FOOTNOTES:

“For who to that dread spot consigned,Amid the maniac’s horrid yellHas liv’d, and in that den confined,Could not some secrets of the madhouse tell.”“Yes! there still live some few who have escaped perpetual torture and confinement, which the soothing care ofdisinterested friendswould have buried alive in those inquisitorial receptacles, but for the acute discernment of the eye of humanity, which accident or curiosity had directed to the spot.“Of private madhouses there has long been but one prevailing opinion. The generality of them are instituted as a medium of existence by talentless and avaricious individuals, who are better, by far, adapted for the office of turnkeys to Newgate, than for the exercise of such moral and physical means as would appear calculated to restore lost reason. They manage these things much better in Paris; but it is not our intention to enter into particulars as regards the management of these licensed houses of correction in the home department, where every fibre of humanity appears paralysed, where victims are left to linger out their miserable and wretched existence, and to perish by means we know nothing of.” Instances innumerable are on record of the improper treatment of the unhappy persons immured in these dreary abodes; the inquest that sat at the Elephant and Castle, Pancras Road, on the body of a poor woman named Ann Goldstock, alias Coldstock, in the month of August, 1828, who came by her death, under singular circumstances, in the madhouse, otherwise yclep’d theWhite House at Bethnal Green, kept by one Warburton, cannot have slipped the recollection of all my readers. The case of an unfortunate man of the name of Parker confined in that place for alleged insanity, is also too remarkable to be passed over in silence. My man-servant importuned me to see the poor fellow. I accordingly went to him, and must acknowledge, that after a long interview in which I closely cross-examined him, he gave a statement of his life and transactions, distinguished for its accuracy, minuteness, and consistency. I wish the parties concerned in that affair to recollect, though I have been refused admittance to the unhappy man by one of the understrappers of that place, that I will not let this affair pass unheeded, as I have very little doubt but that I shall be able to bring to justice the knaves who have stripped the poor fellow and his injured family of their property, and who, to screen their villany, have consigned him to a madhouse.THE END.LONDON:MARCHANT, PRINTER, INGRAM-COURT.FOOTNOTES:[A]Mr. Accum, in his valuable book, enumerates, among the ingredients for giving the deeper or purple colour to wine, brazil-wood; but that ingenious gentleman is in error in this respect; for brazil-wood, as is well known to every practical chemist, has the property of imparting a blue colour to port wine, which is not quite the complexion that the wine-manufacturer wishes to give his spurious commodity.[B]The introduction of this deleterious ingredient into wines is to stop the progress of their ascescency, or to recover ropy wines, or to clarify and render transparent spoiled or muddy white wines. As to the deleterious effects and dangerous consequences of this and other adulterations of wines, &c. see The Oracle of Health and Long Life; or, Plain Rules for the Attainment and Preservation of Sound Health and Vigorous Old Age. By Medicus.[C]Direct Madeira is that which has been shipped direct from the island of Madeira, without having the benefit, as it is termed, of a voyage to the East or West Indies.[D]East-India or West-India Cape is that portion of Cape wines which has had the benefit of a voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies, and thence back to London. Cape Sherry is that portion of Cape wine which bears the greatest resemblance in flavour to real Sherry. Cape Madeira is so denominated from its resemblance, in point of flavour, to Madeira. Cape Burgundy, Cape Hock, Cape Sauterne, Cape Port, Cape Pontac, Cape Champagne, Cape Barsac, &c. owe their appellations to their supposed resemblance, in point of flavour, to those wines.[E]The respectable author of “The Art of Brewing on Scientific Principles” has the following note, “Spirits vended by retail are all adulterated, and some of them to a dreadful extent. Some months since (his work was published in 1826,) a person having writing to do that would occupy great part of the night, purchased, at a liquor shop, in Newgate-street, half a pint of gin; and, during the night, he drank a goblet-full of grog, which he had made from it. He was seized with most excruciating agony, spasms of the stomach, temporary paralysis, and loss of intellect. These he attributed to some natural cause, and he gave the remainder of the liquor to a person that called on him in the morning. In about an hour that person was similarly affected. This induced inquiry; and it was ascertained that the woman who served the liquor had mistaken the bottle, and had sold half a pint of the fluid intended to prepare the adulterations for sale. The last-mentioned person who partook of the infernal mixture died of its effects.” Similar consequences have occurred from adulterated beer. Among a thousand other instances, see the Coroner’s inquest in the Times Newspaper of the 29th of June, 1829.[F]According to the testimony of the author of “Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked” the profits of the wine and spirit compounders are so great, and the chance of the detection of their frauds and impositions on the public and the revenue is almost so impossible, that many of them are to be found “vieing with the nobility of the land in the splendour of their equipages and expenditure.” He mentions one gin-shop-keeper (a worthy in the neighbourhood of St. Luke’s) who “drives his family tochurch, on a Sunday, in his carriage and four.” Another, who has a “richly ornamented state bed.” A third, who is to be found lolling “on an ottoman, in a French dressing-gown.” And he adds, that it is usual to give from four to six thousand guineas for the good will of a gin-shop which has an unexpired lease of eighteen or twenty years, with the drawback of the purchaser being quite at the mercy of the magistrates as to the renewal of his license.[G]The crusting of wine in the natural way generally takes place in about nine months; but, among the artizans of the factitious wine-trade, it is accomplished in a much shorter time. Those ingenious gentry line the inside of the bottles they intend to fill with their compound called wine, by suffering a saturated hot solution of super-tartrate of potash, coloured red with a decoction of Brazil wood, to crystallize within them. Others of that honest fraternity, who dislike trouble, put a tea-spoon full of the powder of catechu into each bottle, and by this artifice soon produce a fine crusted appearance of “aged wine.” This simulation of maturity is often accomplished by the humbler dealer by covering the bottles with snow, or by exposing them to the rays of the sun, or by keeping them for a few days in hot water. Where the casks are to be bottled off by the purchaser, or in his presence, they are stained in the inside with the artificial crystalline crust of super-tartrate of potash, as a proof of the age of the wine.[H]To produce the dilapidations of “Father Time” on wine corks, the dry rot, however injurious to others, is of great advantage to wine-dealers, as it soon covers the bottles with its mouldy appearance, and consumes the external part of the cork; so that with a trifling operation on the bottles after they are filled, and then deposited in cellars pretty strongly affected with the dry rot, they can furnish the admirers of “aged wine” with liquor having the appearance of having been bottled seven or eight years, though it has not in reality been there so many months. The staining of the lower extremities of the corks with a fine red colour, produced from a strong decoction of Brazil wood and alum, to make them appear “aged,” or as if they had been long in contact with the wine, is another of the devices of the factitious wine-trade, and forms a distinct branch of its operations.[I]Among the numerous delusions with which the senses of the “error ridden” nation of Englishmen—aye, and the “bonnie Scots,” and the “Sons of the Emerald Isle,” are benighted, is the false and erroneous opinion that strong stimulating liquors impart strength to the body. As a very sensible writer observes on this subject,—“To depend on spirituous liquors for the power to labour, is as wise as it would be in a man, setting out for York, to get a friend to give him a kick on the b—— to help him forward. His friend must continue the same kind office all the way, or he would continually flag.” No work of the present age has contributed more effectually to remove these mistaken notions than “The Oracle of Health and Long Life.” May its well-intentioned and judicious author have the consolation of finding that his important instructions have contributed to the health and welfare of the community; and may the unqualified approval of his little volume, by the respectable part of the periodical press of the country be a stimulus to fresh exertion to render the work faultless.[J]Mr. Brewer Child’s recipe (see Treatise on Brewing, p. 23) for making new beer old, is to throw in a dash of vitriol. “A smack of age,” he likewise adds, at p. 18, “is also given to beer, by the addition of alum.” Well done, brewer Child; thou art an expeditious chap! Thou mightest have been of service in the Court of Chancery,in temporeLord Chancellor Eldon, ofdoubtingand delaying memory.[K]On this subject, Mr. J. D. Williams, the Editor of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries, has rendered no trifling service to society, by his petition, presented to the House of Commons, by the Marquess of Blandford, on June 17th, 1830; in which he prayed the appointment of fit and competent persons for the digestment and simplification of, or, in the emphatical language of Lord Bacon, for “the choice and tender business of reducing and harmonizing,” the hybrid and confused state of the law. As he justly said, “no useful and beneficial amendment or amelioration can reasonably be expected; but the Statute Book will still continue to be disgraced with enactments which will be at variance with common sense, the first principles of justice, and even nullify the intent and purport of the enactments themselves, while the concoction of laws is entrusted to others than persons endowed with a spirit of comprehensive knowledge, great enlightenment, enlarged and liberal understandings, and who are acquainted with the nature of the subjects on which they presume to legislate.” The instances which that gentleman adduced in his well intended petition of “the great and singular blunders” as to “erroneous conclusions in the first principles of science,” committed by some of our law-makers are really amusing—if any honest man can derive amusement from his country’s injury and degradation.[L]The addition of the farina or starch of the potato improves the bread, by counteracting its constipating effects, and by minutely dividing the particles of the flour during the fermentation; and for this reason its introduction into home-made bread would, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life,” says, be beneficial to health, as making it more nutritious and digestible.[M]The remarks of the learned editors of the Monthly Gazette of Health, Nos. 160 and 162, are so much to the purpose, and so deserving of diffusion among all ranks and classes of the community, on the exhibition of the jew pedlars, the “groundly learned physicians,” the “Doctors” J. and C. Jordan, “physiciansto the West London Medical Establishment,” and “proprietors of thecelebratedBalsam of Rackasiri,” and thecelebrated“Salutary Detersive Drops,” as the vagabonds impudently and unblushingly style themselves and their nostrums; and their redoubtable champion “Mr.CounsellorBluster,” that I cannot do a greater service to the cause of truth and honesty and the discomfiture of roguery of all descriptions, than to refer my readers to those numbers of that work.[N]These “Hebrew” Jewish knaves having at length been driven from their strong-hold of delusion, and finding their trade of imposture in the “balsam” rapidly declining through the patriotic exertions of “the heroic Miss May” and the Editors of the Monthly Gazette of Health, have had recourse to a new source of fraud and villainy, “the celebrated Salutary Detersive Drops”—and as the vermin have the unblushing audacity to designate their filth—a “mostimportant discovery, which, bylong study,deep research, and atgreat expence, they have,fortunatelyfor the human race, brought to a degree of perfection whichastonishesthemselves!!!” and which “is acertainandspeedy cureforallthe most distressing diseases to which human nature is heir,” when administered “bytheir superior skillandjudgment” and sanctioned “bytheir high character and situation in life!!” And theimpiousandblasphemouswretches invoke the Great God of Nature “thathewho has the power of doing all things” mayfurthertheir villainous and murderous designs! But it is some consolation, though the government of the country may be silent and indifferent lookers-on to “doings” so nefarious and diabolical, that there are hearts that feel indignant at the wickedness and imposture of adventurers and monsters in iniquity, whom the ignorance of mankind in the principles of life and the science of medicine has, as Dr. Morrison justly says inMedicine No Mystery, “enabled to possess palacesboughtandconstructedwith thetreasuresandbloodof their victims.”