Quackery Page 2

  Lincoln, to his credit, seemed to recognize that the blue mass might be making him worse rather than better, and he apparently decreased his use once he entered the White House. And not a moment too soon. One shudders to imagine a mercury-toxic, pathologically moody leader of our nation calling the shots during the Civil War.

  “A Night with Venus, a Lifetime with Mercury”

  Mercury has had an entwined relationship with syphilis for centuries. In the fifteenth century after the French invasion of Naples, Italy, the disease began to make its way across Europe. As Voltaire noted, “On their flippant way through Italy, the French carelessly picked up Genoa, Naples, and syphilis. Then they were thrown out and deprived of Naples and Genoa. But they did not lose everything—syphilis went with them.”

  Soon, the “Great Pox” became a true nuisance and deadly accompaniment as it spread throughout Europe. That historical strain of Treponema pallidum (which is the responsible bacterium) was particularly virulent. Genital sores sprouted after exposure to an infected sexual partner and progressed to rash and fevers. Later, foul-smelling abscesses, pustules, and sores spread over the body, some so severe that they ate away at face, flesh, and bone. Yes. Out-of-control syphilis is pretty revolting.

  People were desperate for a cure. By the sixteenth century, mercury came to the rescue with the help of the rather bombastic and vehement Paracelsus, who argued against Galen’s humoral theory. He believed instead that mercury, salt, and sulfur would bring about all manner of bodily cures, having earth-bound, physiologic, and astrological qualities.

  Another salt, mercuric chloride, arrived on the scene. Unlike calomel, mercuric chloride was water-soluble and easily absorbed by the body, making its poisonous results seem all the more effective. It burned the skin when applied (“It hurts! Therefore, it works!”), and the copious salivation was considered a sign of successful purging.

  Syphilitic patients also received what sound like the worst spa packages ever. Elemental mercury was heated for steam baths, where inhalation was considered beneficial (and is a potent route of mercury absorption). Mercuric chloride was added to fat, and the resultant unction rubbed dutifully into sores. Sometimes, bodily fumigations occurred, where a naked patient was placed in a box with some liquid mercury, their head sticking out of a hole, and a fire lit beneath the box to vaporize the mercury. Sixteenth-century Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro remarked that after mercury ointments and fumigations, “You will feel the ferments of the disease dissolve themselves in your mouth in a disgusting flow of saliva.”

  Treatment for syphilis was vastly unsexy. What was worse, these regimens would often continue for the rest of the sufferer’s life. There was no denying a common saying at the time: “A night with Venus, and a lifetime with mercury.”

  Niccolò Paganini, one of the most famous violinists in history, likely suffered from mercury toxicity after he was diagnosed with syphilis. Besides suffering from hypochondria and excessive shyness from erethism, he also began shaking uncontrollably, contributing to his withdrawal from the stage in 1834. He had tree-trunk legs and coughed gunk up chronically. He complained, “I easily expectorate the mucus and pus … three or four saucerfuls … the swelling in my legs has risen to behind the knees so that I walk like a snail.” His teeth fell out, his bladder was constantly irritated, and his testicles became inflamed to the size of “a little pumpkin.” Damn you, syphilis, for ruining the adorableness of little pumpkins everywhere.

  Luckily, or unluckily, poor Paganini’s horrid life of mucus production, mollusk-like speed, and gourd-sized nether regions didn’t last long. Within a month after he stopped performing, Paganini was dead.

  Nowadays, we do know that mercury and other metals such as silver can kill bacteria in vitro. All scientists know, however, that what’s good in the petri dish isn’t necessarily good in the human body. It’s unclear if syphilis sufferers were cured by their mercury treatments or if they simply moved on to the next phase of the illness, which could consist of many symptom-free years.

  That is, if the mercury toxicity didn’t kill them first.

  Syphilis patients being treated. Note the saliva waterfall (top, right) and the grenade-shaped spa treatment.

