Relating to Quacks, Quackery and Nostrums, Part 1

"Quack is a pejorative term, disparagingly, albeit sometimes defensively, applied by a member of the establishment, the orthodox, regular, professional, credentialed and accepted class to describe the unorthodox, unlicensed, disapproved member of a fringe or irregular group. It is a term of condemnation employed when one wants to belittle another. Above all, the term has become associated with the sellers of medicines and the marketers of medical systems, those with the "true" method of curing specific ills or, in an earlier day, all the ills of mankind.

While the origins of the term are obscure, the term "quack" probably came from the Dutch Quacksalber, a charlatan, mountebank, empiric or itinerant seller of medicine. It may also have been derived from the sounds made by a duck, the term applied to the hawker of nostrums whose excessive zeal in describing the merits of his or her cure may well have sounds similar to the squawking of a duck. The chatter of the quack, in most cases more like torrent s of words, would have been familiar to both town and rural populations even in the ancient periods, for quacks have long been well known in every society. Over the past four hundred years they have been representative figures in folktales, stories and especially in prints, drawings and political caricatures..." –William H. Helfand, from Quack Quack Quack


Detail from "Quid hic nobis lumine satium", c. 1670, Anonymous


Detail from advertisement for Dr. Rock's Tincture, 1738, Anonymous


"The Dance of Death: the Undertaker and the Quack." 1816, by Thomas Rowlandson (from Wellcome Library)


"Nancy Linton: A faithful representation of her actual appearance & condition after having been cured by the use of Swann's Panacea", c. 1833, by C Hullmandel (from a drawing by WH Kearney)


"Singular Effects of the Universal Vegetable Pills on a Green Crocer! A Fact!", 1841, by Charles Jameson Grant


Detail from "The Great Lozenge Maker", 1858, by John Leech - from Punch


"Dr S.B. Collins' Painless Opium Antidote" Advertisement, 1874


"Quackery - Medical Minstrel Performing for the Benefit of Their Former Patients - No other Dead-heads Admitted", 1879, by Joseph Keppler - from Puck


"Death's-Head Doctors - Many Paths to the Grave", 1881, by Joseph Keppler - from Puck


Detail of "Death's-Head Doctors - Many Paths to the Grave", 1881, by Joseph Keppler - from Puck


Detail of "Death's-Head Doctors - Many Paths to the Grave", 1881, by Joseph Keppler - from Puck


"Death in the Pestle", c. 1885, by Henry Nappenbach - from The Wasp


Detail of "Death in the Pestle", c. 1885, by Henry Nappenbach - from The Wasp


"The Travelling Quack", 1889, by Tom Merry


An itinerant medicine vendor known as Medicine Jack carrying his wares in a knapsack on his back. (from Wellcome Library)


"William Radam, Microbes and the Microbe Killer", 1890


"The Great American Fraud, an investigative article by Samuel Hopkins Adams", 1907


Quack advertisement for the cure of cancer, 1912 (from Wellcome Library)

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Unless noted all of these come from Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera, & Books by William Helfand - @ Open Library [link]
Wellcome Library has a good collection of quackery related images [link]
The excellent blog The Quack Doctor [link]
The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices [link]
see the blog Quack Cogitations [link]
Quack cartoons at cartoonstock [link]
BBC slideshow: Quacks and Cures [link]

Tibetan Anatomical Paintings

These Tibetan medical tangkas were "painted by the Nepalese tangka artist Romio Shrestha and his Tibetan, Nepalese, and Bhutanese students in Kathmandu during seven years in the late 1980's and early 1990's."


The Face of Impermanence


Images of Impermanence


Cadaver


Vulnerable Points


The Inner Mandala


Chakras and Energy Channels


Chakras and Energy Channels


Topographical Lines of Channels



"Thangkas illustrations of the points of the body associated with bloodletting, moxibustion and minor surgery, differentiated, respectively, by the use of the colors blue, yellow and red."