[O]That the ignorant, the thoughtless, and the “fashionable,” should become the dopes of mountebank-imposture is not much to be wondered at; but that persons of respectability and character, the heads of theChurchand of theState, (I have not yet ascertained that that sly old beldam “The Law” has stupified herself so much as to lend her countenance to the imposture,) should give their sanction and support, and endanger their health and lives, by either patronizing or using the deleterious compounds of mountebanks, and thus becoming the dupes of the most groveling imposture and the vilest quackery, cannot really be reasonably accounted for. The old worm-mountebank in Long Acre boasts that he has a list of fifteen hundred “Clergymen” who can give testimony of the virtues of his nostrums. The miraculous powers of Barclay’s Antibilious Pills, Ching’s Worm Lozenges, and some other articles in the list of quack medicines, are attested by some “Right Reverend Fathers in God!” Nor was that notorious and impudent mountebank “le Docteur” James Graham, who cured patients by only breathing the air of his “Apollo” hall or chamber in the Adelphi, which was always impregnated (as he said) with celestial æther and influences, withoutnoble and reverend patrons. But the consummation of dupery was most powerfully displayed in the case of the old New England quack,CherokeeWhitlaw. In the case of this Yankee quondam gardener, “Royals” (as well of native as of foreign breed), “right honourables,” “reverends,” “SENATORS,” and even some gentle “ladyships,” were his patrons, and those of his mountebank-asylum at Bayswater, and the recommenders of his “American Herb Extracts,” which were a compound of cabbage water, treacle, turpentine, and Epsom salts, and for a pint of which the canting old varlet was barefaced enough to demand eight shillings in lawful British specie, though the cost price of the mixture did not exceed three half-pence-farthing. But it is a lamentable fact, as Dr. Morrison observes in his well-intentioned little work, entitled “Medicine No Mystery,” that in nineteen cases out of twenty (and this, he emphatically remarks, is the proportion that ignorance bears to knowledge,) the charlatan, with his mysterious phrases and gestures, is more sought after and more prized than the accomplished and experienced physician; “so much of the leaven of the old idea of the connexion between physic and occult and mysterious sciences still subsists,—of those days when physicians pretended to judge of their patients’ diseases by seeing their urine; when the stars were consulted before a dose of physic was taken; when the king’s evil was supposed to be cured by royal touch; when women flocked to surround the body of the executed criminal, and rubbed his hands to their breasts as a cure for cancer or epilepsy, &c.”The mock philanthropy of the contemptible quack Whitlaw, and the blasphemous, the monstrously blasphemous and diabolical effrontery of the conventicle and meeting pulpit-charlatans, (the vile tools of harpyism and religious knavery,) who puffed off this “threadbare juggler’s” disgusting impostures by an odious comparison of his selfish and detestable tricks with the enlarged and godlike benevolence and charity of the Saviour of mankind, deserve the severest reprobation and chastisement, though sanctioned by the weak and culpable patronage of royals, nobles, statesmen, M.P.’s, and divines, and swallowed by the gaping mouths of the ignorant,—of foolish women, and half witted men. But of the two species of imposture, the pulpit charlatanry of ignorant and selfish empirics is the most disgusting. The diabolical farces of those wolves in sheep’s clothing—their ignorant and designing perversion of the plain practical morality laid down by the Saviour of mankind in the gospel,—the brain-turning and mind-deranging fanaticism they inculcate, and which they profanely and audaciously call soul-searching and sinner-awakening doctrines, and other like unmeaning and abominable stuff which they inculcate under the evident chieftainship of the devil, loudly demands some legislative interference. It has been well observed, that though the benign spirit of toleration has permitted religious empiricism—though folly and ignorance have countenanced medical quackery and imposture—and though there are persons weak enough to entrust their lives and health, as well as their moral and religious instruction, to enthusiastic cobblers and tailors; yet considering the strange infatuation of mankind, and the proneness of human nature to delusion and imposture, it is the duty of every wise and paternal government to protect the weak and uninformed from the designs of the devil’s agents, who, in order to practise their selfish villanies on their unsuspecting victims, become, to use the words of Dr. Robertson the historian, “outrageously Christian” in their professions.[P]The impolitic and monstrously inconsistent patent medicine act, which legalizes and sanctions and promotes the sale of quack poisons, has no doubt annually been the unweeting cause of more murders, than the joint influence of typhus, small-pox, and consumption. The tax or stamp-duty on this odious and destructive trash was, no doubt, at the time of its imposition, intended as a prevention of the evil which it contemplated to suppress. But this is one of the consequences of short-sighted and vicious legislation, and of the entrusting of the concoction of the laws to incompetent persons—in the emphatic phrase of the most eloquent of human tongues, mere ita lex scripta est lawyers—men who make a boast of never having read, or who have had but little or no opportunity of reading any other kind of books than their musty, ill-written, badly digested law-books; such as certain “learnedgentlemen,” of prodigiously scholar-like and scientific attainments—men, whom the Times Newspaper has justly characterised by the style and title of “The Mindless;” and who contrive by the arts of “huggery” and favouritism to deprive the public of the benefits to be derived from the talents of men of “high classical and literary, and even legal attainments,” and of the most enlarged and enlightened philosophy, but who scorn to court the favour of those in power and “high places” by mean and dirty practices.[Q]This kind of doctrine will, no doubt, be unpalatable ina certain quarter, and the productiveness to the exchequer of thedisgraceful revenuearising from the pest, will be adduced as an argument for its continuance. But it is to be hoped, as Mr. J. D. Williams said in his meritorious petition to the Commons House of Parliament on that subject, that the health of the public will be held superior to any such consideration. The lottery, no doubt, brought into the state-coffers a considerable revenue; but as it was found to undermine and ruin the morals of the community, it was abolished. And the persons at the head of the government at the time have the thanks and gratitude of every true friend of his country for the act. Surely thehealth of the publicis entitled to the same provision.[R]The whole farrago of quack or patent medicines is destructive of health and life, whether cordial or vegetable balsams, tinctures, syrups, or elixirs,—pectoral or antiscorbutic drops, bile or antibilious pills, tonic or digestive wines, balms of gilead, guestonian embrocations, Leake’s pillula salutaria, and a thousand other poisonous and life-destroying trash. Thousands upon thousands of children under three years of age are consigned yearly to the tomb in London alone, by means of the soothing or vegetable syrups, the infants’ balms, the worm-cakes, the anodyne necklaces, Godfrey’s cordial, Daffy’s elixir, Dalby’s carminative, apothecaries’ draughts and powders, and other infernal recipes; which, if they do not cause immediate death, occasion fits, convulsions, fevers, excruciating gripes, palsy, and often confirmed idiotcy. Gowland’s lotion, the kalydors, the macassar oils, the cosmetiques royales, the red and white olympian dews, the blooms, the various hair dyes, &c. have not only robbed many a female of her charms and loveliness, but have even produced severe pains of the bowels and of the brain, have occasioned convulsions, and laid the foundation of those diseases which have deprived the victims of life itself. The folly of depending for cure or relief upon the “gout extractors,” “the metallic tractors,” “animal magnetism,” and “signatures,” has been at length exploded; it is therefore unnecessary to say a word on the subject.[S]The audacity of this fellow exceeds, if possible, the unblushing and incorrigible effrontery of the other impostors. He undertakes to cure all kinds of diseases without any kind of medicine; and he asserts that all difficult surgical operations can be superseded by merely taking a sup or two of his delectable compound of combustibles. According to the modest pretensions of this exotic esculapius, he obtained the knowledge of physic and the power of subduing disease, by intuition or inspiration: he had no need to learn: there was no period of infancy in his medical attainments; he at once attained the highest point and full maturity of medical and chirurgical knowledge! Was there ever a more audacious piece of imposture attempted to be palmed upon the credulity of the most credulous of mortals, Mr. Bull and his progeny? But perhaps the philippics of this gaunt-looking “hygeist” against surgery and anatomy may produce some good. It is true that to a certain degree, those arts should be esteemed and cherished; but after the allowance of suitable consideration, they should fall into their proper rank, with wholesome restrictions. Both the arts are overrated in point of real utility. Were a knowledge of the living laws of the human frame more inculcated by medical professors than is the case, it would be found of more essential service than all the coxcombry of the present day respecting surgical distinctions and anatomical dissections. In many complaints, indeed, in the principal part to which the human frame is subject, the inutility of dissection is well known to every well informed man. But the assumption of the title of “Surgeon,” and the false importance (not to mention the legal security which it affords against prosecution, and the facility of exemption from examination of competency,) it gives the claimant in the estimation of the ignorant part of mankind, have contributed largely to the propagation of the erroneous notions which are so anxiously disseminated on the subject. Though it would be fruitless to attempt to expose this popular folly of the day, (which like all other follies or fashions will “have its rage” until its own enormity cures itself,) yet “it is some consolation to reflect that in another age a more successful practice of medicine will diminish the false estimation in which surgical foppery is now held; when to save a limb will be deemed a superior exertion of skill to its amputation.”Nor is the other branch (namely, that which was once designated by the now exploded and unfashionable title ofapothecary) free from reprehension. Those “sons of the pestle and mortar,” whose money-interest induces them rather to encourage disease than to subdue it, as the longer they keep the patient in hand, the greater number of phials, pill-boxes, gallipots, draughts and powders they will be entitled to charge for, are so wedded to routine, that they can seldom bring themselves to lay aside the lumber and unmeaning farrago of materia medicas, pharmacopœias, &c. Their prejudices and pertinacity in favour of received opinions and established usage are so blind and inveterate, that they will never allow themselves to have recourse to the simple remedies which Nature points out: all must be mystery, complication, and conformity to etiquette with them: toleadnature by simple means would be unprofessional; to practise “secundum artem,” she must be driven by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation; and they must bring into play in the simplest ailment to which the human frame is subject that huge mass of disjointed practices and experiments, which is held together by no order, and is not capable of any satisfactory application, or even elucidation. On this subject, the remarks of the editor of the Monthly Gazette of Health are so deserving of observation, that I cannot deny myself the advantage of enriching my pages with them.That learned gentleman (who has contributed more to the exposure of quackery and imposture than any writer of the age) having introduced to the notice of his readers Dr. Mackie’s communication of the medicinal virtues of the Guaco plant in cases of hydrophobia among the Indians of South America, closes his information with the following striking remarks:“The mode of treating diseases which is generally adopted by the native practitioners of South America, and the East Indies, by decoctions, infusions, and the expressed juices of vegetable productions, has, at any rate, that great recommendation—simplicity; but, contemptible as it may appear to be to the practitioners of this country, who suppose that no disease can be successfully combated without blue pill or calomel, or some active mineral or vegetable poison, agreeable to some favourite theory, it often proves successful; and, indeed, from the information which we have received from the intelligent gentlemen who have spent some years among the natives of South America and the East Indies, (some of them members of the medical profession,) we are disposed to believe that in some diseases, particularly scorbutic and scrofulous affections, and those termedpseudo-syphilitic, the native surgeons are more successful than the practitioners of this country. To us, the great difference between the practice of the former and that of the latter appears to be, that the oneleadnature by simple means, which enable her to correct the constitution, and to produce a healthy process of mutation in a diseased part, whilst the otherdrivenature by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation. Often have we witnessed the recovery of patients, who had been discharged from a hospital, under the simple treatment by decoction of an apparently simple vegetable, and by fomentations under the direction of an old woman; and whoever considers how simple the operations of nature are, will not be surprised that such treatment should succeed even in a formidable chronic disease. Every practitioner of experience and observation will, we think, admit that many thousand invalids are annually hurried to their graves in this metropolis, by persevering in the use of calomel and blue pill, or a drastic purgative, who might have been cured, or whose lives might have been prolonged many years, by a mild alterative treatment; and that many a limb might have been saved by a mild topical treatment of the local diseases, which has been consigned to the knife. In cases of internal acute disease, or active inflammation of a vital part, a decisive treatment is absolutely necessary to save life; but in chronic diseases, attempts by potent remedies to drive nature but too often distract her. To the new theory of chronic inflammation, or ulceration of the mucous membrane of some part of the alimentary canal, thousands have already been sacrificed.”[T]The disgusting practice of having one’s hands and eyes polluted at every corner of a street with the abominable bills and placards of the quacking vermin, is past endurance, and loudly calls for suppression.

