An Adventure in Medical Hyperbole

same time, introducing new ones of their own. These vendors advertised widely (often with celebrity testimonials), publishing broadsides, posters, pamphlets and manifestoes to further amplify the popular reach of their product claims. Until the mid-nineteenth century, both physicians and quacks relied upon certain standard agents, including opium, quinine and antimony (which worked) and a great many others (which did not).

….In the years past, quacks competed with establishment physicians, providing less expensive, and in many cases equally effective, therapy. But over the last 150 years medical science has made great strides, and today’s patients would be well-advised to avoid quacks altogether. Exaggerated claims and expenditures of patent-medicine marketers have led to efforts to rid society of their presence, ultimately requiring legislation. Yet, in spite of these efforts, nothing has ever succeeded in eliminating quackery completely. The many unwanted notices for Viagra, steroids, and similar promises of wonder drugs online offer enduring evidence of quackery’s long-term persistence in popular culture. The quack in modern form thus survives to the present day, promising cures to make us all thinner, handsomer and healthier.

As the title suggests, the show consists of books but also of pamphlets, broadsides, manifestos, posters, caricatures and cartoons, color and black and white illustrations and prints, advertisements, and even calling cards, valentines, and other ephemera. The 100+ piece exhibit takes up 10 cases, and is divided into 10 basic themes: The Itinerant Quack (emphasizing the mobile nature of these early “medical” practitioners); Systems (showcasing different quack theories or ideas, such as the “blue light treatment” in which the pateint's ills are cured by looking through a sheet of blue glass); Morrison’s Pill (which focuses on one particular popular treatment marketed from 1825 on as alternative medicine); Vin Mariani (another popular American treatment, this one a wine laced with cocaine invented in 1871 in France by Angelo Francois Mariani, a French pharmaceutical worker; Mariani even went so far in his ad campaigns as to hire noted artists of the time and get them to produce illustrations in which figures display his product); Anatomical Museums & Medicine Shows (A shared case featuring examples of printed renderings of each. An anatomical museum was basically a traveling horror show in which various

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An Adventure in Medical Hyperbole

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An Adventure in Medical Hyperbole

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