PART II. (continued 2)

Nor has the spirit of adulteration allowed even the accredited patent or quack medicines to escape its ingenuity. Dr. James’s Fever Powders, and Norris’s Fever Drops, besides a variety of other popular receipts, are to be obtained in all possible degrees of strength and flavours from the various venders and manufacturers of the articles.

Even the simple articles arrow-root, worm-seed, Spanish liquorice, lemon acid, soda water, lozenges, honey, spermaceti, and a long list of other commodities in general use, receive the benefit of the sophisticators’ ingenuity.

The greater part of the commodity sold under the name of arrow-root in the shops of the druggists and grocers is prepared from the fecula or starch of wheat and of dry mealy potatoes, with a portion of arrow-root. When good, the grains of arrow-root are very fine, with numbers of little clots which are formed by the aggregation of the minuter grains while the commodity is drying, and when examined by a magnifying glass appear pearly and very brilliant.

The seeds of the tansy are often offered for sale, for worm-seed; but the more conscientious dealer sometimes treats his customers with an equal portion of the genuine and the adulterated article.

The Spanish liquorice juice of the shops is generally composed of the worst kind of gum arabic, called Indian or Barbary gum, and imported chiefly for the purpose of making shoe-blacking, with a small portion of the genuine juice; and the factitious composition, when inspissated, is formed into rolls, resembling the genuine article imported from Catalonia, nicely sprinkled or stratified with particles of dry bay-leaves, and skilfully impressed with the word “Solaz,” in the true cast of Spanish engraving. Refined liquorice is frequently manufactured from Spanish juice, with an equal quantity of carpenters’ glue or starch. The specimens of genuine juice are generally small, perfectly black, brittle, and break with a smooth and glassy fracture. They are also soluble either in the mouth or in water, without leaving any residue.

The lemon acid of commerce is, as I have before said, a counterfeit; tartareous acid being employed as a cheap substitute for lemon or citric acid.

The soda-water on general sale is frequently contaminated with copper and lead, produced from the action of the carbonic acid contained in the water on the metallic substances of which the apparatus in which it is made is constructed.

The lozenges of all varieties, hues, flavours, and qualities, particularly those in the composition of which ginger, cream of tartar, magnesia, &c. are used, are sophisticated with a liberal portion of pipe-clay, as a cheap substitution for sugar; but this fraud is readily detected by laying one of the suspected lozenges on the pan of a fire shovel or sheet of iron made red-hot; when, if it be pure, it will readily take fire and be consumed, but if it be adulterated, it will burn feebly, and a hard strong substance will remain, resembling the lozenge in form.

It is well known that but little genuine honey can be obtained in London. The tests of good honey are its fragrance and sweetness. When it is suspected to be adulterated with starch or bean flour, the fraud may be discovered by dissolving the honey in cold water, when the flour will be readily seen, as it will not dissolve, but falls to the bottom of the vessel in powder. If honey thus adulterated be exposed to heat, it soon solidifies and becomes tenacious.

Honey is of three kinds; the first, called virgin honey, and which is of the finest flavour, is of a whitish cast, and in a fluid state, about the consistence of a syrup. The second is that known by the name of white honey, and its texture is almost solid. The third kind is the common yellow honey, obtained from the combs, by heating them over the fire, or by dipping them into hot water, and then pressing them.

Manna is sometimes counterfeited by a composition of sugar and honey, mixed with a small portion of scammony.

The adulteration of spermaceti is generally effected with wax; but the fraud may be detected by the smell of the adulterating ingredient, and by the dulness of the colour; whereas pure spermaceti is of a semitransparent crystalline appearance. It is also said that a preparation of the oil obtained from the tail of the whale is likewise vended for genuine spermaceti; but, as this factitious commodity assumes a yellow shade when exposed to the air, this imposition is also of easy detection.

The adulteration of the essential oils obtained from the more expensive spices is so common, that, as Mr. Accum says, “it is not easy to meet with any that are fit for use,” and so much subtle ingenuity is made use of in the sophistications, that no known tests or agents exist for the detection of the fraud. The only certain tests are the taste or flavour, and the smell.

It is worth while to attend to the plausible excuses of the respective “artists” of these sophistications. They allege that they are obliged to have recourse to the fraud, to meet the fancies “of those clever persons in their own conceit who are fond of haggling, and insist on buying better bargains than other people, shutting their eyes to the defects of an article, so that they can enjoy the delight of getting it cheap; and secondly, for those persons, who being but bad paymasters, yet as the manufacturer, for his own credit-sake, cannot charge more than the usual price of the articles, he thinks himself therefore authorized to adulterate it in value, to make up for the risk he runs, and the long credit he gives;”—they therefore are reduced to the necessity of keeping, as they term it, “reduced articles,” and genuine ones. This is excellent logic, and no doubt well understood by the whole sophisticating tribe. The public are indebted to Dr. T. Lloyd for this information, which he communicated to the Literary Gazette, No. 146.

The ready methods or tests for ascertaining the good qualities of the most common drugs are:

Castor-oil, when good, is of a light amber or straw colour, inclining to a greenish cast. That which has the least smell, taste, and colour, is considered the mildest. The necessity of some attention to these signs may appear, when I state that I once took seven ounces of this oil in successive doses, and do verily believe that I might have continued to this present hour taking, daily, the usual dose furnished from the same quarter, with as little effect, had not my good genius directed me to send for an ounce from Apothecaries’ Hall. I recommend my readers to purchase their drugs, &c. in the same place.