“For who to that dread spot consigned,Amid the maniac’s horrid yellHas liv’d, and in that den confined,Could not some secrets of the madhouse tell.”

“For who to that dread spot consigned,

Amid the maniac’s horrid yell

Has liv’d, and in that den confined,

Could not some secrets of the madhouse tell.”

“Yes! there still live some few who have escaped perpetual torture and confinement, which the soothing care ofdisinterested friendswould have buried alive in those inquisitorial receptacles, but for the acute discernment of the eye of humanity, which accident or curiosity had directed to the spot.

“Of private madhouses there has long been but one prevailing opinion. The generality of them are instituted as a medium of existence by talentless and avaricious individuals, who are better, by far, adapted for the office of turnkeys to Newgate, than for the exercise of such moral and physical means as would appear calculated to restore lost reason. They manage these things much better in Paris; but it is not our intention to enter into particulars as regards the management of these licensed houses of correction in the home department, where every fibre of humanity appears paralysed, where victims are left to linger out their miserable and wretched existence, and to perish by means we know nothing of.” Instances innumerable are on record of the improper treatment of the unhappy persons immured in these dreary abodes; the inquest that sat at the Elephant and Castle, Pancras Road, on the body of a poor woman named Ann Goldstock, alias Coldstock, in the month of August, 1828, who came by her death, under singular circumstances, in the madhouse, otherwise yclep’d theWhite House at Bethnal Green, kept by one Warburton, cannot have slipped the recollection of all my readers. The case of an unfortunate man of the name of Parker confined in that place for alleged insanity, is also too remarkable to be passed over in silence. My man-servant importuned me to see the poor fellow. I accordingly went to him, and must acknowledge, that after a long interview in which I closely cross-examined him, he gave a statement of his life and transactions, distinguished for its accuracy, minuteness, and consistency. I wish the parties concerned in that affair to recollect, though I have been refused admittance to the unhappy man by one of the understrappers of that place, that I will not let this affair pass unheeded, as I have very little doubt but that I shall be able to bring to justice the knaves who have stripped the poor fellow and his injured family of their property, and who, to screen their villany, have consigned him to a madhouse.

THE END.

LONDON:MARCHANT, PRINTER, INGRAM-COURT.

