Overview
From the harangues of mountebanks to the dubious advertisements in Victorian newspapers, quackery sports a colorful history. Featuring entertaining advertisements from historical newspapers, this book investigates the inventive ways in which quack remedies were promoted – and whether the people who bought them should be written off as gullible after all. There's the Methodist minister and his museum of intestinal worms, the obesity cure that turned fat into sweat, and the device that brought the fresh air of Italy into British homes. The story of quack advertising is bawdy, gruesome, funny, and sometimes moving – and in this book it takes to the stage to promote itself as a fascinating part of the history of medicine.Author Biography
Caroline Rance is studying for an MA in Medicine, Science, and Society at Birkbeck College, University of London and writes the successful blog The Quack Doctor, which has been shortlisted twice for the Medgadget medical blog awards. Her novel, set in an 18th-century hospital, was published in 2009. She regularly speaks on quacks and quackery and lives in Buckinghamshire.