Quack Doctor

Historical Remedies for All Your Ills

From the harangues of mountebanks to the dubious advertisements in Victorian newspapers, quackery sports a colorful history. Featuring entertaining advertisements from historical newspapers, this book investigates the inventive ways in which quack remedies were promoted – and whether the people who bought them should be written off as gullible after all. There's the Methodist minister and his museum of intestinal worms, the obesity cure that turned fat into sweat, and the device that brought the fresh air of Italy into British homes. The story of quack advertising is bawdy, gruesome, funny, and sometimes moving – and in this book it takes to the stage to promote itself as a fascinating part of the history of medicine.