Before the FDA
Quack Cures to Medicine Shows

"Before you take his Drop or Pill,
Take leave of Friends, and make your Will"
Of Quack Doctors,
Grubstreet Journal, 1973.

What is a quack cure? To answer that we need to first ask what a quack is? The term has been tossed around over the last several hundred years enough. In early modern England, the term was an accusation used to brand someone practicing medicine in bad faith. Throughout this brief exploration of quackery and the history of medicine shows, we will use the term quack to identify those who sold health in a bottle

- drumming up business largely through self-orchestrated publicity; operating as individual entrepreneurs, rather than as members of a medical community. Clearly, the further back you want to look at the "history of medicine", the more apparent it is that altruistic doctors did not confront thievish quacks like day meeting night. Medical practitioners formed a panorama of individuals with different stripes, some more, some less, who engaged in quackish activities.

It was these early men (and women, occasionally) who were among the first to market cures to many of the ailments that afflicted the young and the old in England, and the newly formed US. Because, indeed, sick people seeking medical services faced an agonizingly complex set of choices and no organized quality standardization - even into the beginning of the last century. All kinds of patients, not just the poor or ignorant, ended up - at least sometimes - calling on quacks and on the medicines they had for sale.

And it is in this strange business of quackery we find an interesting history of the beginning of what has been called (and what will be called here for lack of an accurate term) "modern" medicine. This history of quack cures, medicine shows, patent medicines and quacks themselves is not just interesting reading - it provides a telling look at the beginning of the American search for the perfect drug.