Solomon's Secret Arts by Paul Kléber Monod

Author:Paul Kléber Monod
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300123586
Publisher: Yale University Press

Such passages remind us that the widening sphere of eighteenth-century discourse was not inherently rational, however much emphasis it may have placed on making subjects sound reasonable.16 Sibly presents himself here as an empiricist, because he values “experience” over “abstract reasoning.” After all, he had analysed the chemicals and seen their effects in practical trials. His endorsement of magic was apparently upheld by strict methods of inquiry. What more did members of the public need to convince them that his Solar Tincture could conquer death?

Sibly certainly belonged among those marketers of ineffective remedies whom Roy Porter has labelled “quacks,” but he was not necessarily a charlatan.17 To read his books alongside his advertising claims can only lead one to conclude that he believed in what he was doing, and that his stupendous assertions were based on real conviction. The same might not be said of other patent-medicine pedlars, most of whom were neither astrologers nor spagyrists, even if their potions and pills sounded alchemical. John Ching was an apothecary of Cheapside and maker of “Worm-destroying LOZENGES, for Fits, Pains in the stomach, Pains in the Head or Side, and for Pale, Languid and Emaciated Appearances in young Persons.” Like many iatrochemical remedies, Ching's Lozenges contained mercury and were poisonous. After they killed one young man at Hull in 1803, the victim's grieving father, a printer by trade, published a pamphlet denouncing them.18 Attacks on quackery were not uncommon, but in spite of them the late eighteenth century saw a dramatic rise in the number of patent medicines, which were heavily marketed through advertising. Dr Samuel Solomon of Liverpool claimed to have spent £5,000 a year on publicizing his highly successful “Balm of Gilead,” a large bottle of which cost as much as a guinea. His tireless self-promotion rested on claims that he had solved age-old mysteries. The “Balm of Gilead,” designed to cure nervous disorders and “Female complaints,” was “extracted from the SEED of GOLD, which our alchymists and philosophers have so long sought after in vain.”19 Solomon presented himself as a scientist, but the appeal of his advertising undoubtedly rested on the notion that he had found the Philosopher's Stone.

The use of advertising for specifically occult purposes was also widespread, a point underlined by the editor of a collection of London handbills from the 1770s and 1780s. “That the occult science called white magic, and the study of astrology, flourishes among us, is evident,” observed the anonymous compiler. The collection included an advertisement for W. Lacy of Bartlett Buildings, Holborn, who offered “ASTRONOMICAL and ASTROLOGICAL Demonstrations” for ladies and gentlemen, including the drawing-up of nativities. Lacy would show “how and at what time any animal or plant is under the celestial rays, which is sufficient to convince unbelievers that astrology is not a vain opinion (as some think).” An inventor as well as a seer, Lacy had already announced his “new invented astronomical machines” in the St. James's Chronicle, a newspaper for the elite. More traditional in her approach was “Mrs.

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