Ipecacuanha.—As this drug is sold to the public in a pulverized state, there is no short or off-hand test for discovering its purity. It is adulterated with emetic tartar.

Opium.—Good opium in a concrete state should be of a blackish brown colour, of a strong fetid smell, a hard viscous texture, and heavy; and when rubbed between the finger and thumb, it is perfectly free from roughness or grittiness. This drug is liable to great adulteration, being frequently vitiated with cow-dung, or a powder composed of the dry leaves and stalks of the poppy, the gum of the mimosa, meal and other substances. The flavour alone indicates the goodness of opium in a liquid state.

Rhubarb.—The marks of the goodness of rhubarb are the liveliness of its colour when cut; its being firm, dry, and solid, but not flinty or hard; its being easily pulverizable, and appearing, when powdered, of a fine bright yellow colour; and its imparting to the spittle, when chewed, a deep saffron-colour, and not proving slimy or mucilaginous to the taste. When rhubarb has become worm-eaten, druggist-ingenuity is called into play, by filling up the holes with a paste made of rhubarb-powder and mucilage; and then the physic-artists roll the mended pieces in the finest rhubarb powder to give their handy works a good colour and an appearance of freshness.

Senna leaves are frequently mixed and sophisticated with leaves of argol, box leaves, &c.

But among the frauds and impositions practised on the public, none are more odious and unprincipled, and, at the same time, more loudly call for the prompt and active interference of the Legislature, than the tricks and effrontery of impostors, quacks, and empirics in medicine, both regular and irregular. It cannot but have been the frequent subject of regret to every honest and reflecting person that this vile trade should receive a legal sanction and protection, which it most assuredly does by virtue of the stamp duty imposed on the villainous trash; and it cannot be sufficiently deplored that any government should find itself reduced to straits so deplorable, or be so short-sighted in its views of enlightened policy, as to be under the necessity of extracting a paltry and disgraceful profit to the revenue of the state, from the tolerance and encouragement of ignorance, imposture, and mischief.

The assertion is true, that those pests of society the charlatans and nostrum-mongers “quarter” themselves only on the ignorance and credulity of mankind, and that their patrons and supporters are wealthy but ignorant men, and superstitious old women, or profligate and thoughtless rakes; but this is a miserable excuse, and but lame kind of reasoning: if it means any thing, it proves the necessity of public protection from the abominable and anti-christian nuisance. Can there be greater libel on the utility and operation of English law, than that vermin of the description of the “Balsam of Rackasiri” empirics[M] should be tolerated and allowed to spread their mischief and destruction among the population of a country professing Christianity and civilization, and forsooth, to boast of “the thousands they pay yearly to the government and the public press,” in the form of duty to the one for its sanction and licence, and to the other in the form of remuneration for giving a disgraceful and destructive publicity to their nefarious designs.[N]

Nor is the absence of a proper discrimination between right and wrong of a certain prating brazen-faced

“barrister” less reprehensible. I love and venerate “the Bar;” but I must be free to say that when a man can be found so devoid of just and proper feeling as to appear, for the paltry remuneration of a few pounds, or for any remuneration however large, in the defence and propagation of naked and disgusting fraud and peculation—aye, and the secret and wide-spreading destruction of health and life too!—it evidently proves that there are some members of that distinguished profession who are not possessed of the high and honourable feelings which belong to those who are gentlemen by birth and breeding, scholars by education, and Christians and honourable men from moral and religious feeling. But it is to be hoped that there will never occur again a similar exhibition to that which took place at Marlborough-street on the infamous Rackasiri-balsam fraud, practised on Miss May, by “the learned graduates of Petticoat-lane,” and “regularly bred physicians,” the Jew pedlars and old clothesmen “of wonderful abilities,” the “Doctors” C. and J. Jordan; who “feel awkwardness in recommending to public notice their uncommon discoveries and talents.” The more I consider that transaction, the more I am satisfied that the magistrates are to blame for having allowed the piece of impudent effrontery and imposture to have had the semblance of their sanction, by their singular taciturnity which happened on that occasion. Of the newspapers which gave currency and circulation to the artful and fiend-like exculpation, language will not afford terms strong enough to express one’s abhorrence and indignation. O shame! where is thy blush? How much human misery and destruction has the insertion of those disgraceful and wicked puffs occasioned, by inducing the weak and credulous to give credit to that as a piece of intelligence coming from editors of accredited and impartial journals, which is merely the contrivance and fabrication of wicked impostors to delude and ensnare the thoughtless and unsuspecting; and for the giving of its mischievous publicity, the proprietors and editors of certain newspapers received large sums of money. But let those thoughtless men reflect, that it is the very consummation of cruelty and unprincipled conduct to sanction the infamous tampering with the lives and happiness of one’s fellow creatures for the mere sake of lucre. Nor is the conduct of the magistrates of certain police offices (particularly those to whom the jurisdiction of the city of London is entrusted) less reprehensible, and less fraught with mischievous consequences. What! ought the frauds and murderous designs of the basest miscreants alive to receive the solemn and imposing sanction and authority of an oath made before a judicial tribunal? Surely a grosser violation of duty and a more stupid and reckless indifference to the destruction of human health and life, were never, in the most barbarous country, and the most uncivilized age, exhibited, than the want of sense and foresight displayed by some city-magistrates in allowing affidavits to be made before them of the “wonderful cures” performed on the deluded and perjured agents and “stalking horses” of the empirics and impostors; but, fortunately for mankind, the culpable act will ever remain on record as a stigma and reproach of city-legislation and moral economy. The trade of legalized poisoning and destruction of public health has received greater and more effectual help and recommendation from that source than from all the arts and devices of the impostors, though aided by the sanction of a government duty, and the disgusting and unprincipled puffs and paragraphs of a certain portion of the public press. To put an end to these culpable and mischievous proceedings, either on the part of magistrates or of editors of newspapers, in future, I wish those gentlemen to bear in mind that their “misdoings” shall entitle them to a “niche and an escutcheon of immortality” in the pages of “Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked;”