  Lewis and Clark and the Thunderbolts (No, It’s Not a Band)

  Benjamin Rush’s influence had more far-reaching effects beyond Philadelphia, in the form of Dr. Rush’s Bilious Pills. The pills, a proprietary blend of calomel, chlorine, and jalap (a potent herbal laxative), were fondly referred to as Dr. Rush’s Thunderbolts or “Thunderclappers.” On Rush’s recommendations, Lewis and Clark took them on their famous expedition. Rush wrote, “When you feel the least indisposition … gently open the bowels by means of one, two, or more of the purging pills.” Also, constipation “is often a sign of approaching disease … take one or more of the purging pills.” In addition, lack of appetite “is a sign of approaching indisposition and it should be obviated by the same remedy.”

  In summary, if anything felt off? Purge. Purge like hell.

  So Lewis and Clark brought no less than 600 of Dr. Rush’s Thunderbolts. Modern historians determined that on their historic journey, Lewis and Clark had squatted in Lolo, Montana—literally. As their expedition was a military one, they relied on military guidelines that ordered their latrines be located 300 feet from the main camping area, which had been found using dated lead samples. Lo and behold, mercury was detected 300 feet away. It was an excremental bingo winner. Rush’s Thunderbolts may or may not have cured their ills, but they certainly left their mark, in a scatalogically historical way.

  To boldly purge where no man has purged before.

  The Caduceus: A Snake Switcheroo

  Calomel fell from favor gradually, as safer and more effective treatments replaced the “heroic medicine” of purging. In the United States and around the world, mercury was banned from felting in the 1940s and gold and silver mining in the 1960s. Calomel wasn’t removed from the British pharmacopoeia until the 1950s because it took that long to finally realize mercury was the cause of acrodynia. Even now, you can still find mercury thermometers (they’re more accurate than the red-colored alcohol ones), but regulations are phasing them out worldwide.

  Though the element is no longer used in mainstream medicine, mercury has managed to slither its way into many a doctor’s office. It is perhaps oddly appropriate that the symbol for the god Mercury was the caduceus—two snakes entwined on a winged rod. The symbol is commonly and incorrectly associated with the medical establishment, due to a mistake when the US Army Medical Corps adopted the symbol in 1902. Soon after, it became a ubiquitous sign of healing. But in fact, the caduceus represents Mercury—the god of financial gain, commerce, thieves, and trickery.

  The Rod of Asclepius, which has a single serpent entwined on a simple rod, was held by the Greek god Asclepius, the patron of health and healing. This was the rod mistakenly missed in 1902 and is currently used by most academic medical establishments today.

  In 1932, Stuart Tyson argued about the misuse of the caduceus in The Scientific Monthly, stating that Mercury was “the patron of commerce and of the fat purse … his silver tongued eloquence could always make ‘the worse appear the better cause.’ … Would not his symbol be suitable for … all medical quacks?” Indeed.

  Mercury, holding his caduceus and a fat purse, while stomping on everyone.

  2

  Antimony

  Of Oliver Goldsmith’s Last Folly, the Fake Basil Valentine, Captain Cook’s Cup, and Everlasting Poop Pills

  In 1774, Oliver Goldsmith was feeling rather off. The forty-four-year-old author of The Vicar of Wakefield and She Stoops to Conquer had a fever, headache, and suspected kidney problems. In his life, he’d graduated at the bottom of his class at Trinity College, attempted but did not complete a degree in medicine in Edinburgh, and wandered Europe after exhausting his funds. He finally managed a degree of success as a writer, though some, like Horace Walpole, called him “an inspired idiot.”
<
br />   It was, however, his incomplete doctorate in medicine and briefly held position as an apothecary’s assistant that led to action at that moment. He must cure himself.

  It was time for St. James’s Fever Powder.

  Now, St. James’s Fever Powder was famous in its time. Created and sold by one of the eighteenth century’s most famous patent medicine doctors, the powder claimed to cure fevers “accompanied by convulsions and light-headedness,” gout, scurvy, and cattle distemper virus. Dr. Robert James was so secretive about his formula that he even lied on his patent application for fear others would steal it. But the main ingredient, a toxic metal called antimony, was extremely good at what Oliver Goldsmith thought he needed—nay, demanded—to get him out of his sickbed.