FOOTNOTES:[A]Mr. Accum, in his valuable book, enumerates, among the ingredients for giving the deeper or purple colour to wine, brazil-wood; but that ingenious gentleman is in error in this respect; for brazil-wood, as is well known to every practical chemist, has the property of imparting a blue colour to port wine, which is not quite the complexion that the wine-manufacturer wishes to give his spurious commodity.[B]The introduction of this deleterious ingredient into wines is to stop the progress of their ascescency, or to recover ropy wines, or to clarify and render transparent spoiled or muddy white wines. As to the deleterious effects and dangerous consequences of this and other adulterations of wines, &c. see The Oracle of Health and Long Life; or, Plain Rules for the Attainment and Preservation of Sound Health and Vigorous Old Age. By Medicus.[C]Direct Madeira is that which has been shipped direct from the island of Madeira, without having the benefit, as it is termed, of a voyage to the East or West Indies.[D]East-India or West-India Cape is that portion of Cape wines which has had the benefit of a voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies, and thence back to London. Cape Sherry is that portion of Cape wine which bears the greatest resemblance in flavour to real Sherry. Cape Madeira is so denominated from its resemblance, in point of flavour, to Madeira. Cape Burgundy, Cape Hock, Cape Sauterne, Cape Port, Cape Pontac, Cape Champagne, Cape Barsac, &c. owe their appellations to their supposed resemblance, in point of flavour, to those wines.[E]The respectable author of “The Art of Brewing on Scientific Principles” has the following note, “Spirits vended by retail are all adulterated, and some of them to a dreadful extent. Some months since (his work was published in 1826,) a person having writing to do that would occupy great part of the night, purchased, at a liquor shop, in Newgate-street, half a pint of gin; and, during the night, he drank a goblet-full of grog, which he had made from it. He was seized with most excruciating agony, spasms of the stomach, temporary paralysis, and loss of intellect. These he attributed to some natural cause, and he gave the remainder of the liquor to a person that called on him in the morning. In about an hour that person was similarly affected. This induced inquiry; and it was ascertained that the woman who served the liquor had mistaken the bottle, and had sold half a pint of the fluid intended to prepare the adulterations for sale. The last-mentioned person who partook of the infernal mixture died of its effects.” Similar consequences have occurred from adulterated beer. Among a thousand other instances, see the Coroner’s inquest in the Times Newspaper of the 29th of June, 1829.[F]According to the testimony of the author of “Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked” the profits of the wine and spirit compounders are so great, and the chance of the detection of their frauds and impositions on the public and the revenue is almost so impossible, that many of them are to be found “vieing with the nobility of the land in the splendour of their equipages and expenditure.” He mentions one gin-shop-keeper (a worthy in the neighbourhood of St. Luke’s) who “drives his family tochurch, on a Sunday, in his carriage and four.” Another, who has a “richly ornamented state bed.” A third, who is to be found lolling “on an ottoman, in a French dressing-gown.” And he adds, that it is usual to give from four to six thousand guineas for the good will of a gin-shop which has an unexpired lease of eighteen or twenty years, with the drawback of the purchaser being quite at the mercy of the magistrates as to the renewal of his license.[G]The crusting of wine in the natural way generally takes place in about nine months; but, among the artizans of the factitious wine-trade, it is accomplished in a much shorter time. Those ingenious gentry line the inside of the bottles they intend to fill with their compound called wine, by suffering a saturated hot solution of super-tartrate of potash, coloured red with a decoction of Brazil wood, to crystallize within them. Others of that honest fraternity, who dislike trouble, put a tea-spoon full of the powder of catechu into each bottle, and by this artifice soon produce a fine crusted appearance of “aged wine.” This simulation of maturity is often accomplished by the humbler dealer by covering the bottles with snow, or by exposing them to the rays of the sun, or by keeping them for a few days in hot water. Where the casks are to be bottled off by the purchaser, or in his presence, they are stained in the inside with the artificial crystalline crust of super-tartrate of potash, as a proof of the age of the wine.[H]To produce the dilapidations of “Father Time” on wine corks, the dry rot, however injurious to others, is of great advantage to wine-dealers, as it soon covers the bottles with its mouldy appearance, and consumes the external part of the cork; so that with a trifling operation on the bottles after they are filled, and then deposited in cellars pretty strongly affected with the dry rot, they can furnish the admirers of “aged wine” with liquor having the appearance of having been bottled seven or eight years, though it has not in reality been there so many months. The staining of the lower extremities of the corks with a fine red colour, produced from a strong decoction of Brazil wood and alum, to make them appear “aged,” or as if they had been long in contact with the wine, is another of the devices of the factitious wine-trade, and forms a distinct branch of its operations.[I]Among the numerous delusions with which the senses of the “error ridden” nation of Englishmen—aye, and the “bonnie Scots,” and the “Sons of the Emerald Isle,” are benighted, is the false and erroneous opinion that strong stimulating liquors impart strength to the body. As a very sensible writer observes on this subject,—“To depend on spirituous liquors for the power to labour, is as wise as it would be in a man, setting out for York, to get a friend to give him a kick on the b—— to help him forward. His friend must continue the same kind office all the way, or he would continually flag.” No work of the present age has contributed more effectually to remove these mistaken notions than “The Oracle of Health and Long Life.” May its well-intentioned and judicious author have the consolation of finding that his important instructions have contributed to the health and welfare of the community; and may the unqualified approval of his little volume, by the respectable part of the periodical press of the country be a stimulus to fresh exertion to render the work faultless.[J]Mr. Brewer Child’s recipe (see Treatise on Brewing, p. 23) for making new beer old, is to throw in a dash of vitriol. “A smack of age,” he likewise adds, at p. 18, “is also given to beer, by the addition of alum.” Well done, brewer Child; thou art an expeditious chap! Thou mightest have been of service in the Court of Chancery,in temporeLord Chancellor Eldon, ofdoubtingand delaying memory.[K]On this subject, Mr. J. D. Williams, the Editor of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries, has rendered no trifling service to society, by his petition, presented to the House of Commons, by the Marquess of Blandford, on June 17th, 1830; in which he prayed the appointment of fit and competent persons for the digestment and simplification of, or, in the emphatical language of Lord Bacon, for “the choice and tender business of reducing and harmonizing,” the hybrid and confused state of the law. As he justly said, “no useful and beneficial amendment or amelioration can reasonably be expected; but the Statute Book will still continue to be disgraced with enactments which will be at variance with common sense, the first principles of justice, and even nullify the intent and purport of the enactments themselves, while the concoction of laws is entrusted to others than persons endowed with a spirit of comprehensive knowledge, great enlightenment, enlarged and liberal understandings, and who are acquainted with the nature of the subjects on which they presume to legislate.” The instances which that gentleman adduced in his well intended petition of “the great and singular blunders” as to “erroneous conclusions in the first principles of science,” committed by some of our law-makers are really amusing—if any honest man can derive amusement from his country’s injury and degradation.[L]The addition of the farina or starch of the potato improves the bread, by counteracting its constipating effects, and by minutely dividing the particles of the flour during the fermentation; and for this reason its introduction into home-made bread would, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life,” says, be beneficial to health, as making it more nutritious and digestible.[M]The remarks of the learned editors of the Monthly Gazette of Health, Nos. 160 and 162, are so much to the purpose, and so deserving of diffusion among all ranks and classes of the community, on the exhibition of the jew pedlars, the “groundly learned physicians,” the “Doctors” J. and C. Jordan, “physiciansto the West London Medical Establishment,” and “proprietors of thecelebratedBalsam of Rackasiri,” and thecelebrated“Salutary Detersive Drops,” as the vagabonds impudently and unblushingly style themselves and their nostrums; and their redoubtable champion “Mr.CounsellorBluster,” that I cannot do a greater service to the cause of truth and honesty and the discomfiture of roguery of all descriptions, than to refer my readers to those numbers of that work.[N]These “Hebrew” Jewish knaves having at length been driven from their strong-hold of delusion, and finding their trade of imposture in the “balsam” rapidly declining through the patriotic exertions of “the heroic Miss May” and the Editors of the Monthly Gazette of Health, have had recourse to a new source of fraud and villainy, “the celebrated Salutary Detersive Drops”—and as the vermin have the unblushing audacity to designate their filth—a “mostimportant discovery, which, bylong study,deep research, and atgreat expence, they have,fortunatelyfor the human race, brought to a degree of perfection whichastonishesthemselves!!!” and which “is acertainandspeedy cureforallthe most distressing diseases to which human nature is heir,” when administered “bytheir superior skillandjudgment” and sanctioned “bytheir high character and situation in life!!” And theimpiousandblasphemouswretches invoke the Great God of Nature “thathewho has the power of doing all things” mayfurthertheir villainous and murderous designs! But it is some consolation, though the government of the country may be silent and indifferent lookers-on to “doings” so nefarious and diabolical, that there are hearts that feel indignant at the wickedness and imposture of adventurers and monsters in iniquity, whom the ignorance of mankind in the principles of life and the science of medicine has, as Dr. Morrison justly says inMedicine No Mystery, “enabled to possess palacesboughtandconstructedwith thetreasuresandbloodof their victims.”[O]That the ignorant, the thoughtless, and the “fashionable,” should become the dopes of mountebank-imposture is not much to be wondered at; but that persons of respectability and character, the heads of theChurchand of theState, (I have not yet ascertained that that sly old beldam “The Law” has stupified herself so much as to lend her countenance to the imposture,) should give their sanction and support, and endanger their health and lives, by either patronizing or using the deleterious compounds of mountebanks, and thus becoming the dupes of the most groveling imposture and the vilest quackery, cannot really be reasonably accounted for. The old worm-mountebank in Long Acre boasts that he has a list of fifteen hundred “Clergymen” who can give testimony of the virtues of his nostrums. The miraculous powers of Barclay’s Antibilious Pills, Ching’s Worm Lozenges, and some other articles in the list of quack medicines, are attested by some “Right Reverend Fathers in God!” Nor was that notorious and impudent mountebank “le Docteur” James Graham, who cured patients by only breathing the air of his “Apollo” hall or chamber in the Adelphi, which was always impregnated (as he said) with celestial æther and influences, withoutnoble and reverend patrons. But the consummation of dupery was most powerfully displayed in the case of the old New England quack,CherokeeWhitlaw. In the case of this Yankee quondam gardener, “Royals” (as well of native as of foreign breed), “right honourables,” “reverends,” “SENATORS,” and even some gentle “ladyships,” were his patrons, and those of his mountebank-asylum at Bayswater, and the recommenders of his “American Herb Extracts,” which were a compound of cabbage water, treacle, turpentine, and Epsom salts, and for a pint of which the canting old varlet was barefaced enough to demand eight shillings in lawful British specie, though the cost price of the mixture did not exceed three half-pence-farthing. But it is a lamentable fact, as Dr. Morrison observes in his well-intentioned little work, entitled “Medicine No Mystery,” that in nineteen cases out of twenty (and this, he emphatically remarks, is the proportion that ignorance