and that no threats or intimidations of “actions” and “reparations due to the wounded feelings of gentlemen,” shall deter me from my duty. If I should offend, of course the courts of justice are open to every injured man, and he will most assuredly receive his due measure of justice there; but should I give that offence for which the “law of the land” affords no redress, the man of honourable feelings and conduct shall never have to complain of my backwardness to give a most prompt and satisfactory reparation; but, at the same time, I wish that those who have been privy, whether by overt or covert acts—whether from their love of “filthy lucre,” or their natural propensity to fraud—to the destruction of the lives or health of their fellow-creatures, to recollect that I shall be prepared to treat them with the scorn and contempt which their conduct and their misdeeds may merit.

It has been well said that it is not easy to determine whether the fraud and impudence of the empiric or nostrum-monger, or the folly and credulity of the sufferer, are the greater. But the fact is that quacks and impostors of all kinds, whether medical or political, pædagoguecal or corporational, live and thrive on the infernal popish maxim, that ignorance is the mother of devotion, that is, in plainer phrase—of gullibility. But to the case of the quacks.—It surely indicates no ordinary share of dupery, to believe that one and the same nostrum can cure all and every disorder contained in the long catalogue of human woes and miseries; such a belief must incline the victim of its hallucination to suppose an exact similarity of symptoms and a perfect identity of nature in all the disorders to which the frailty of our common nature has rendered us subject. On this momentous subject few persons have written more forcibly than the admirable author of the “Manual for Invalids.” May the following quotation from that valuable work awaken the attention of those who foolishly confide their health and lives to the care of quacks, nostrum-mongers, jugglers, and impostors![O]

“Where dwells the boasted march of intellect when the understanding is continually insulted with the most impudent and daring pretensions of impostors, who, while they pretend to restore your health, are making a direct attack upon your credulity and your purse. What encouragement exists for the well educated men, regular graduates of Universities, of high classical and literary attainments, who have chosen the profession of medicine or surgery as a business of life, and in order to practice with credit and character, have directed their attention, their time, and their property to its studies,—who have made the nature of diseases and the efficacy of remedies a study of life—when they find themselves completely superseded by some inspired pretender—some ignorant quack. Lord Bacon has long since said, in his work on the advancement of learning, ‘If the same honours and rewards are given to fools, which ought to be awarded to the wise, who will labour to be wise?’ That the ignorant pretender should be encouraged by the public, is a reproach to the understanding of any people; but that the revenue of any country should be supplied by a stamp duty[P] on empirical nostrums, instead of the government taking measures either of prevention or punishment, can only be explained by exhibiting similar acts of atrocity on the sentiments of nature; but the truth is, the auri sacra fames has the power of making that appear relatively right, which is absolutely wrong.”[Q]

“Beware of hypocrisy of every description,” adds the same excellent writer; “you may as well believe that the Pope can send you to perdition, as that an advertising charlatan can, by any empirical nostrum, restore you to health.”

But, unhappily, it appears that poor John Bull and “his hopeful family” are not gifted with the power of being “beware of hypocrisy,” “advertising charlatans” and “empirical nostrums;” but that through their proneness to gullibility and the love of the marvellous, the trade of quackery is daily increasing, and that hundreds of quacks swarm in every quarter of the metropolis, and fatten on the murders which they are constantly perpetrating with their poisons; and to add to the monstrous combination against the lives and health of the community, that the aid of even the pulpit is invoked to further the propagation of the imposture! Instances are on record where mercenary preachers have been wicked enough to sermonize and expatiate on the miraculous virtues and benefits of the poisonous nostrums[R] and remedies of the mountebank jugglers and impostors.

But humbug and imposture, as it has been truly said, is a many-headed monster, and is of very catching influence; it has worshippers at the corner of every street; hordes of the most ignorant vagabonds and jugglers are engaged in its propagation, and announce their impostures as “prepared and sanctioned by His Majesty’s august authority;” but to waste my pages with the mention of the “ladies’ fever” doctors Lamert, Peede, Davis, Eady, Caton, Courtenay, (alias Messrs. Currie and Co.) Fiedeberg (alias Sloane and Co. alias Jones and Co.);—the surreptitious knights, His Carpentership, Sir Gully Daniels, and his Plastership, White Arsenic Sir Cancer Aldis;—the firm of Goss and Company, the consulting Surgeons of Ægis and Hygeiene notoriety;—the miniature painter, “the learned and celebrated” artful artist and curer of consumption, Long St. Long,—the crazy chap who entitles himself the “hygeist”[S]—Taylor and Son, the Leake’s pill-men,—Samuel, the syphilis-pill-man,—the old canting staymaker and life-guardsman, Gardner, who can manufacture tape-worms wholesale and of a league in length from the intestines of cats and chickens,—the piddle-taster, or morning water-doctor, Cameron (alias Crumples,) as also all other quacks, whether of the masculine or feminine gender, who cure by proxy, or by simply pronouncing that the disease shall be cured, (for there have been impostors impudent enough to make such pretensions;) or by any art or delusion, and who by chalk, chuckling, and chicanery are battening on the vitals of society, would be an insult to the understanding of my readers, further than to say that each of those worthies, as well as their honourable compeers the balsam of Rackasiri vagabonds and impostors, can, no doubt, recognize the reality of their deeds in the following quotation from the pages of Hudibras:

Perhaps a few words said on the subject of the former occupations of some of the mountebank impostors, who are practising, and have practised their frauds and villanies on the community, may tend to open the eyes of this very gullable nation as to the extent and quality of their medical knowledge, unless it should be supposed that they acquired it by miraculous inspiration or divine influence, to which high pretensions, indeed, many of the vermin have had the audacity to lay claim, well knowing that the bolder their assertions were, the more gullable they would find their ninny patients.

Know then that the “groundly learned physicians” —“of superior skill and judgement”—high character and situation,” the Doctors Mordecai J. and C. Jordan, were Jew pedlars; (and here, reader, recollect that more than one half of the mountebanks and impostors who have gulled and laughed at our gullable nation, are or were circumcised Jews, either of native or of foreign breed;)—the renowned Doctor Eady, of cyprianic memory, and who owed his reputation to the joint exertions and recommendation of the saints of Providence Chapel, and the coal-heaving-preaching-and-praying-sinner-saved Huntingdon, was a bumpkin haberdasher and retailer of small wares in an obscure country village;—Monsieur John St. John Long, the celebrated curer of consumption, was a dauber in the miniature-line;—the once celebrated, and now warmly nestled and scoffing Doctors Brodum and Solomon were, by turns, porters either in a drug warehouse or Jew pedlars; the canting worm manufacturer in Long Acre was a staymaker and life-guardsman;—Yankee noodle do Whitlaw and Don celestial Graham filled the honourable posts of a day labourer and tom-fool to a strolling company of players;—and many of the by-gone mountebank vagabonds were cobblers, tailors, weavers, footmen, blacking-makers, cat’s-meat men, &c. &c. &c.: but they all, during their tremulous career of iniquity and canting,

The sanction and encouragement given to quacks and quackery in this country have long and loudly been stigmatized by foreign writers as a national opprobrium to Britain; and it must be allowed very justly. The increase of these vermin and pests of society has long been a disgrace to the legislature and government of the country. “They manage these things,” as Sterne says, “better in France.” How careful our neighbours are of the health of their community may be gleaned from the following paper lately read before the Royal Academy of Medicine, at Paris:—

“1st. That for several centuries, by the vigilance of the administration, in concert with the most distinguished medical men, the strongest efforts have been made to rid society of the pestilence constantly springing up from secret remedies. 2dly. That the most favourable circumstances are at present combined to free them from the tribute of money and life, which, on no consideration, ought longer to be tolerated.”

It is to be hoped that our government will be influenced by like motives and follow the glorious example of our neighbours. If they want precedent,—the great bugbear of improvement either in morals, politics, law, religion, or even common sense, in our error-ridden nation, history furnishes us with sufficient examples. But, while those methods and laws are being planned and prepared, let us, in the mean time, resort to the good old practices of correcting and punishing the jugglers of the present day.

In the reign of Edward VI. one Gregg, a poulterer, in Surrey, was set in the pillory at Croydon, and again in the Borough of Southwark, during the time of the fair, for cheating people out of their money, for pretending to cure them with charms, by only looking at the patient, and examining his water. In the reign of James I., an order of council, founded on the statute of Henry, granted to the College of Physicians, was issued to the magistrates of the city of London, for the apprehension of all reputed empirics, to bring them before the censors of the College, in order to their being examined as to their qualifications to be trusted either with the lives or limbs of the subject. On that occasion several mountebanks, (among others, Lamb, Read, and Woodhouse,) water casters, ague charmers, and nostrum venders, were fined, imprisoned, and banished. This wholesome severity, it may be supposed, checked the evil for a time; but in the reign of William III. it became again necessary to put the laws in force against those vermin; in consequence of which many of them were examined, and confessed their utter ignorance even of reading and writing. Some of the miscreants were set in the pillory, and some were put on horse-back with their faces towards the horses’ tails, whipped, branded, and banished.

In Stowe’s Annals is to be found an account of a water caster being set on horse-back, his face towards the horse’s tail, which he held in his hand, with his neck decked with a collar of urinals, and being led by the hangman through the city, was whipped, branded, and afterwards banished. One Fairfax, in king William’s time was fined and imprisoned for doing great damage to several people, by his aqua celestis. Antony, for his aurum potabile; Arthur Dee, for advertising remedies which he gave out would cure all diseases; Foster, for selling a powder for the green-sickness; Tenant, a water doctor, who sold his pills for 6l. each; Ayres, for selling purging sugar plumbs; Hunt, for putting up bills in the streets[T] for the cure of diseases; and many others, were all punished, and compelled to relinquish their malpractices.

But it is not only the interloping quack—the irregular and illegitimate charlatan and self-dubbed doctor that does mischief and destroys the health of the public, but the “regular” and legitimate pretender to medical knowledge, or as they have been significantly and appropriately termed by Dr. Morrison, the “roturiers,” or dabblers in physic, often do not much less mischief. The following extract from the Manual for Invalids is so much to the purpose, that the wider its circulation can be promoted, the greater good will be produced to society at large.