  He wanted to vomit.

  Goldsmith, who called himself a doctor despite not being one, asked an apothecary to bring him St. James’s Fever Powder. The apothecary resisted, begging him to consult a real physician. But Goldsmith ended up getting what he asked for.

  Eighteen hours later, after a lot of vomiting and convulsions, Oliver Goldsmith was dead.

  Oliver Goldsmith, author and “inspired idiot.”

  A Brief History of Hurling

  We’ll get back to poor Mr. Goldsmith and his coveted antimony prescription. But first, let’s take a brief pause to examine why he wanted to vomit so badly that it killed him.

  Emesis, or vomiting, is the body’s way of ridding itself of its stomach contents, against both gravity and the body’s normal digestional direction. By irritating the lining of the stomach, eliciting the gag reflex, and tickling the “vomiting center” in your brain (yes, that’s a real neural location), you can induce this reverse digestion. Emetics like antimony are substances you take on purpose to make you spew, and they have a long and glorious history. Herodotus reported that the ancient Egyptians employed monthly emetics to maintain their health. Hippocrates, too, advocated regular vomiting. The recommendations go on and on through several millennia. Up until only a few decades ago, emetics were still considered an important part of the medical formulary.

  Much of emetics’ use linked back to humoral theories of the body: It was believed that when the body’s blood, black bile, yellow bile, or phlegm was unbalanced, sickness occurred. So rebalancing via vomiting, diarrhea, sweating, or salivation was necessary. Basically, if it could ooze out of a pore or projectile shoot out of an orifice, it balanced you.

  And since 3000 bce, antimony, a grayish metalloid mined from mineral deposits around the world, was the substance du jour for this purpose. It’s well known that some people have enjoyed emetics for their ability to empty themselves out after a gluttonous meal, as Roman emperors Julius Caesar and Claudius were known to do. Seneca the Younger, counsel to Emperor Nero, mentioned some Romans who “vomited to eat, and ate to vomit, and did not deign to digest their repasts furnished from all parts of the world.” An antimony-containing wine was reportedly used for such purposes. (Interestingly, the term vomitorium was long thought to be an area provided to bingeing Roman partygoers. But in actuality, it was simply an exit area of an amphitheater for crowds to “purge” and leave the building. That’s right. It’s an architectural term that equates people with vomit.)

  Unfortunately, to get the body to reverse its normal processes, sometimes you have to introduce it to something it desperately wants to remove, like poison. Scholars and healers alike recognized antimony’s toxic potential. It could cause liver damage, severe inflammation of the pancreas, heart problems, and death. Still, they were confident that doctors could rein in its lethal power. A common thought at the time regarding antimony was that “a poison is not a poison in the hands of a physician.”

  Too bad that Oliver Goldsmith got his antimony, despite his doctors’ disagreement.

  Monk Killer or Wonder Drug?

  Sixteenth-century celebrity physician Paracelsus believed in a more mineral-based philosophy as opposed to humors, a radical divergence of thought that brought him plenty of followers and enemies. One must understand the natural sciences before understanding the body’s ailments, he believed. Earthly substances like antimony or mercury were the perfect elements to set things right. Antimony in particular “purifies itself and at the same time everything else that is impure,” he claimed.

  You’d think the endorsement of the Renaissance’s Dr. Oz would be enough to make you the go-to vomit inducer, but it wasn’t until antimony received a mythical monk’s stamp of approval that it really took off.

  Antimony’s name supposedly draws from a story about a fifteenth-century German monk named Basil Valentine. Legend has it, he belonged to the Canon of Benedictine Priory of St. Peter and died at an astounding 106 years old. His mysterious epitaph read: “post CXX annos patebo” (after 120 years to clear, or, perhaps, pass), and right on the mark, one of the priory’s church pillars reportedly burst open to reveal hidden books written by Valentine, the existence of which no one ever knew.

  He’s got good aim, doesn’t he?

