I admit it, I too find it hard to have my Regency doctors administering blood letting. I have noticed this often becomes an anachronistic trope in contemporary Regency—the doctor who admits the junk science behind cupping.
But what were Regency contemporaries really calling out on the carpet as Quackery?
I have developed a short list of some of the bad medicine Regencies were starting to address:
- Cures for Consumption. Really, the folks here think anything promising to cure it is pretty Quack.
- Scrofula (tuberculosis) cured by getting touched by a King or Royal or a gold coin. (New Medical and Physical Journal, Or, Annals of Medicine, Natural …, Volume 9, William Shearman (1815))
- Mercury in large amounts “goes on to produce much greater debility than could be inferred from the slightness of the preceding mercurial fever”
- Cherry Laurel Water/Oil (usually an Italian medicine) “though it may derice its chief energy from prussic acid…at present much abused and ought to be followed with great caution.” (The Quarterly Journal of Foreign and British Medicine and Surgery (1822)
- Hot, enclosed and unaired confinement rooms to avoid draughts or chills of mothers. (http://www.janeausten.co.uk/developements-in-childbirth-in-regency-and-victorian-england/)
- Animal magnetism, as promoted by Mesmer…essentially rubbing down bits with magnets. By the Regency era, folks were still writing on this to stamp out magnets and other metallic like practices. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 1 – Page 564 (1817))
More on Quackery: http://www.historytoday.com/roy-porter/fringe-quack-medicine-georgian-england
More on Regency Doctors: http://main.thebeaumonde.com/archives/2392