“In the restoration of health, the poor often try the efficacy of the wine vaults and the medical wisdom of the druggist, who flourishes greatly in low neighbourhoods, in the metropolis, and even in some large provincial towns. These men, whose solitary qualification for this honest mode of existence has been commonly an apprenticeship behind the counter, have often placed in imminent peril many a valuable life. Sometimes it has occurred that a shrewd boy, employed to clean bottles and sweep out the shop, has received an intuitive call, and has felt himself fully qualified for the important office of recovering and regulating the health of many invalids. The writer has a knowledge of a general practitioner of this description who was received behind a druggist’s counter in the manner before related, and perhaps, learning audacity from his late employer, has obtained, through the medium of puffing friends, a surreptitious reputation, and is cried up by those worthies as a very skilful, even a “delightful” and “fine” man, particularly for nervous invalids, and more especially for the disorders of women and children.”

Thousands and thousands of the population of this blessedly gifted country in medical science, are killed by this disgraceful quackery of the drug-shop, and the iniquitous drug-jobbing of apothecaries. What murders, what numerous murders have those men to answer for by their careless and injudicious use of powerful medicines—calomel and opium! But perhaps they console their unfeeling and selfish hearts with the miserable subterfuge that they are merely removing that portion of the increasing population which is the great bugbear, that is hourly threatening to eat up Mr. Parson Malthus and his believing disciples by wholesale.

But the prescribing druggist, the drugging apothecary, and the soi-disant surgeon are not the only regular and legitimate quacks; we have quack physicians, who by the remittance of the enormous sum of £15 to a Scotch university are entitled, legally and professionally, to tack the wonder-working cabalistical initials M.D. to their names, and are then entitled to kill the king’s liege and loving subjects, “secundum artem,” with licensed and legitimate potion, pill, and draught; who to return obligations to their “pals” the apothecary and surgeon, prescribe draughts by the quart and the gallon—bleeding, blistering, and purging, ad infinitum. By these mystified and jabbering doctors, whose little-or-no wisdom consists in foolish words of little or no meaning, and dog Latin, or disputes about precedence and the receipt of fees, the laws of vital existence and the astonishing functions of the animal economy, are understood by hearsay and inspiration!

This statement of the general ignorance of the medical profession is not exaggerated. “Five sixths of the medical profession,” says Dr. Morrison, in Medicine No Mystery, “know little or nothing of the science of life.” The cause of this lamentable ignorance arises from the abominable and disgraceful system of medical education in vogue, according to which the bought and sale prices of the current drugs, and the art and mystery of dispensing medicines often constitute the whole and sole knowledge of those who are entrusted with the health and lives of their fellow-creatures; in whose bungling and self-interested practice hearsay and precedent supply the place of experience, and by whom signs and symptoms are mistaken for causes. Another cause is the deplorable deficiency of the public in the knowledge of medicine. Were the principles of medical science to form a part of general education, the public would be enabled to select well educated and honest medical men, and escape the fangs and delusions and murderous acts of quacks and impostors, whether interlopers, or those who are enrolled in one or other of the medical institutions of London. It really seems an anomaly in the pursuit and attainment of knowledge that a man should conceive it necessary to be able to judge whether his shoe or his cravat is made in a good and workman-like manner, but of that science which treats of himself, and with which his health, his life, and all his comforts are so intimately and seriously connected, he should be in the most abject state of ignorance, and, unhappily, not hesitate to avow that ignorance! But while it is an incontrovertible truth that the community in general should have some knowledge of medicine, in order to enable them to judge of the qualifications of their medical attendants, (to the attainment of which knowledge popular medical writings, such as Dr. Kitchener’s Art of Invigorating Life; Sir John Sinclair’s Code of Health and Longevity, Dr. Reece’s Medical Guide, and the Oracle of Health and Long Life, or Plain Rules for the Preservation and Attainment of Sound Health and Vigorous Old Age, and a few others, are calculated to afford the most effectual help;) it must be deeply regretted by every well disposed member of society, to observe books got up by rash and inexperienced persons, professing to give directions for the management of health, which are filled with the crudest and the falsest instructions, the nature and consequence of which are decidedly destructive of health, if not of life itself. And what must add to that regret, is that the title-page and covers should be blazoned with the professed sanction and recommendation of a late eminent medical practitioner. But surely that gentleman could never have read, among many other dangerous fooleries and extravagancies, the silly and monstrous instructions to sleep with open windows, to swallow as much salt as possible, &c. &c. &c. or if he did read them, it is but an act of courteous feeling towards him to suppose that he did not comprehend their purport. Another circumstance deserving reprobation respecting the means which have been taken to get that ill-judged little book into circulation has been the profuse and repeated attempts of a portion of the public press to give it notoriety and circulation. It certainly savours a little of presumption, that those who have not made the science of medicine a study or a profession, should venture to give opinions of the merits or demerits of a work professing to treat of the momentous subjects of health and life. These remarks are not made in any petulant feeling. I believe the author to be a well-intentioned though a misguided man, and as he hints that he published his work with the hope of adding to his income from the profits, I sincerely wish that he had chosen a subject for which he may be more competent, as then I should have been relieved from the necessity of making these remarks, in the expression of which a sense of public duty has alone actuated me. It gives me, however, great satisfaction to draw the public attention to the masterly abstract of Cornaro’s Treatise appended to the book, and which, from its disparity of style, is evidently written by another person. It is no extravagant praise to say that the public is under infinite obligations to the able and experienced writer who made that valuable addition to the book. Comaro’s works may now be read with advantage by every one, as it is freed from the disagreeable prosings, tautologies, and incongruities which pervade that work. It is to be hoped that the proprietor of the book will favour the community with its publication in a separate form.

