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  • Article

The making of ‘Quacks’

How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?

  • Article

Graphic battles in pharmacy

James Morison’s campaign against the medical establishment inspired a wave of caricatures mocking his quack medicine.

  • Article

The doctor who challenged the unicorn myth

Our era of fake news and medical misinformation is nothing new. Estelle Paranque relays the thrusts and parries of a 440-year-old row over a magical cure-all, the unicorn horn.

  • Article

Rethinking the placebo effect

The placebo effect has long been harnessed for both legitimate and fraudulent use, but we’re only just discovering how and why our bodies respond positively to dummy drugs, as Anjuli Sharma reveals.

All stories (7)

Images

  • A doctor angry with his patient for trying quack medicine as well as his own prescription. Wood engraving by H.M. Brock, 1909.
  • A quack doctor offering a gouty John Bull some medicine while conventional doctors are turned away; referring to British politics. Coloured lithograph attributed to J. Doyle.
  • A quack doctor offering a gouty John Bull some medicine while conventional doctors are turned away; referring to British politics. Coloured lithograph attributed to J. Doyle.
  • A quack doctor offering a gouty John Bull some medicine while conventional doctors are turned away; referring to British politics. Coloured lithograph attributed to J. Doyle.
  • Three despairing women, one of whom looks disapprovingly at three quack medicine vendors concocting a mixture; representing Britain's economic depletion and distress at the hands of her politicians. Etching by W. Heath, 1830.
  • Medical cautions : chiefly for the consideration of invalids. Containing essays on fashionable diseases, the dangerous effects of hot and crouded rooms, an enquiry into the use of medicine during a course of mineral waters, on quacks, and quack medicine, and lady doctors. And an essay on regimen, very much enlarged ... / By James Makittrick Adair.
  • Medical cautions : chiefly for the consideration of invalids. Containing essays on fashionable diseases, the dangerous effects of hot and crouded rooms, an enquiry into the use of medicine during a course of mineral waters, on quacks, and quack medicine, and lady doctors. And an essay on regimen, very much enlarged ... / By James Makittrick Adair.
  • Medical cautions : chiefly for the consideration of invalids. Containing essays on fashionable diseases, the dangerous effects of hot and crouded rooms, an enquiry into the use of medicine during a course of mineral waters, on quacks, and quack medicine, and lady doctors. And an essay on regimen, very much enlarged ... / By James Makittrick Adair.
  • A troupe of quack medicine vendors crying up their wares, representing Opposition politicians advertising their policies to the Prince Regent, but he, represented as a horse ridden by R.C. Wellesley, gallops away from them. Coloured etching by G. Cruikshank after "Nathaniel NoParty", 1812.
  • A quack selling medicines. Oil painting.
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Maladies and Medicine

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