The Cordial Balm of Gilead is a unique medicine of the choicest balsams, the sole invention of Dr Solomon, prepared by a long and laborious secret process and unequalled in efficacy by anything else discovered.
This is the surrogate-mechanism and exclusivity claim. The tract presents the balm as a medicine “composed of some of the choisest balsams”, whose discovery cost the proprietor “amazing sums” and repeated experiments, and which is unequalled by anything in public or private practice. An affidavit sworn before Thomas Golightly JP at Liverpool on 29 August 1796 (Sivan 2009; reproduced in the tract) maintained that Solomon was the sole inventor and preparer who had never disclosed the ingredients. The secrecy was the mechanism: the composition could not be examined, which shielded the ingredients from scrutiny, and the affidavit converted that opacity into a legal-sounding guarantee. The efficacy claim itself was never put to a controlled test. The claim is refuted by the later reconstruction of the formula as a spiced brandy (Helfand via Mugglestone 2021; McLaren 2007), which is neither a unique balsamic discovery nor an agent of any special efficacy.
Appears in
Sources
- An account of that most excellent medicine, the cordial balm of Gilead (Solomon's advertising tract) — Solomon, Samuel. An account of that most excellent medicine, the cordial balm of Gilead, so justly celebrated for the relief and cure of nervous disorders, female complaints, weaknesses, loss of appetite, impurity of blood ... [advertising tract], Solomon's Place, Liverpool, circa 1799-1800. Held by the Wellcome Collection (Wellcome Library) and digitized through the Medical Heritage Library; Internet Archive item b3038946x (https://archive.org/details/b3038946x); public-domain copy on Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
- Samuel Solomon (1745-1819): quack or entrepreneur? — Sivan, Gabriel A. 'Samuel Solomon (1745-1819): quack or entrepreneur?' Jewish Historical Studies (Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England), vol. 42 (2009), pp. 23-51.
- Let's buy: Some Cordial Balm of Gilead (John Johnson Collection guest post) — Mugglestone, Lynda. 'Let's buy: Some Cordial Balm of Gilead.' Guest post, John Johnson Collection blog, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, 3 February 2021.
- Impotence: A Cultural History — McLaren, Angus. Impotence: A Cultural History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-226-50076-8.