Illustrations from the Wellcome Institute Library. Sequah: an English "American Medicine"-man in 1890.

"SEQUAH ON CLAPHAM COMMON" is the legend attached to a small Victorian oil-painting in the Wellcome Institute library (plate 1).1 The setting, Clapham Common, is known to Londoners as a grassy open space a mile or two south of the river Thames, but the name "Sequah" today means, to most people, nothing. Yet for a brief period around 1890, Sequah was perhaps the most celebrated medical operator in Britain outside the capital. The painting is a nocturne in which Sequah, clad in gold, stands out from the darkness, transfigured by moonbeams and naphtha flares. Together with other records, it enables us to penetrate the obscurity which now covers his name and to see him in the lurid, flashy light of his now distant celebrity. The Sequah story-for it falls naturally into the language of journalism-goes back to September 1887, when Sequah started his medical career at Landport, Portsmouth.2 In January 1888, he was practising at Brighton.3 By June 1888, he had joined the medical scene in Dublin.4 Reports from these and numerous other towns scattered throughout the United Kingdom reveal the technique behind his triumphs. The inhabitants of the town would be shaken by the sound of a brass band and bass drummer parading through the streets in a colossal golden carriage, and handbills