Bloodletting Channels


Dzogchen Channels


Cranial Physiognomy


Anatomy of Light


Anatomical Grids

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some of these illustrations come from the book The Tibetan Art of Healing by Ian A. Baker - worldcat [link] Powell's books [link] - amazon [link]
others (along with many more) are from the American Museum of Natural History's collection "Body & Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings" [link]
Romio Shrestha's website [link]

19th Century Japanese Drug Advertisments

Kyō maruyama okaruyaki - Lightly baked confection by Kyō maruyama. (late 19th century)


Fukunai dokusō-gan - Internal poison cleansing pills (if taken for a month, cleans various poison sicknesses such as syphilis and gonorrhea). (late 19th century)


Shinyaku Sonota - Divine Medicine and others, with portraits of Jun Matsumoto, Shochu Sato, and Ki Hayashi. (Hashimoto Chikanobu, 1878)


Shōni-yaku-ō Kindoru-san - King of children's drug: Kinder-Puwder (Morikawa Chikashige, 1880)


Rakuzen-dō sanyaku: Hoyō-gan, Chinryūin, Ontsū-gan, Megusuri Seiki-sui - Three drugs from Rakuzendō for low energy, heart-burn, and constipation (Eitaku, late 19th century)


Tsukisarae kokoku; Kaitetsu-gan – monthly cleansing (c 1830)


Yōtetsugan - Iodide iron pill (Hasegawa Sadanobu, mid-late 19th century)


Miruwa kusuri kasumi no hikifuda - Medicine for clear vision. (Utagawa Yoshitsuya, 1862)


Miruwa kusuri kasumi no hikifuda - Medicine for clear vision. (Utagawa Yoshitsuya, 1862)


Benri ohaguro tokiwa no tsuya - Easy to use teeth-blackening oxide, Tokiwa no tsuya means "everlasting luster" and is also the name of the woman pictured (Hasegawa Sadanobu II, late 19th century)


Hikan yakuōen - drug for spleen and liver (1895)


Ichikawa Danjūro kōen Seisei gan - Ichikawa Danjūrō announcing the drug “Seisei gan” (for hangover) (Utagawa Toyokuni III, mid 19th century)

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all images are from San Francisco University's Japanese Woodblock Print Collection [link]
see more at Digital Clendening's Japanese Art on the Subject of Medicine [link]

Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing

Illustrations from Marvels of Things Created and Miraculous Aspects of Things Existing (Ajā’ib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharā’ib al-mawjūdāt - كتاب عجائب المخلوقات وغرائب الموجودات) by Zakarīyā’ ibn Muḥammad al-Qazwīnī, originally published in 1283. The illustrator, copyist and date of the edition are unknown. The nature of paper, script, ink, illumination, and illustrations suggest that it was produced in provincial Mughal India, possibly the Punjab, in the 17th century.


Eight constellations (from the top): Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius (a large figure drawing water from a well), Pisces, Cetus (a harpy with a peacock's tail), Orion (a standing turbaned male with sword and shepherd's staff), and the constellation Eridanus (the River).


Creatures from the Island of Zanj (jazirah-i Zanj), including gray and green winged humanoids.


Five mythical sea creatures, including a human-headed fish and a winged fish.


Above: a woman with long hair behind a large gray fish. Below: a monkey (labeled insan al-ma', 'aquatic being') and a pink fish.


Six animal-headed demons or jinn, all (except the blue elephant-headed demons) snapping their fingers.


Fabulous beasts and demons: two horned demons playing musical instruments; a feline, horned quadruped with two heads; a brown demon with a cat's head and tail, wearing wrist beads (noise-makers); and an elephant with rear claw feet. On a page labeled 'people of the Seal of Solomon (muhr-i Sulayman)'.


A humanoid with hair standing on end.


A lynx or caracal (‘anaq) and an elephant-headed demon.


A cock and (above) a partridge (darraj).


A simurgh (‘anqa', a mythical bird) and, above, a bird that appears to be a hoopoe but is labeled 'aq'aq (magpie).


An ostrich (na‘amat) and a small black bird labeled hudhud (the hoopoe).


A dragon (thu‘ban).


Five fabulous creatures: a dark-skinned female wearing only a head-scarf and pearls; two winged figure, nude except for pearls; a bare-breasted, long-haired female with six legs and wrist beads (noise-makers); and, at the bottom, a human-headed snake.


Four mythical creatures: a humanoid with his head in his chest, a human-headed turtle, and two half-sectioned women.

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More illustrations at the Islamic Medical Manuscripts @ the National Library of Medicine [link]