Cosmetic Surgery and Beauty Magazine #66

column
Quacks
of the
Eighteenth
Century
In his regular column
Dr Jim Leavesley examines
the history and origins of
different medical topics.
The golden age for medical quacks was the 18th
century, an era full of soothsayers, ladies bountiful,
seventh sons of seventh sons and peddlers of potion
and nostrums. Three of these latter gained immortality by
being depicted in William Hogarth’s famous 1736 etching,
The Company of Undertakers. Shown at the top of the
page opposite, it depicts a number of doctors, most shown
inhaling fragrance from the top of their trademark goldtopped
canes to ward of the stench from patients.
Surmounting all is a row of three of the best known
charlatans of the times. In the middle is Sarah Mapp, or
Crazy Sal, as she was affectionately known. Her rumpled
hat is set at a rakish angle above a defiant face dominated
by crossed eyes. She was a bone setter, as had been her
father before her; her sister, Polly Peecham, became the
Duchess of Bolton. Mrs Mapp settled in Epsom just out of
London and such was her fame the town actually paid her
100 guineas to stay there for a year to attract gullible and
well-heeled visitors. Twice weekly she drove into London in
a magnificent carriage to consult at the fashionable Grecian
Coffee House. She became the most acclaimed bone
setter of the day, though famed contemporary orthopaedic
surgeon Percival Pott did not hold back and called her ‘an
ignorant, illiterate, drunken female savage’. She gradually
lost favour and died in obscurity.
On Crazy Sal’s left in the etching is Joshua ‘Spot’ Ward.
He was known as Spot on account of a large birthmark
clearly seen on his face. He started life as a footman to
landed gentry, but left and went into business selling salt.
It failed so he turned his hand to faith healing, no training
needed, and manufacturing questionable pills. Nonetheless,
he developed a great reputation and following, including the
naval establishment to which he supplied his nostrums.
With his substantial earnings he eventually turned into a
respected philanthropist, helping to endow four London
Hospitals for the poor.
His greatest triumph was replacing George II’s dislocated
thumb after his regular doctors had diagnosed gout. This
gained him entry to the Royal Court and being congratulated
for his success by the newspapers of the day. More to the
point, it also gave him personal exemption from the College
of Physicians inspecting his medications.
The third quack in the picture on Mrs Mapp’s right is John
‘Chevalier’ Taylor who had a more formal medical education.
Son of a Norwich surgeon, he first became an apothecary’s
James Graham had taken
London by storm with his
“Temple of Hymen”, which he
set up in Pall Mall
assistant and then trained at the famous St Thomas’s
Hospital in London, later the training hospital for Florence
Nightingale. On leaving he travelled from fair to fair as an
itinerant ‘oculist’, then went to the Continent to gain proper
medical degrees at Basel and Cologne, returning in 1736
to England as eye specialist to George II. Never a modest
man, he dubbed himself ‘Ophthalmiater Pontifical Imperial
Royal’ (whatever that means) and included composers J. S.
Bach and George Handal among his patients. Both were
blind and neither regained their sight under Taylor’s care. He
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