Considering the severity of the remarks I have made in the preceding pages on the medical profession, it may be supposed I have set myself up in opposition to medical men of all descriptions. I have no such intention. The intelligent and skilful physician and surgeon I reverence, and only wish that the following observations were not a true portrait of their often unsuccessful progress.

It is certain no body of men can produce more noble instances of integrity, liberality of mind, and strength of intellect, than the Professors of Physic; but, as with other bodies of men, this high character will not apply diffusedly. To find, therefore, a fit person with whom to intrust our health, is not an easy matter. Fortunately, however, for the profession, people are not very fastidious on this point; and if they or their friends are but sent to the grave in a regular way, they bear the load of ills which their own follies and the ignorance of the practitioner may have heaped upon them, with great philosophy, imputing the whole to the natural order of things. Indeed, to judge of the merits of a medical man is extremely difficult; and, when we see one man ordering away, with contempt, the medicine which another has thought a specific, and pursuing a totally different course, we are forced to conclude that education alone will not make a physician. Reputation is not unfrequently got without merit, for who is to judge? Accident, solely, both with the drug and the doctor, has often been the maker of their fame. This may be exemplified by an anecdote of a deservedly eminent physician, which, though perhaps it has been often related, is not less to the point. The doctor happened to be sent for one evening, after having indulged at a convivial meeting, so that by the time he had been whirled to his patient’s door, he was very ill qualified to decide in a case of difficulty. Having made shift to reach the drawing room, and seeing a lady extended on a sofa, assisted by a female attendant, he, by a sort of mechanical impulse, seized her hand; but finding himself utterly unable to form an opinion on the case, he exclaimed, “D—— d drunk, by G—d!” (meaning that he was in that unfit state) and immediately made the best retreat he was able. Feeling rather awkwardly at this adventure, he was not impatient to renew his visit; but being sent for on some other occasion, he took courage, and was preparing an apology, when the lady presently removed his apprehensions, by whispering these words in his ear—“My dear doctor, how could you find out my case so immediately the other evening?—It was certainly a proof of your skill, but for God’s sake not a word more on that subject.” Thus, the doctor added to his repute by a circumstance which might have endangered that of a less fortunate man. This, though a ludicrous event, may serve, as well as a graver one, to elucidate the fact that many owe their celebrity, not so much to any judgement of their own, as to a want of it in others. As it is with other professions, so it is with physic. Many of its professors possessing great skill are doomed to pass their lives in obscurity, whilst they see others, of inferior knowledge and judgement, rise to importance. It has been truly said by one who was not unacquainted with the causes of medical success or failure, that, “Even among the regularly bred physicians accident will often accomplish what merit strives for in vain; and those coincidences of circumstances which frequently elevate one man and depress another in the medical art, are more the production of what is called chance, than from any extension of mind, or any peculiar tact or skill in the art of intellectual combinations.”

SECTION IX. COALS.

There are few trades in which greater frauds are practised than in “the coal trade.” The dealers in the “black diamonds” are versed in all the allowable legerdemain and trickery of “auld England’s honest tradesmen:” the most skilfully initiated in the art of sleight-of-hand would find himself at fault in attempting to rival the dexterity of the true “son of the coalshed,” under the old régime of measuring, in ingeniously tossing his “spadefuls” into the measure so as to enable “the darlings” to lie lightly and “go far,” and assume the form of a solid cone, while the hollow cavity within proved as treacherous to any one treading on its “well raised summit,” as if he had put his foot on the surface of a quagmire. Nor was the well-fed, gaily clothed, richly lodged coal-merchant, with his “extensive concerns” to be easily “out-done” in well devised craft and contrivance: nicely pinched sacks, not foolishly flapping inwards so as to betray the precise amount of their contents,—well planned deliveries, either so early in the morning that the heads of the family might prefer the arms of Morpheus to the hazard of being choked with volumes of coal dust, or so late in the evening, that there might be a possibility of their being engaged in the “solid recreation” of their dinner, were a few of the demonstrations of generalship frequently exhibited by this portion of “the monied interest” and “great capitalists of the nation.”

But to come to the point in hand. An honest writer on the subject, Mr. Eddington, in his Treatise on the Coal Trade, p. 94, informs us that the keeper of a coalshed felt himself dissatisfied with his measure, if in doling out his article to his poor, half-starved, shivering neighbours, in pecks, half pecks, or bushels, he could not measure out at the rate of forty-two bushels from every chaldron of thirty-six bushels; without taking into consideration the gain to be obtained from vending the inferior coal, and the consequent increase of quantity by throwing a few bushels of sifted ashes, pieces of stone, bones, or any other commodity which will assume a black form after having been well rummaged among the heap of coals.