bears to knowledge,) the charlatan, with his mysterious phrases and gestures, is more sought after and more prized than the accomplished and experienced physician; “so much of the leaven of the old idea of the connexion between physic and occult and mysterious sciences still subsists,—of those days when physicians pretended to judge of their patients’ diseases by seeing their urine; when the stars were consulted before a dose of physic was taken; when the king’s evil was supposed to be cured by royal touch; when women flocked to surround the body of the executed criminal, and rubbed his hands to their breasts as a cure for cancer or epilepsy, &c.”The mock philanthropy of the contemptible quack Whitlaw, and the blasphemous, the monstrously blasphemous and diabolical effrontery of the conventicle and meeting pulpit-charlatans, (the vile tools of harpyism and religious knavery,) who puffed off this “threadbare juggler’s” disgusting impostures by an odious comparison of his selfish and detestable tricks with the enlarged and godlike benevolence and charity of the Saviour of mankind, deserve the severest reprobation and chastisement, though sanctioned by the weak and culpable patronage of royals, nobles, statesmen, M.P.’s, and divines, and swallowed by the gaping mouths of the ignorant,—of foolish women, and half witted men. But of the two species of imposture, the pulpit charlatanry of ignorant and selfish empirics is the most disgusting. The diabolical farces of those wolves in sheep’s clothing—their ignorant and designing perversion of the plain practical morality laid down by the Saviour of mankind in the gospel,—the brain-turning and mind-deranging fanaticism they inculcate, and which they profanely and audaciously call soul-searching and sinner-awakening doctrines, and other like unmeaning and abominable stuff which they inculcate under the evident chieftainship of the devil, loudly demands some legislative interference. It has been well observed, that though the benign spirit of toleration has permitted religious empiricism—though folly and ignorance have countenanced medical quackery and imposture—and though there are persons weak enough to entrust their lives and health, as well as their moral and religious instruction, to enthusiastic cobblers and tailors; yet considering the strange infatuation of mankind, and the proneness of human nature to delusion and imposture, it is the duty of every wise and paternal government to protect the weak and uninformed from the designs of the devil’s agents, who, in order to practise their selfish villanies on their unsuspecting victims, become, to use the words of Dr. Robertson the historian, “outrageously Christian” in their professions.[P]The impolitic and monstrously inconsistent patent medicine act, which legalizes and sanctions and promotes the sale of quack poisons, has no doubt annually been the unweeting cause of more murders, than the joint influence of typhus, small-pox, and consumption. The tax or stamp-duty on this odious and destructive trash was, no doubt, at the time of its imposition, intended as a prevention of the evil which it contemplated to suppress. But this is one of the consequences of short-sighted and vicious legislation, and of the entrusting of the concoction of the laws to incompetent persons—in the emphatic phrase of the most eloquent of human tongues, mere ita lex scripta est lawyers—men who make a boast of never having read, or who have had but little or no opportunity of reading any other kind of books than their musty, ill-written, badly digested law-books; such as certain “learnedgentlemen,” of prodigiously scholar-like and scientific attainments—men, whom the Times Newspaper has justly characterised by the style and title of “The Mindless;” and who contrive by the arts of “huggery” and favouritism to deprive the public of the benefits to be derived from the talents of men of “high classical and literary, and even legal attainments,” and of the most enlarged and enlightened philosophy, but who scorn to court the favour of those in power and “high places” by mean and dirty practices.[Q]This kind of doctrine will, no doubt, be unpalatable ina certain quarter, and the productiveness to the exchequer of thedisgraceful revenuearising from the pest, will be adduced as an argument for its continuance. But it is to be hoped, as Mr. J. D. Williams said in his meritorious petition to the Commons House of Parliament on that subject, that the health of the public will be held superior to any such consideration. The lottery, no doubt, brought into the state-coffers a considerable revenue; but as it was found to undermine and ruin the morals of the community, it was abolished. And the persons at the head of the government at the time have the thanks and gratitude of every true friend of his country for the act. Surely thehealth of the publicis entitled to the same provision.[R]The whole farrago of quack or patent medicines is destructive of health and life, whether cordial or vegetable balsams, tinctures, syrups, or elixirs,—pectoral or antiscorbutic drops, bile or antibilious pills, tonic or digestive wines, balms of gilead, guestonian embrocations, Leake’s pillula salutaria, and a thousand other poisonous and life-destroying trash. Thousands upon thousands of children under three years of age are consigned yearly to the tomb in London alone, by means of the soothing or vegetable syrups, the infants’ balms, the worm-cakes, the anodyne necklaces, Godfrey’s cordial, Daffy’s elixir, Dalby’s carminative, apothecaries’ draughts and powders, and other infernal recipes; which, if they do not cause immediate death, occasion fits, convulsions, fevers, excruciating gripes, palsy, and often confirmed idiotcy. Gowland’s lotion, the kalydors, the macassar oils, the cosmetiques royales, the red and white olympian dews, the blooms, the various hair dyes, &c. have not only robbed many a female of her charms and loveliness, but have even produced severe pains of the bowels and of the brain, have occasioned convulsions, and laid the foundation of those diseases which have deprived the victims of life itself. The folly of depending for cure or relief upon the “gout extractors,” “the metallic tractors,” “animal magnetism,” and “signatures,” has been at length exploded; it is therefore unnecessary to say a word on the subject.[S]The audacity of this fellow exceeds, if possible, the unblushing and incorrigible effrontery of the other impostors. He undertakes to cure all kinds of diseases without any kind of medicine; and he asserts that all difficult surgical operations can be superseded by merely taking a sup or two of his delectable compound of combustibles. According to the modest pretensions of this exotic esculapius, he obtained the knowledge of physic and the power of subduing disease, by intuition or inspiration: he had no need to learn: there was no period of infancy in his medical attainments; he at once attained the highest point and full maturity of medical and chirurgical knowledge! Was there ever a more audacious piece of imposture attempted to be palmed upon the credulity of the most credulous of mortals, Mr. Bull and his progeny? But perhaps the philippics of this gaunt-looking “hygeist” against surgery and anatomy may produce some good. It is true that to a certain degree, those arts should be esteemed and cherished; but after the allowance of suitable consideration, they should fall into their proper rank, with wholesome restrictions. Both the arts are overrated in point of real utility. Were a knowledge of the living laws of the human frame more inculcated by medical professors than is the case, it would be found of more essential service than all the coxcombry of the present day respecting surgical distinctions and anatomical dissections. In many complaints, indeed, in the principal part to which the human frame is subject, the inutility of dissection is well known to every well informed man. But the assumption of the title of “Surgeon,” and the false importance (not to mention the legal security which it affords against prosecution, and the facility of exemption from examination of competency,) it gives the claimant in the estimation of the ignorant part of mankind, have contributed largely to the propagation of the erroneous notions which are so anxiously disseminated on the subject. Though it would be fruitless to attempt to expose this popular folly of the day, (which like all other follies or fashions will “have its rage” until its own enormity cures itself,) yet “it is some consolation to reflect that in another age a more successful practice of medicine will diminish the false estimation in which surgical foppery is now held; when to save a limb will be deemed a superior exertion of skill to its amputation.”Nor is the other branch (namely, that which was once designated by the now exploded and unfashionable title ofapothecary) free from reprehension. Those “sons of the pestle and mortar,” whose money-interest induces them rather to encourage disease than to subdue it, as the longer they keep the patient in hand, the greater number of phials, pill-boxes, gallipots, draughts and powders they will be entitled to charge for, are so wedded to routine, that they can seldom bring themselves to lay aside the lumber and unmeaning farrago of materia medicas, pharmacopœias, &c. Their prejudices and pertinacity in favour of received opinions and established usage are so blind and inveterate, that they will never allow themselves to have recourse to the simple remedies which Nature points out: all must be mystery, complication, and conformity to etiquette with them: toleadnature by simple means would be unprofessional; to practise “secundum artem,” she must be driven by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation; and they must bring into play in the simplest ailment to which the human frame is subject that huge mass of disjointed practices and experiments, which is held together by no order, and is not capable of any satisfactory application, or even elucidation. On this subject, the remarks of the editor of the Monthly Gazette of Health are so deserving of observation, that I cannot deny myself the advantage of enriching my pages with them.That learned gentleman (who has contributed more to the exposure of quackery and imposture than any writer of the age) having introduced to the notice of his readers Dr. Mackie’s communication of the medicinal virtues of the Guaco plant in cases of hydrophobia among the Indians of South America, closes his information with the following striking remarks:“The mode of treating diseases which is generally adopted by the native practitioners of South America, and the East Indies, by decoctions, infusions, and the expressed juices of vegetable productions, has, at any rate, that great recommendation—simplicity; but, contemptible as it may appear to be to the practitioners of this country, who suppose that no disease can be successfully combated without blue pill or calomel, or some active mineral or vegetable poison, agreeable to some favourite theory, it often proves successful; and, indeed, from the information which we have received from the intelligent gentlemen who have spent some years among the natives of South America and the East Indies, (some of them members of the medical profession,) we are disposed to believe that in some diseases, particularly scorbutic and scrofulous affections, and those termedpseudo-syphilitic, the native surgeons are more successful than the practitioners of this country. To us, the great difference between the practice of the former and that of the latter appears to be, that the oneleadnature by simple means, which enable her to correct the constitution, and to produce a healthy process of mutation in a diseased part, whilst the otherdrivenature by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation. Often have we witnessed the recovery of patients, who had been discharged from a hospital, under the simple treatment by decoction of an apparently simple vegetable, and by fomentations under the direction of an old woman; and whoever considers how simple the operations of nature are, will not be surprised that such treatment should succeed even in a formidable chronic disease. Every practitioner of experience and observation will, we think, admit that many thousand invalids are annually hurried to their graves in this metropolis, by persevering in the use of calomel and blue pill, or a drastic purgative, who might have been cured, or whose lives might have been prolonged many years, by a mild alterative treatment; and that many a limb might have been saved by a mild topical treatment of the local diseases, which has been consigned to the knife. In cases of internal acute disease, or active inflammation of a vital part, a decisive treatment is absolutely necessary to save life; but in chronic diseases, attempts by potent remedies to drive nature but too often distract her. To the new theory of chronic inflammation, or ulceration of the mucous membrane of some part of the alimentary canal, thousands have already been sacrificed.”[T]The disgusting practice of having one’s hands and eyes polluted at every corner of a street with the abominable bills and placards of the quacking vermin, is past endurance, and loudly calls for suppression.

