Epidemics and ideas: essays on the historical perception of pestilence

reproduced, Columbus's first sighting of America is a billboard boosting Ayar's Sarsaparilla. Certainly, quacks have always proved adroit at exploiting American sensibilities (angelic infants loom large) and pandering to particularly New World fears, not least that of growing old. Early this century, Duffy's Pure Malt Therapeutic Whiskey widely featured the 106-year-old Mrs Nancy Tigue of Lafayette, Indiana, pictured in the bloom of health, declaring, "I really don't feel like I'm a day over 60. Thanks to Duffy's Pure Malt Whiskey". (But if fears remain the same, certain attitudes change: imagine anyone confessing in an ad these days to feeling sixty!) Much analysis is decanted into Young's delightfully told stories of Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Dalley's Magical Pain Extractor, Germ-a-way, Grove's Tasteless [sic] Chill Tonic ("Makes Children and Adults as Fat as Pigs"), and many other preposterous products including Dr Porter's Healing Oil. And amusement at their hyperbole sugars a more serious purpose, for Young is no less anxious to expose contemporary frauds (laetrile and so forth), including the opportunists cashing in on today's AIDS crisis. What remains tantalizing, here as in all of Young's writings, is his historical perspective on the regulars. In his writings they commonly assume a certain sanctified air by virtue of the verbal lashings Young administers to their foes, the mountebanks, food adulterators and ignoramuses. Were he to train his probing mind and ironic disposition onto the deans of the profession, would they escape whipping? Be that as it may, the bubbling delight of Young's essays derives from the veneer of seriousness with which he treats topics that would be farcical, had they not jeopardized the health and lives of millions and involved some of the longest-running and most money-spinning con-tricks in history. The fact that Young does not even need to explore the grey area where medical folklore overlaps with medical fakery, but is able to target his attention upon such a vast number of fringe and freaky health fads that were arrant and shameless frauds, itself affords a fascinating commentary upon the particularly American circus of the sick trade.