Before the Fringe: Quack Medicine in Georgian England
Roy Porter looks into medicine in Georgian England where sufferers from the 'Glimmering of the Gizzard' the 'Quavering of the Kidneys' and the 'Wambling Trot' could chose their cures from a cornucopia of remedies and nostrums doled out by an army of practitioners amongst whom flourished the quacks.
In Georgian England, a medical orthodoxy existed which was socially well-defined and institutionally identified, in London at least, with the three-tiered hierarchy of the College of Physicians, the Incorporation of Surgeons and the Apothecaries' Company. In terms of individual practitioners, it was typified by the university educated physician, who practised physic as a liberal science; the surgeon, who had trained by apprenticeship or, increasingly, at Edinburgh University, and who practised a manual craft; and the apothecary who kept shop.
This article is available to History Today online subscribers only. If you are a subscriber, please log in.
Please choose one of these options to access this article:
- Purchase a online subscription and receive unlimited access to our archive for one week, one month or a year
- Purchase a print and website subscription, giving you one year's access to all our content and 12 editions of History Today magazine.
- If you are already a print subscriber, purchase the online archive upgrade for a year's worth of access at a reduced price
Call our Subscriptions department on +44 (0)20 3219 7813 for more information.
If you are logged in but still cannot access the article, please contact us
If you enjoyed this article, you might like these:
This Month's Magazine
Newsletter
From The Current Issue
Luci Gosling
|
Penelope J. Corfield
|
Tom Holland
|
Roger Hudson
|
History Today App
Follow Us
From The Archive
 The Hudson's Bay Company was one of the central forces moulding the development of the vast tracts of land that today are Canada - but as Barry Gough explains here, the circumstances of its launch in 1670 also reveal much about the commercial forces, personalities and rivalries of Restoration England. |