[A]Mr. Accum, in his valuable book, enumerates, among the ingredients for giving the deeper or purple colour to wine, brazil-wood; but that ingenious gentleman is in error in this respect; for brazil-wood, as is well known to every practical chemist, has the property of imparting a blue colour to port wine, which is not quite the complexion that the wine-manufacturer wishes to give his spurious commodity.

[B]The introduction of this deleterious ingredient into wines is to stop the progress of their ascescency, or to recover ropy wines, or to clarify and render transparent spoiled or muddy white wines. As to the deleterious effects and dangerous consequences of this and other adulterations of wines, &c. see The Oracle of Health and Long Life; or, Plain Rules for the Attainment and Preservation of Sound Health and Vigorous Old Age. By Medicus.

[C]Direct Madeira is that which has been shipped direct from the island of Madeira, without having the benefit, as it is termed, of a voyage to the East or West Indies.

[D]East-India or West-India Cape is that portion of Cape wines which has had the benefit of a voyage from the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies, and thence back to London. Cape Sherry is that portion of Cape wine which bears the greatest resemblance in flavour to real Sherry. Cape Madeira is so denominated from its resemblance, in point of flavour, to Madeira. Cape Burgundy, Cape Hock, Cape Sauterne, Cape Port, Cape Pontac, Cape Champagne, Cape Barsac, &c. owe their appellations to their supposed resemblance, in point of flavour, to those wines.

[E]The respectable author of “The Art of Brewing on Scientific Principles” has the following note, “Spirits vended by retail are all adulterated, and some of them to a dreadful extent. Some months since (his work was published in 1826,) a person having writing to do that would occupy great part of the night, purchased, at a liquor shop, in Newgate-street, half a pint of gin; and, during the night, he drank a goblet-full of grog, which he had made from it. He was seized with most excruciating agony, spasms of the stomach, temporary paralysis, and loss of intellect. These he attributed to some natural cause, and he gave the remainder of the liquor to a person that called on him in the morning. In about an hour that person was similarly affected. This induced inquiry; and it was ascertained that the woman who served the liquor had mistaken the bottle, and had sold half a pint of the fluid intended to prepare the adulterations for sale. The last-mentioned person who partook of the infernal mixture died of its effects.” Similar consequences have occurred from adulterated beer. Among a thousand other instances, see the Coroner’s inquest in the Times Newspaper of the 29th of June, 1829.

[F]According to the testimony of the author of “Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked” the profits of the wine and spirit compounders are so great, and the chance of the detection of their frauds and impositions on the public and the revenue is almost so impossible, that many of them are to be found “vieing with the nobility of the land in the splendour of their equipages and expenditure.” He mentions one gin-shop-keeper (a worthy in the neighbourhood of St. Luke’s) who “drives his family tochurch, on a Sunday, in his carriage and four.” Another, who has a “richly ornamented state bed.” A third, who is to be found lolling “on an ottoman, in a French dressing-gown.” And he adds, that it is usual to give from four to six thousand guineas for the good will of a gin-shop which has an unexpired lease of eighteen or twenty years, with the drawback of the purchaser being quite at the mercy of the magistrates as to the renewal of his license.

[G]The crusting of wine in the natural way generally takes place in about nine months; but, among the artizans of the factitious wine-trade, it is accomplished in a much shorter time. Those ingenious gentry line the inside of the bottles they intend to fill with their compound called wine, by suffering a saturated hot solution of super-tartrate of potash, coloured red with a decoction of Brazil wood, to crystallize within them. Others of that honest fraternity, who dislike trouble, put a tea-spoon full of the powder of catechu into each bottle, and by this artifice soon produce a fine crusted appearance of “aged wine.” This simulation of maturity is often accomplished by the humbler dealer by covering the bottles with snow, or by exposing them to the rays of the sun, or by keeping them for a few days in hot water. Where the casks are to be bottled off by the purchaser, or in his presence, they are stained in the inside with the artificial crystalline crust of super-tartrate of potash, as a proof of the age of the wine.

[H]To produce the dilapidations of “Father Time” on wine corks, the dry rot, however injurious to others, is of great advantage to wine-dealers, as it soon covers the bottles with its mouldy appearance, and consumes the external part of the cork; so that with a trifling operation on the bottles after they are filled, and then deposited in cellars pretty strongly affected with the dry rot, they can furnish the admirers of “aged wine” with liquor having the appearance of having been bottled seven or eight years, though it has not in reality been there so many months. The staining of the lower extremities of the corks with a fine red colour, produced from a strong decoction of Brazil wood and alum, to make them appear “aged,” or as if they had been long in contact with the wine, is another of the devices of the factitious wine-trade, and forms a distinct branch of its operations.

[I]Among the numerous delusions with which the senses of the “error ridden” nation of Englishmen—aye, and the “bonnie Scots,” and the “Sons of the Emerald Isle,” are benighted, is the false and erroneous opinion that strong stimulating liquors impart strength to the body. As a very sensible writer observes on this subject,—“To depend on spirituous liquors for the power to labour, is as wise as it would be in a man, setting out for York, to get a friend to give him a kick on the b—— to help him forward. His friend must continue the same kind office all the way, or he would continually flag.” No work of the present age has contributed more effectually to remove these mistaken notions than “The Oracle of Health and Long Life.” May its well-intentioned and judicious author have the consolation of finding that his important instructions have contributed to the health and welfare of the community; and may the unqualified approval of his little volume, by the respectable part of the periodical press of the country be a stimulus to fresh exertion to render the work faultless.

[J]Mr. Brewer Child’s recipe (see Treatise on Brewing, p. 23) for making new beer old, is to throw in a dash of vitriol. “A smack of age,” he likewise adds, at p. 18, “is also given to beer, by the addition of alum.” Well done, brewer Child; thou art an expeditious chap! Thou mightest have been of service in the Court of Chancery,in temporeLord Chancellor Eldon, ofdoubtingand delaying memory.

[K]On this subject, Mr. J. D. Williams, the Editor of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries, has rendered no trifling service to society, by his petition, presented to the House of Commons, by the Marquess of Blandford, on June 17th, 1830; in which he prayed the appointment of fit and competent persons for the digestment and simplification of, or, in the emphatical language of Lord Bacon, for “the choice and tender business of reducing and harmonizing,” the hybrid and confused state of the law. As he justly said, “no useful and beneficial amendment or amelioration can reasonably be expected; but the Statute Book will still continue to be disgraced with enactments which will be at variance with common sense, the first principles of justice, and even nullify the intent and purport of the enactments themselves, while the concoction of laws is entrusted to others than persons endowed with a spirit of comprehensive knowledge, great enlightenment, enlarged and liberal understandings, and who are acquainted with the nature of the subjects on which they presume to legislate.” The instances which that gentleman adduced in his well intended petition of “the great and singular blunders” as to “erroneous conclusions in the first principles of science,” committed by some of our law-makers are really amusing—if any honest man can derive amusement from his country’s injury and degradation.

[L]The addition of the farina or starch of the potato improves the bread, by counteracting its constipating effects, and by minutely dividing the particles of the flour during the fermentation; and for this reason its introduction into home-made bread would, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life,” says, be beneficial to health, as making it more nutritious and digestible.

[M]The remarks of the learned editors of the Monthly Gazette of Health, Nos. 160 and 162, are so much to the purpose, and so deserving of diffusion among all ranks and classes of the community, on the exhibition of the jew pedlars, the “groundly learned physicians,” the “Doctors” J. and C. Jordan, “physiciansto the West London Medical Establishment,” and “proprietors of thecelebratedBalsam of Rackasiri,” and thecelebrated“Salutary Detersive Drops,” as the vagabonds impudently and unblushingly style themselves and their nostrums; and their redoubtable champion “Mr.CounsellorBluster,” that I cannot do a greater service to the cause of truth and honesty and the discomfiture of roguery of all descriptions, than to refer my readers to those numbers of that work.