Another great source of unfair profit arising to the vender of coals is the “Macadamizing” of them, and like true “nursing fathers” carefully and sedulously giving them their due quantum of moisture. For under the old régime of measuring, the cunning varlets knew full well that by the greater number of angular points that they were able to produce, they filled their measure with the least possible quantity of coals. This paternal fulfilment of the command “to increase and multiply” they still piously and faithfully observe, as the greater progeny of small bits and dust that they can produce from a lonely and solitary lump, the more they will be able to increase the weight by their considerate and frequently repeated waterings and drenchings. Accordingly they set their shoulders to the work, and patriotically and radically proscribe every rebellious lump in their shed, by smashing it into as many figures as possible, often exceeding in number the ever varying mutations of the kaleidoscope, or Orator Hunt’s two hundred thousand unity tales. Nor are their “betters” “the merchants” less skilled in the art. Those considerate and sharp-sighted gentry, foreseeing that the large masses and blocks which are delivered out of the ships into their barges, round as they came from the mine, would be an inconvenience to their customers, and probable tumble on some fair and delicate damsel’s toes, kindly set to work, and smash away; so that when the round coals of every chamber, containing the ingrain of five chaldron and a half, have undergone the process of their friendly thumpings and republican equalization, they will measure out again from six to six and a half chaldrons. The increase by breakage appears by the following statement from Dr. Hutton’s Mathematical Dictionary: “If one coal measuring exactly a cubic yard (nearly equal to five bolls) be broken into pieces of a moderate size, it will measure seven bolls and a half; if broken very small, it will measure nine bolls.”

And even after the coals have gone through the conjuring process of being increased in bulk by the aforesaid smashing or Macadamising art, and have reached their destination at the wharf, the ingenuity of “the monied interest” and “the great capitalists” is still at work. Careful that the purchaser may not be put to the trouble of wetting his coals to make them cake and burn well, those considerate and obliging gentlemen relieve him from the task by scientifically wetting the commodity; and as a reward for their well intentioned and meritorious labours they generally contrive to produce, as Mr. Eddington informs us, “from six to six and a quarter, or even six and a half, chaldrons from each room,” containing five and a half chaldron of smashed or “macadamized” coals. A correspondent to the World newspaper for September, 1829, who signs himself a Coal Merchant, says that instances are on record where eighty and even ninety sacks have been measured out of a room of coals!

According to the new régime of weighing, (which has already proved one of the most deceitful hoaxes that ignorance and cupidity ever contrived against the interests of the poor,) the quantity is increased in a like proportion in favour of the coal dealer.

Another hint or two on this matter may be of some service to thee, friend Bull. Always recollect, John, in the purchase of your coals, that you pay attention to the season of the year; for there is with every article a cheap season and a dear one, and with none more than with coals: by purchasing at the proper season, often from twenty to thirty per cent. are saved. The method of purchasing should always be considered; for by purchasing a room of coals, which is called pool measure, two fourths of a chaldron is often obtained in every five chaldrons; for a room of coals contains in general from sixty-three to sixty-eight sacks. Therefore, where the quantity is too much for the consumption of one family, two or more should join together in the purchase.

But the legislature, that is, “the collective wisdom of the nation,” aware of thy disposition to gullibility, has, John, taken thy affair of coals into its paternal and law-making consideration, and has made some regulations, as to the possibility of thy receiving “good and lawful” weight. They are as follow:—To ensure lawful weight to the purchaser, and prevent frauds in the sale and delivery of coals, the vender of all coals exceeding 560lbs. is to cause the carman to deliver a paper or ticket to the purchaser before he shoots any of the coals out of his cart or waggon, specifying the number of tons, the description of the coals, and the weight of the sack. And a weighing machine is to be carried in such cart or waggon, with which the carman is directed to weigh gratis the coals contained in any one or more of the sacks which the purchaser or his servant may require to be so reweighed. But no ticket is necessary to be delivered with coals purchased at the “Coal Market,” or with coals exceeding 560lbs. purchased in bulk from any vessel or wharf, if purchasers do not require a ticket. The seller of the coals not sending a ticket and a weighing machine with the coals, and the carman not delivering the ticket, or neglecting or refusing to weigh the coals, are subject to distinct penalties.

No less than seventy-seven kinds of sea coal are brought to the London market; forty-five of which are imported from Newcastle, and the rest from Sunderland. The best of the Sunderland produce are Stewart’s main, Lambton’s main, and Hetley main, or as they are more generally termed in imitation of the old Russell Walls End, Stewart’s Walls End, &c. The Scotch and Staffordshire coals are inferior to the sea coal both in durability and the heat which they give, being about one-third less productive in those qualities than the Newcastle and Sunderland varieties.

The test of good coal depends on the burning, and the quantity of bitumen it affords in its combustion; and no bad signs of its inferiority are that it is dull, small, stony, or slaty. But the quality of coals is in a great measure determined by the weight; for there often occurs a difference of 30lbs. weight in two sacks of different qualities, though equally filled: largeness of size is no proper criterion, for the inferior coals are often of the largest size.

SECTION X. Painters’ Colours or Pigments, Hats, Broad Cloth, Kerseymeres, Linens, Laces, Cambrics, Silks, Jewellery, Stationary, &c.

The spirit of adulteration pursues poor John even into his domestic arrangements. Should he design to decorate his dwelling—“his neat suburban cottage”—and have the walls or wainscot of his drawing-room painted a delicate pink colour to rival the carnation tints of the cheek of his “cara sposa,” or those of his breakfast parlour, to imitate the lively blue of the bright eyes of his “lovely cherubs,” the vile sophisticators mar all his wishes, and he is able to obtain nothing else than dull and darkling daubs. In fewer words, he cannot obtain genuine colours wherewith to have his house painted. And this sophistication does not only extend to the common house-paints, (as where white lead is mixed with carbonate or sulphate of barytes; vermilion with red lead, and a long et-cetera;) but should honest John wish that his hopeful progeny may rival the Zeuxis or Apelles of antiquity, or confine his paternal longings to the more modern artists—a Reynolds, a Gainsborough, a Moreland, or a David,—he has the mortification of seeing his fond illusions dissipated by the adulterating manufacturers of ultramarine, carmine, lake, Antwerp blue, crome yellow, Indian ink, and all the other et-ceteras of artist-decoration.

The covering of even John’s sconce is not exempt from sophistication. In the room of the dear bought, far fetched beaver, the adulterators adorn John’s pate with a strange combination of wool and the homely and cheaply purchased fur of the rabbit and mole. This, it must be admitted, is cruel usage of the good old gentleman, and must, as the witty author of the Indicator says, bring to his mind an odd association of ideas, (namely, of cheatery and forgiveness,) in one of those communings with his hat’s lining, while, like a polite worshipper, he is whispering his preparatory ejaculations, before he turns round with due gravity and composure, and makes a bow of genteel recognition of the Mr. and Mrs A. and the Misses B. who have assembled in the pew before him.

Nor is he better treated by his clothier or man’s mercer. Not to mention the slight texture of the articles, and the substitution of inferior materials for the “best superfine Spanish” and the “super-extra Saxony,” the sly varlet artfully stitches the selvage of broad cloths, kerseymeres, and ladies’ “extra superfine,” dyed of a permanent colour, to the edge of cloth dyed with a fugative or fading dye; and this operation is performed with so much skill and nicety as to elude John’s most penetrating optics.

Neither are Mrs. Bull and her “lovely daughters” more exempt from the knaveries of the linen-draper, the dealers in laces, veils, silks, “Cashmere shawls,” French cambrics, and the other paraphernalia of the female wardrobe: they are all sophisticated, and often no more like the native article than “the moon is like green cheese.” Like “a true bred knight,” I shall not forget to furnish the female part of Mr. Bull’s family with the means and criteria for judging of the goodness of those commodities, in the work which, as I have before said, I have nearly ready for press. Nor shall I omit to take notice in the same publication, to give directions for the proper selection of the articles of furniture of the old gent’s house; such as feathers, blankets, carpets, &c. &c.

While gallantly professing my knight-errantry in the cause of Mrs. Bull and “her lovely daughters,” I find that I have made an unpardonable omission—not a word on laces and muslins! To propitiate their “kind consideration,” I hurry to supply the unpardonable omission. Let then every “lovely fair one” know that laces are now generally made from single cottons (instead of good double thread, as was formerly the case), and in order to make them look fine and clear, they are stiffened with starch, which occasions the delusive articles, as soon as they are washed, to fall to pieces. In some articles of lace, particularly veils, many of the springs and flowers are fastened on with gum, which, as soon as they are wetted, immediately fall off and betray the cheatery. Caps and other articles of female habiliments sold in the streets, are often united together in the most ingenious manner by means of gum or paste.

Muslins are not free from sophistication-ingenuity. Poor, thin, rough specimens are rendered stiff, high glazed, and thick with a quantum sufficit of pipe-clay, &c.; sometimes a paper-pulp is spread over the deteriorated article; and the fibres of the cotton which ought to be dressed off, are left in order to hold the composition put in.

Stockings are often rendered stiff and thick to the feet, by bleaching them with brimstone. And coarse woollen cloth receives the addition of large quantities of fuller’s-earth to give it body and closeness; while the right or pressed side is finished off with oil, in order to give the cloth a fine, soft, and smooth appearance. Never choose woollen cloth which is glossy and stiff.

“The frauds committed in the tanning of skins, and their conversion into leather; and in the manufacture of cutlery and jewellery,” says Mr. Accum, “exceed belief.” And I can assure my readers that that gentleman is not mistaken in his assertion; and, had he added that of cabinet wares and silver plate of all sorts, he would not have over-stepped the limits of truth. To those acquainted with the manufacture of silver goods, it is well known that you cannot always be sure that the various costly articles are of the legal standard with which Pride and Vanity, Luxury and Fashion, when they “set up for Gentry and Stylish people,” and have a desire for “shewing off,” gratify their whims and fantastic notions of gentility, and their ambition of “outplating and outdishing” their friends and neighbours. The prosecution instituted some years ago against a “legitimate” son of Crispin for the manufacture of shoes, the soles of which were ingeniously united to the welts by only six stitches in each shoe, while the external parts of the soles exhibited evident traces of a multiplicity of stitches rivalling the number of the stars of the firmament of the heavens in extent and variety, and their exact mathematical precision seemed to display the exertion of the genius of a Euclid, cannot have slipped the recollection of all my readers.

And to complete the climax of sophistication, even the paper on which John gives birth to his “winged words,” and expresses his indignant feelings at the extent and the audacity of the frauds and impositions practised on his good-nature and credulous disposition, is sophisticated. In the manufacture of paper, a large quantity of plaster of Paris is often mixed up with the paper-stuff, instead of its consisting of good linen rags only, and the foreign substance is added to increase the weight of the commodity. Nor is he, when, like ourselves, desirous of having his thoughts and discoveries rendered “enduring for ages,” (monumentum ære perennius,) by having them cast in stereotype, and thus “save a penny,” exempt from the designs and contrivances of sophistication;—the founder deceives him by casting his “words that breathe and thoughts that burn” in a metal as soft and ductile as lollipop. Thus honest Bull is circumvented in all his intents, and surprised and overpowered at every turn by the Genius of Sophistication.