  Valentine extolled the virtues of antimony in a manuscript entitled “The Triumphant Chariot of Antimony.” He even recommended it to fatten up pigs. Rumor told that after having a good effect on the swine, he tried it on monks, who promptly died. Hence the meaning of antimony—“anti-monk” or “monk killer.” (This is unlikely the true origin. Antimony more likely derives from the Greek word antimonos, for “a metal not found alone,” due to its natural affinity for other elements like sulfur. Just as “Basil Valentine” is more apt a name for a sleazy lounge singer.)

  Valentine’s manuscripts had magically entered the hands of one Johann Thölde, a salt boiler, salesman, and the likely true author of the texts. He also happened to be a skilled chemist. In the early 1600s, he made a pretty penny spreading Valentine’s writing around, and antimony experienced a surge in use.

  And an intellectual war began.

  Galenical physicians who extolled the virtues of humoral theory were in a rage about the doctor-chemists who followed Paracelsus and Valentine and adored the purgative powers of mercury and antimony. Bitter fights and court battles ensued over the intersection of chemistry and medicine, with antimony at their center. The faculty of medicine in Paris decreed antimony was a “virulent poison.” One of the loudest seventeenth-century French critics, physician Guy Patin, exclaimed, “May God protect us from such drugs and such physicians!”

  And yet, many believed antimony would “perfect the body” and would purify anything impure it came to touch. It was used for everything from asthma and allergies to syphilis and the plague. When King Louix XIV fell deathly ill in 1658, he received a dose. He recovered (miraculously), and that ended the antimony debate in France with one shiny, metalloid winner.

  And what of Thölde and the possibly fictitious Valentine? No one really cared that the salt boiler/chemist was likely the true author of the texts. It seemed quite impossible that a fifteenth-century monk would have written the manuscript because “Valentine” referenced things that happened after his death. But the nauseating legacy of antimony was very real indeed.

  Everlasting Pills and Puke Chalices

  At the height of antimony’s popularity, it wasn’t enough to pop the occasional prescription. People had to possess accessories. Fashionable in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, cups were made out of antimony, fondly called pucula emetic or calicos vomitorii—basically some version of “puke chalice.” Combined with the acid in wine, the antimony from the cup would form “tartar emetic”—antimony potassium tartrate—and treat the cup holder to a good “healthy” vomit, or at least some diarrhea. One of the only remaining antimony cups is believed to have belonged to Captain James Cook, who may have taken it on his voyages around the world. But it wasn’t to be used lightly—if too much antimony leached into the wine, the resulting drink would be deadly. One such cup, purchased in London’s Gunpowder Alley in 1637 for 50 shillings, killed three people.

  To boot ’n’ rally, just add wine: antimony cup and
case, seventeenth century.

  Then there were antimony pills. Unlike our one-use pharmaceuticals today, these metal pills were heavy, and after passing through the bowels they were often relatively unchanged. They were dutifully retrieved from latrines, washed, and reused over and over again. Talk about recycling. The “everlasting pills” or “perpetual pills” were often lovingly handed down from generation to generation as an heirloom. Imagine reading that in someone’s last will and testament: “And to Jonathan, my beloved constipated son, I bequeath my poop pills.”

  And you thought Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper was special.

  Plenty of enterprising quack doctors got rich off the antimony craze. After curing King George II of a dislocated thumb, eighteenth-century physician Joshua Ward could do no wrong in the king’s eyes. Even though he had no medical background and a trifling knowledge of pharmaceuticals, Ward used his fame to amass a fortune. His signature medicines? Ward’s Pill and Ward’s Drop, which he claimed could cure every single human malady from gout to cancer. Too good to be true? Well, yes. They contained poisonous amounts of antimony. But everyone wanted Ward’s Pill and Drop in their cupboards. Ever the promotional whiz, he even colored the pills red, purple, or blue because artificial color makes everything better, like Jell-O. Unlike Jell-O, some of Ward’s formulations also contained arsenic. Ward did use his fortune to try and give back, even opening his own hospital. He ministered to the poor, which was quite good of him. Though he often gave them his pills—not so good of him.

  A Gag-Inducing Potpourri

  Emetics come in a range of forms, typically mineral or herbal. Here’s a rundown of some of history’s most infamous puke-enhancers.