contains several detailed accounts of notable practitioners, along with detailed etchings and engravings of quacks as they beguile and entertain potential customers. The book was overly repetitive at times, especially in the sections about advertising and nostrums, but overall it was a well written and balanced look at quackery in Britain.
However, Porter shows us that several practitioners who were labeled as quacks received medical degrees from Oxford, Cambridge or other renowned schools, and nearly all subscribed to the same medical theories and treatments used by the regular physicians. Many of the standard medical providers also used the same techniques as the quacks, such as advertising, frequent use of nostrums to purge the body of toxins that were the cause of illness, and frequent self promotion. The success of quackery was also aided by the lack of regulation, as neither the courts nor town officials sought to enforce standards on practitioners until the early 19th century, and by the state of medical knowledge in the 17th and 18th centuries, which was dominated by theories beliefs rather than proven fact.
Quackery slowly fell out of fashion in the early and mid 19th century in England, as alternative medical movements such as homeopathy, naturopathy and medical botany took hold, and as allopathic (standard) medical practice became more regulated and restricted.
"Quacks" contains several detailed accounts of notable practitioners, along with detailed etchings and engravings of quacks as they beguile and entertain potential customers. The book was overly repetitive at times, especially in the sections about advertising and nostrums, but overall it was a well written and balanced look at quackery in Britain.
May 3, 2026
So today, Indigenous healers in the Amazon are still labeled as Quacks by white men standing upright lecturing over a modern bed. Yet in the West, we do actually use the plant-based medicine coming from that region, even as we label the healers who apply it there locally as batshit crazy, we ourselves have institutions and pills for the crazy, but apparently no medical remedy for the doctors. How many doctors can we demote to quacks, and how many quacks can we lift to the status of doctors? Who gets to decide what counts as legitimate care? Interestingly enough, when framing things like this, it seems we are talking on behalf of the healthy, but no, we are all patients sooner or later.
Yes, it was all about the money, the prestige, the status of one above another, the material surplus, more bread and water and wine for Jesus, and a free tax for an increased ecological footprint. It’s obviously not about care. Never was, and arguably never will be in this rotten system. Rotten? But Louis, I am ok, so shut the fuck up. Yes, in every family, someone is okay.
Of course, to give credit to a traditional quack, a layman, or any independent caregiver operating somewhat outside the strict control of a top-down lobby group and body of interests is to hurt the authority of the system. Indeed, even saying that a man on the street did not end up there solely because of his own choices can feel threatening to those who believe that whatever power they have achieved is entirely of their own making.
Capitalism behaves like a quack: it makes us sick while claiming to be the cure, generating conditions that damage well-being and marketing palliatives in place of remedies. It soothes, prolongs, and profits from the complaint. The malady and its remedy spring from the same hand: the patient, paying for both, has to call it relief. A system becomes quack-like when it sustains the very conditions that justify its remedies.
True care often faces bitter ingratitude, and some people seem not to understand why someone would offer care without the personal reward, even though it’s all an existential defense mechanism of an animal patting itself on the back (Becker). Some might express this as a form of intelligence: not valuing unselfishness because one has supposedly seen through it. But this is not intelligence. It is incomprehension. The unselfish act becomes intolerable because it exposes the poverty of one’s own moral imagination. How could anyone be so unselfish? It seems self-destructive. It must be wrong. It must be foolish. It must be stopped. Give me more money.
An act of solidarity does not directly take anything from the person outside it. So why oppose it? Why oppose socialism, or a narrative from below? Perhaps because it threatens something deeper than property: it threatens the moral architecture that allows selfishness to appear reasonable. It exposes the fact that even the most intimate forms of life are built on unequal ground. To build a family in an unjust world is also to build it within conditions that others are denied, or can access only in diminished ways. The same with the room, the workshop, the house, the flat, and the rooftop terrace. There are no neutral spaces.
Unselfish acts can become intolerable to those who need selfishness to remain morally comfortable. By criticising generosity, they make their own refusal to act seem less confronting. Of course, it’s all rather self-explanatory, but people being people, the world doesn’t seem to change much with the added (Big) data or quota. Capitalism is rational, they say. Efficient, too. But efficiency has often been the language through which horror becomes administratively acceptable. Yes, for some, the definition of efficient is directly related to the bureaucracy of the Holocaust. Or, efficiency: a process by which humans block out uncomfortable truths to live. Character is a vital lie (Rank). But no, we have morals and ethics and ideas and dreams. They are so real! No, animals we surely are not. We stand for progress and for a bigger slice of the pie. It does not matter that the pie is breaking the table and is being made out of ingredients that kill thousands of people elsewhere, because that’s just life, Louis, eat up.
When doctors point at the symptoms instead of the causes of the damage, within a system that gives them money and status and all the jazz if they do not address the problems at their root… well, are they not something like sanctioned quacks operating on the surface, never quite cutting deep enough, never quite curing the origin of disease?
And when responsibility, that damned responsibility, in the absence of real resolution, so often returns to the patient, who must adjust, comply, endure… then what exactly is being treated, and what is being quietly deferred?
Hospitals, then, are not quite places of healing, but rather something closer to a graveyard in purgatory, where bodies are stored, symptoms are managed, and the deeper causes of illness are completely ignored.
Despair, one might think. Yet from the depths comes relief.
Yes, it was all about the money, the prestige, the status of one above another, the material surplus, more bread and water and wine for Jesus, and a free tax for an increased ecological footprint. It’s obviously not about care. Never was, and arguably never will be in this rotten system. Rotten? But Louis, I am ok, so shut the fuck up. Yes, in every family, someone is okay.