[N]These “Hebrew” Jewish knaves having at length been driven from their strong-hold of delusion, and finding their trade of imposture in the “balsam” rapidly declining through the patriotic exertions of “the heroic Miss May” and the Editors of the Monthly Gazette of Health, have had recourse to a new source of fraud and villainy, “the celebrated Salutary Detersive Drops”—and as the vermin have the unblushing audacity to designate their filth—a “mostimportant discovery, which, bylong study,deep research, and atgreat expence, they have,fortunatelyfor the human race, brought to a degree of perfection whichastonishesthemselves!!!” and which “is acertainandspeedy cureforallthe most distressing diseases to which human nature is heir,” when administered “bytheir superior skillandjudgment” and sanctioned “bytheir high character and situation in life!!” And theimpiousandblasphemouswretches invoke the Great God of Nature “thathewho has the power of doing all things” mayfurthertheir villainous and murderous designs! But it is some consolation, though the government of the country may be silent and indifferent lookers-on to “doings” so nefarious and diabolical, that there are hearts that feel indignant at the wickedness and imposture of adventurers and monsters in iniquity, whom the ignorance of mankind in the principles of life and the science of medicine has, as Dr. Morrison justly says inMedicine No Mystery, “enabled to possess palacesboughtandconstructedwith thetreasuresandbloodof their victims.”

[O]That the ignorant, the thoughtless, and the “fashionable,” should become the dopes of mountebank-imposture is not much to be wondered at; but that persons of respectability and character, the heads of theChurchand of theState, (I have not yet ascertained that that sly old beldam “The Law” has stupified herself so much as to lend her countenance to the imposture,) should give their sanction and support, and endanger their health and lives, by either patronizing or using the deleterious compounds of mountebanks, and thus becoming the dupes of the most groveling imposture and the vilest quackery, cannot really be reasonably accounted for. The old worm-mountebank in Long Acre boasts that he has a list of fifteen hundred “Clergymen” who can give testimony of the virtues of his nostrums. The miraculous powers of Barclay’s Antibilious Pills, Ching’s Worm Lozenges, and some other articles in the list of quack medicines, are attested by some “Right Reverend Fathers in God!” Nor was that notorious and impudent mountebank “le Docteur” James Graham, who cured patients by only breathing the air of his “Apollo” hall or chamber in the Adelphi, which was always impregnated (as he said) with celestial æther and influences, withoutnoble and reverend patrons. But the consummation of dupery was most powerfully displayed in the case of the old New England quack,CherokeeWhitlaw. In the case of this Yankee quondam gardener, “Royals” (as well of native as of foreign breed), “right honourables,” “reverends,” “SENATORS,” and even some gentle “ladyships,” were his patrons, and those of his mountebank-asylum at Bayswater, and the recommenders of his “American Herb Extracts,” which were a compound of cabbage water, treacle, turpentine, and Epsom salts, and for a pint of which the canting old varlet was barefaced enough to demand eight shillings in lawful British specie, though the cost price of the mixture did not exceed three half-pence-farthing. But it is a lamentable fact, as Dr. Morrison observes in his well-intentioned little work, entitled “Medicine No Mystery,” that in nineteen cases out of twenty (and this, he emphatically remarks, is the proportion that ignorance bears to knowledge,) the charlatan, with his mysterious phrases and gestures, is more sought after and more prized than the accomplished and experienced physician; “so much of the leaven of the old idea of the connexion between physic and occult and mysterious sciences still subsists,—of those days when physicians pretended to judge of their patients’ diseases by seeing their urine; when the stars were consulted before a dose of physic was taken; when the king’s evil was supposed to be cured by royal touch; when women flocked to surround the body of the executed criminal, and rubbed his hands to their breasts as a cure for cancer or epilepsy, &c.”The mock philanthropy of the contemptible quack Whitlaw, and the blasphemous, the monstrously blasphemous and diabolical effrontery of the conventicle and meeting pulpit-charlatans, (the vile tools of harpyism and religious knavery,) who puffed off this “threadbare juggler’s” disgusting impostures by an odious comparison of his selfish and detestable tricks with the enlarged and godlike benevolence and charity of the Saviour of mankind, deserve the severest reprobation and chastisement, though sanctioned by the weak and culpable patronage of royals, nobles, statesmen, M.P.’s, and divines, and swallowed by the gaping mouths of the ignorant,—of foolish women, and half witted men. But of the two species of imposture, the pulpit charlatanry of ignorant and selfish empirics is the most disgusting. The diabolical farces of those wolves in sheep’s clothing—their ignorant and designing perversion of the plain practical morality laid down by the Saviour of mankind in the gospel,—the brain-turning and mind-deranging fanaticism they inculcate, and which they profanely and audaciously call soul-searching and sinner-awakening doctrines, and other like unmeaning and abominable stuff which they inculcate under the evident chieftainship of the devil, loudly demands some legislative interference. It has been well observed, that though the benign spirit of toleration has permitted religious empiricism—though folly and ignorance have countenanced medical quackery and imposture—and though there are persons weak enough to entrust their lives and health, as well as their moral and religious instruction, to enthusiastic cobblers and tailors; yet considering the strange infatuation of mankind, and the proneness of human nature to delusion and imposture, it is the duty of every wise and paternal government to protect the weak and uninformed from the designs of the devil’s agents, who, in order to practise their selfish villanies on their unsuspecting victims, become, to use the words of Dr. Robertson the historian, “outrageously Christian” in their professions.

The mock philanthropy of the contemptible quack Whitlaw, and the blasphemous, the monstrously blasphemous and diabolical effrontery of the conventicle and meeting pulpit-charlatans, (the vile tools of harpyism and religious knavery,) who puffed off this “threadbare juggler’s” disgusting impostures by an odious comparison of his selfish and detestable tricks with the enlarged and godlike benevolence and charity of the Saviour of mankind, deserve the severest reprobation and chastisement, though sanctioned by the weak and culpable patronage of royals, nobles, statesmen, M.P.’s, and divines, and swallowed by the gaping mouths of the ignorant,—of foolish women, and half witted men. But of the two species of imposture, the pulpit charlatanry of ignorant and selfish empirics is the most disgusting. The diabolical farces of those wolves in sheep’s clothing—their ignorant and designing perversion of the plain practical morality laid down by the Saviour of mankind in the gospel,—the brain-turning and mind-deranging fanaticism they inculcate, and which they profanely and audaciously call soul-searching and sinner-awakening doctrines, and other like unmeaning and abominable stuff which they inculcate under the evident chieftainship of the devil, loudly demands some legislative interference. It has been well observed, that though the benign spirit of toleration has permitted religious empiricism—though folly and ignorance have countenanced medical quackery and imposture—and though there are persons weak enough to entrust their lives and health, as well as their moral and religious instruction, to enthusiastic cobblers and tailors; yet considering the strange infatuation of mankind, and the proneness of human nature to delusion and imposture, it is the duty of every wise and paternal government to protect the weak and uninformed from the designs of the devil’s agents, who, in order to practise their selfish villanies on their unsuspecting victims, become, to use the words of Dr. Robertson the historian, “outrageously Christian” in their professions.

[P]The impolitic and monstrously inconsistent patent medicine act, which legalizes and sanctions and promotes the sale of quack poisons, has no doubt annually been the unweeting cause of more murders, than the joint influence of typhus, small-pox, and consumption. The tax or stamp-duty on this odious and destructive trash was, no doubt, at the time of its imposition, intended as a prevention of the evil which it contemplated to suppress. But this is one of the consequences of short-sighted and vicious legislation, and of the entrusting of the concoction of the laws to incompetent persons—in the emphatic phrase of the most eloquent of human tongues, mere ita lex scripta est lawyers—men who make a boast of never having read, or who have had but little or no opportunity of reading any other kind of books than their musty, ill-written, badly digested law-books; such as certain “learnedgentlemen,” of prodigiously scholar-like and scientific attainments—men, whom the Times Newspaper has justly characterised by the style and title of “The Mindless;” and who contrive by the arts of “huggery” and favouritism to deprive the public of the benefits to be derived from the talents of men of “high classical and literary, and even legal attainments,” and of the most enlarged and enlightened philosophy, but who scorn to court the favour of those in power and “high places” by mean and dirty practices.

[Q]This kind of doctrine will, no doubt, be unpalatable ina certain quarter, and the productiveness to the exchequer of thedisgraceful revenuearising from the pest, will be adduced as an argument for its continuance. But it is to be hoped, as Mr. J. D. Williams said in his meritorious petition to the Commons House of Parliament on that subject, that the health of the public will be held superior to any such consideration. The lottery, no doubt, brought into the state-coffers a considerable revenue; but as it was found to undermine and ruin the morals of the community, it was abolished. And the persons at the head of the government at the time have the thanks and gratitude of every true friend of his country for the act. Surely thehealth of the publicis entitled to the same provision.

