From Grub Street to Fleet Street: An Illustrated History of English Newspapers to 1899 by Bob Clarke

Author:Bob Clarke [Clarke, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351935470
Google: FgwkDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 990805
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

According to the advertisement in the Reading Mercury for 18 July 1774, Speediman’s Stomach Pills ‘by the blessing of God dispersed the wind in a very surprising manner’.

A quick glance at the quack advertisements of early-eighteenth-century newspapers could easily lead to the conclusion that theirs was an age obsessed with sex. There is almost a symmetry of cause and effect with the sellers of aphrodisiacs plying their wares next to cures for venereal disease.

The advertisements for aphrodisiacs went to no great lengths to shroud in euphemism the claimed effects of their concoctions. The advertisement for the Cordial Quintessence of Vipers in the Craftsman on 12 August 1738, claims that

A few DROPS of it only, gives such a generous Warmth, and so increaseth the Vital and Animal Spirits, it not only promotes, and prompts the Desire, but also furnishes proper Matter … Nor does it only furnish Matter, and create Desire, but also true Power (as it braces up and corroborates the Testes) and gives an elastic Springiness to the Musculi Erectoris Penis, in Men, and corrects, cleanses, and comforts the Uterus, or Womb in Women, the Lankness and Laxity of the former, and the Foulness, Coldness or Obstruction of the latter. Those who but once try it, will so pleasantly experience its nutritive Quickening Properties, in exhilarating the Heart, reviving the Spirits, comforting the Vitals, circulating the Juices, and recreating, and renovating, as it were, the whole Man, that they will never be without it; for it is such a present Help in time of Need, as that on taking then but a Dose or two more of it than ordinary, it will so instantaneously animate the dull inactive Spirits, and rouze up, and activate the sluggish, enfeebled Faculties in both Sexes, as to excite and capacitate, where it could hardly be expected, and at the same Time, seldom fail to render that conjugal Intercourse, Prolifick.

Similar effects are claimed for the Superlative Enlivening Drops, ‘to be had only at Mr. Radford’s Toy-Shop’, advertised in the Universal Spectator for 3 March 1733, and Dr Smyth’s Restorative Medicine in Drewry’s Derby Mercury for 20 September 1787:

If in Cases of this Delicacy it were allowable to publish Names, the Doctor would give the World a long list of Fathers, become so, by the Use of his Medicine; of Mothers rejoycing in the Fruitfulness they never knew before.

So much for the cause, now for the effects. There are more advertisements for cures for venereal disease in the first half of the eighteenth century than for any other ailment. As the advertisement for Dr Smith’s Specific Drops in the Reading Mercury for 18 June 1774 proclaimed, ‘The Venereal Disease is the Ruin of half our Youth’. The following advertisement from the Westminster Journal for 27 December 1746 is typical of its kind:

At the GOLDEN-BALL

In Bow-Church-Yard, Cheapside, London,

Livest G West … who cureth all the various Symptoms of the FRENCH DISTEMPER, whether freshly contracted, or of long Continuance, by a new, speedy, and sure Method, and

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