Of course, to give credit to a traditional quack, a layman, or any independent caregiver operating somewhat outside the strict control of a top-down lobby group and body of interests is to hurt the authority of the system. Indeed, even saying that a man on the street did not end up there solely because of his own choices can feel threatening to those who believe that whatever power they have achieved is entirely of their own making.
Capitalism behaves like a quack: it makes us sick while claiming to be the cure, generating conditions that damage well-being and marketing palliatives in place of remedies. It soothes, prolongs, and profits from the complaint. The malady and its remedy spring from the same hand: the patient, paying for both, has to call it relief. A system becomes quack-like when it sustains the very conditions that justify its remedies.
True care often faces bitter ingratitude, and some people seem not to understand why someone would offer care without the personal reward, even though it’s all an existential defense mechanism of an animal patting itself on the back (Becker). Some might express this as a form of intelligence: not valuing unselfishness because one has supposedly seen through it. But this is not intelligence. It is incomprehension. The unselfish act becomes intolerable because it exposes the poverty of one’s own moral imagination. How could anyone be so unselfish? It seems self-destructive. It must be wrong. It must be foolish. It must be stopped. Give me more money.
An act of solidarity does not directly take anything from the person outside it. So why oppose it? Why oppose socialism, or a narrative from below? Perhaps because it threatens something deeper than property: it threatens the moral architecture that allows selfishness to appear reasonable. It exposes the fact that even the most intimate forms of life are built on unequal ground. To build a family in an unjust world is also to build it within conditions that others are denied, or can access only in diminished ways. The same with the room, the workshop, the house, the flat, and the rooftop terrace. There are no neutral spaces.
Unselfish acts can become intolerable to those who need selfishness to remain morally comfortable. By criticising generosity, they make their own refusal to act seem less confronting. Of course, it’s all rather self-explanatory, but people being people, the world doesn’t seem to change much with the added (Big) data or quota. Capitalism is rational, they say. Efficient, too. But efficiency has often been the language through which horror becomes administratively acceptable. Yes, for some, the definition of efficient is directly related to the bureaucracy of the Holocaust. Or, efficiency: a process by which humans block out uncomfortable truths to live. Character is a vital lie (Rank). But no, we have morals and ethics and ideas and dreams. They are so real! No, animals we surely are not. We stand for progress and for a bigger slice of the pie. It does not matter that the pie is breaking the table and is being made out of ingredients that kill thousands of people elsewhere, because that’s just life, Louis, eat up.
When doctors point at the symptoms instead of the causes of the damage, within a system that gives them money and status and all the jazz if they do not address the problems at their root… well, are they not something like sanctioned quacks operating on the surface, never quite cutting deep enough, never quite curing the origin of disease?
And when responsibility, that damned responsibility, in the absence of real resolution, so often returns to the patient, who must adjust, comply, endure… then what exactly is being treated, and what is being quietly deferred?
Hospitals, then, are not quite places of healing, but rather something closer to a graveyard in purgatory, where bodies are stored, symptoms are managed, and the deeper causes of illness are completely ignored.
Despair, one might think. Yet from the depths comes relief.
Want to Read
September 2, 2020'A Book featuring the Medical Profession'
September 15, 2013
This is a terrific romp through quackery and certainly up to Roy Porter's usual high standards. As a writer I loved the richness of language, the proliferation of quotes and snippets of satire. To some extent there are parallels with today's alternative health culture, where outcomes are not tested and at the very worst, vulnerable people are scammed or even slowly murdered. Somehow, however, the idea of these quacks in all their variety, standing on wagons declaiming from town to town, reflects that bawdy, rumbustious view of the Georgian era I very much admire. My favourite parts were those dealing with advertising (hugely popular in newspapers) and some shrewd observations on sex and quackery, especially one of my interest areas, the Georgian focus on beauty and cosmetics. I would have liked more on women quacks and the links to the older 'wise women' and herbalists, but I suppose that's another book.
September 29, 2018
As Porter himself concludes the book “has aimed to demystify the subject, disentangling the realities of irregular medicine from the verbal, ideological, and moralising smokescreens behind which it has often been hidden.””...quackery never prospers, for if and when it does, it becomes termed medicine...”
Something I read of background at work but a pleasing and informative book packed with research and context to the bigger picture of the life and times of ‘quacks’ in England. References to a marketer of teething necklace for children (p152) and an operation in 1700s done on affluent lady to lift an eyelid when during the procedure she yelled in pain the ‘quack’ reassured her “remember lady, beauty, beauty” to ease the pain.
My biggest annoyance is it sat on my ‘to read’ pile for two years and wish I had opened it the minute it was received, great read.
Something I read of background at work but a pleasing and informative book packed with research and context to the bigger picture of the life and times of ‘quacks’ in England. References to a marketer of teething necklace for children (p152) and an operation in 1700s done on affluent lady to lift an eyelid when during the procedure she yelled in pain the ‘quack’ reassured her “remember lady, beauty, beauty” to ease the pain.
My biggest annoyance is it sat on my ‘to read’ pile for two years and wish I had opened it the minute it was received, great read.
September 5, 2009
Commissioned by me at Tempus Publishing (now the History Press). The glowing review from the Mail on Sunday says it all: 'Entertaining… the joy of this book lies in the colourful characters. My favourite is James Graham, a sex guru who guaranteed bliss and fertility in his patent 'Grand Celestial Bed' in return for what was then the vast sum of £50. He had no shortage of takers' THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
October 27, 2013
Lost interest quickly. A bit more self justification than required at the start and more Quacks than Fakers. Will try and get back to it sometime
July 3, 2015
I found much of it very interesting, but it was hard work. Although well written it seemed a bit of an academics book and not that engaging for me personally.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews