The Abrams' Cult in Medicine

Abstract

LORD BACON wrote that the “weakness and credulity of men is such as they will often prefer a mountebank or witch before a learned physician.” Quacks have existed in all ages and have deluded all classes. So late as 1738 an ignorant and mercenary creature, Joanna Stephens, claimed to have discovered a remedy for dissolving urinary calculi in vivo. After extracting large sums of money from unfortunate sufferers, she offered to sell her remedy to the British nation for 5000?., and her claims were supported by the Bishops of Oxford, Gloucester, and Salisbury, and by the Dukes or Duchesses of Rutland, Leeds, Richmond, Portland, and Gordon. A commission was appointed to consider her claims, and it included such honoured names as Stephen Hales, F.R.S.; William Cheselden, the inventor of the operation of lateral lithotomy; and Sir Caesar Hawkins, F.R.S., Sergeant-Surgeon to Kings George II. and III. On the recommendation of the commission, an Act of Parliament was passed, and the nation handed over 5000l. for the recipe for the secret solvent. When Joanna disclosed the nature of her remedies they were found to consist of a powder of egg-shells and snails, and of pills which contained snails, wild carrot seeds, hips and haws, soap and honey.