[R]The whole farrago of quack or patent medicines is destructive of health and life, whether cordial or vegetable balsams, tinctures, syrups, or elixirs,—pectoral or antiscorbutic drops, bile or antibilious pills, tonic or digestive wines, balms of gilead, guestonian embrocations, Leake’s pillula salutaria, and a thousand other poisonous and life-destroying trash. Thousands upon thousands of children under three years of age are consigned yearly to the tomb in London alone, by means of the soothing or vegetable syrups, the infants’ balms, the worm-cakes, the anodyne necklaces, Godfrey’s cordial, Daffy’s elixir, Dalby’s carminative, apothecaries’ draughts and powders, and other infernal recipes; which, if they do not cause immediate death, occasion fits, convulsions, fevers, excruciating gripes, palsy, and often confirmed idiotcy. Gowland’s lotion, the kalydors, the macassar oils, the cosmetiques royales, the red and white olympian dews, the blooms, the various hair dyes, &c. have not only robbed many a female of her charms and loveliness, but have even produced severe pains of the bowels and of the brain, have occasioned convulsions, and laid the foundation of those diseases which have deprived the victims of life itself. The folly of depending for cure or relief upon the “gout extractors,” “the metallic tractors,” “animal magnetism,” and “signatures,” has been at length exploded; it is therefore unnecessary to say a word on the subject.

[S]The audacity of this fellow exceeds, if possible, the unblushing and incorrigible effrontery of the other impostors. He undertakes to cure all kinds of diseases without any kind of medicine; and he asserts that all difficult surgical operations can be superseded by merely taking a sup or two of his delectable compound of combustibles. According to the modest pretensions of this exotic esculapius, he obtained the knowledge of physic and the power of subduing disease, by intuition or inspiration: he had no need to learn: there was no period of infancy in his medical attainments; he at once attained the highest point and full maturity of medical and chirurgical knowledge! Was there ever a more audacious piece of imposture attempted to be palmed upon the credulity of the most credulous of mortals, Mr. Bull and his progeny? But perhaps the philippics of this gaunt-looking “hygeist” against surgery and anatomy may produce some good. It is true that to a certain degree, those arts should be esteemed and cherished; but after the allowance of suitable consideration, they should fall into their proper rank, with wholesome restrictions. Both the arts are overrated in point of real utility. Were a knowledge of the living laws of the human frame more inculcated by medical professors than is the case, it would be found of more essential service than all the coxcombry of the present day respecting surgical distinctions and anatomical dissections. In many complaints, indeed, in the principal part to which the human frame is subject, the inutility of dissection is well known to every well informed man. But the assumption of the title of “Surgeon,” and the false importance (not to mention the legal security which it affords against prosecution, and the facility of exemption from examination of competency,) it gives the claimant in the estimation of the ignorant part of mankind, have contributed largely to the propagation of the erroneous notions which are so anxiously disseminated on the subject. Though it would be fruitless to attempt to expose this popular folly of the day, (which like all other follies or fashions will “have its rage” until its own enormity cures itself,) yet “it is some consolation to reflect that in another age a more successful practice of medicine will diminish the false estimation in which surgical foppery is now held; when to save a limb will be deemed a superior exertion of skill to its amputation.”Nor is the other branch (namely, that which was once designated by the now exploded and unfashionable title ofapothecary) free from reprehension. Those “sons of the pestle and mortar,” whose money-interest induces them rather to encourage disease than to subdue it, as the longer they keep the patient in hand, the greater number of phials, pill-boxes, gallipots, draughts and powders they will be entitled to charge for, are so wedded to routine, that they can seldom bring themselves to lay aside the lumber and unmeaning farrago of materia medicas, pharmacopœias, &c. Their prejudices and pertinacity in favour of received opinions and established usage are so blind and inveterate, that they will never allow themselves to have recourse to the simple remedies which Nature points out: all must be mystery, complication, and conformity to etiquette with them: toleadnature by simple means would be unprofessional; to practise “secundum artem,” she must be driven by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation; and they must bring into play in the simplest ailment to which the human frame is subject that huge mass of disjointed practices and experiments, which is held together by no order, and is not capable of any satisfactory application, or even elucidation. On this subject, the remarks of the editor of the Monthly Gazette of Health are so deserving of observation, that I cannot deny myself the advantage of enriching my pages with them.That learned gentleman (who has contributed more to the exposure of quackery and imposture than any writer of the age) having introduced to the notice of his readers Dr. Mackie’s communication of the medicinal virtues of the Guaco plant in cases of hydrophobia among the Indians of South America, closes his information with the following striking remarks:“The mode of treating diseases which is generally adopted by the native practitioners of South America, and the East Indies, by decoctions, infusions, and the expressed juices of vegetable productions, has, at any rate, that great recommendation—simplicity; but, contemptible as it may appear to be to the practitioners of this country, who suppose that no disease can be successfully combated without blue pill or calomel, or some active mineral or vegetable poison, agreeable to some favourite theory, it often proves successful; and, indeed, from the information which we have received from the intelligent gentlemen who have spent some years among the natives of South America and the East Indies, (some of them members of the medical profession,) we are disposed to believe that in some diseases, particularly scorbutic and scrofulous affections, and those termedpseudo-syphilitic, the native surgeons are more successful than the practitioners of this country. To us, the great difference between the practice of the former and that of the latter appears to be, that the oneleadnature by simple means, which enable her to correct the constitution, and to produce a healthy process of mutation in a diseased part, whilst the otherdrivenature by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation. Often have we witnessed the recovery of patients, who had been discharged from a hospital, under the simple treatment by decoction of an apparently simple vegetable, and by fomentations under the direction of an old woman; and whoever considers how simple the operations of nature are, will not be surprised that such treatment should succeed even in a formidable chronic disease. Every practitioner of experience and observation will, we think, admit that many thousand invalids are annually hurried to their graves in this metropolis, by persevering in the use of calomel and blue pill, or a drastic purgative, who might have been cured, or whose lives might have been prolonged many years, by a mild alterative treatment; and that many a limb might have been saved by a mild topical treatment of the local diseases, which has been consigned to the knife. In cases of internal acute disease, or active inflammation of a vital part, a decisive treatment is absolutely necessary to save life; but in chronic diseases, attempts by potent remedies to drive nature but too often distract her. To the new theory of chronic inflammation, or ulceration of the mucous membrane of some part of the alimentary canal, thousands have already been sacrificed.”

Nor is the other branch (namely, that which was once designated by the now exploded and unfashionable title ofapothecary) free from reprehension. Those “sons of the pestle and mortar,” whose money-interest induces them rather to encourage disease than to subdue it, as the longer they keep the patient in hand, the greater number of phials, pill-boxes, gallipots, draughts and powders they will be entitled to charge for, are so wedded to routine, that they can seldom bring themselves to lay aside the lumber and unmeaning farrago of materia medicas, pharmacopœias, &c. Their prejudices and pertinacity in favour of received opinions and established usage are so blind and inveterate, that they will never allow themselves to have recourse to the simple remedies which Nature points out: all must be mystery, complication, and conformity to etiquette with them: toleadnature by simple means would be unprofessional; to practise “secundum artem,” she must be driven by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation; and they must bring into play in the simplest ailment to which the human frame is subject that huge mass of disjointed practices and experiments, which is held together by no order, and is not capable of any satisfactory application, or even elucidation. On this subject, the remarks of the editor of the Monthly Gazette of Health are so deserving of observation, that I cannot deny myself the advantage of enriching my pages with them.

That learned gentleman (who has contributed more to the exposure of quackery and imposture than any writer of the age) having introduced to the notice of his readers Dr. Mackie’s communication of the medicinal virtues of the Guaco plant in cases of hydrophobia among the Indians of South America, closes his information with the following striking remarks:

“The mode of treating diseases which is generally adopted by the native practitioners of South America, and the East Indies, by decoctions, infusions, and the expressed juices of vegetable productions, has, at any rate, that great recommendation—simplicity; but, contemptible as it may appear to be to the practitioners of this country, who suppose that no disease can be successfully combated without blue pill or calomel, or some active mineral or vegetable poison, agreeable to some favourite theory, it often proves successful; and, indeed, from the information which we have received from the intelligent gentlemen who have spent some years among the natives of South America and the East Indies, (some of them members of the medical profession,) we are disposed to believe that in some diseases, particularly scorbutic and scrofulous affections, and those termedpseudo-syphilitic, the native surgeons are more successful than the practitioners of this country. To us, the great difference between the practice of the former and that of the latter appears to be, that the oneleadnature by simple means, which enable her to correct the constitution, and to produce a healthy process of mutation in a diseased part, whilst the otherdrivenature by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation. Often have we witnessed the recovery of patients, who had been discharged from a hospital, under the simple treatment by decoction of an apparently simple vegetable, and by fomentations under the direction of an old woman; and whoever considers how simple the operations of nature are, will not be surprised that such treatment should succeed even in a formidable chronic disease. Every practitioner of experience and observation will, we think, admit that many thousand invalids are annually hurried to their graves in this metropolis, by persevering in the use of calomel and blue pill, or a drastic purgative, who might have been cured, or whose lives might have been prolonged many years, by a mild alterative treatment; and that many a limb might have been saved by a mild topical treatment of the local diseases, which has been consigned to the knife. In cases of internal acute disease, or active inflammation of a vital part, a decisive treatment is absolutely necessary to save life; but in chronic diseases, attempts by potent remedies to drive nature but too often distract her. To the new theory of chronic inflammation, or ulceration of the mucous membrane of some part of the alimentary canal, thousands have already been sacrificed.”

[T]The disgusting practice of having one’s hands and eyes polluted at every corner of a street with the abominable bills and placards of the quacking vermin, is past endurance, and loudly calls for suppression.

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