The Patent Medicines Industry in late Georgian England: A Respectable Alternative to both Regular Medicine and Irregular Practice
secondary literature · 2017
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SUMMARY
Peer-reviewed scholarly study of the late-Georgian patent-medicine trade, used as the biographical and commercial anchor for William Brodum. Facts copied from the fetched open-access accepted-version PDF (White Rose Research Online, eprint 98462; citation of record confirmed on the deposit cover page): Brodum is named as 'the most notorious' of the irregular medicine owners, '(died 1824), the owner of two medicines, a nervous cordial and a botanical syrup'; 'Although he claimed to have been trained as a military practitioner in continental Europe, Brodum was regarded as an irregular practitioner'; 'Often itinerant, he bought an MD from Marischal College, Aberdeen for 13 guineas, and aggressively publicised both himself and his patent medicines'; 'He was very successful, earning an estimated £5,000 a year from selling medicines'; his celebrity was such that a 1802 Foley-House masquerade attended by the Prince of Wales and two brothers included a mock village shop named 'Doctor Brodum's shop'; and he 'made some effort to be recognised as a regular physician, stopping his travelling and attending Westminster Hospital as a 45-year-old medical student' (he and the Manchester owner John Lignum both advertised consulting hours at Leeds in July 1793). Mackintosh's footnotes cite the Medical and Physical Journal, 1805, vol. 13 (the attack 'Of Quacks and Empiricism', pp. 66-75, and a defence, pp. 258-67). DOI verified against Crossref-style metadata on the deposit. Cited for Brodum's death year, the bought Aberdeen MD, the estimated income, the two medicines, the irregular/itinerant status, the masquerade celebrity, and the basis for the circa-1750 birth estimate; not for any assessment of the medicines' efficacy beyond the historical verdict of quackery.
NOTES
Alan Mackintosh’s study in Social History of Medicine is the scholarly biographical source for this case. It supplies the documented facts of Brodum’s career: his death in 1824; his ownership of two patent medicines, a nervous cordial and a botanical syrup; his claim to continental military-medical training set against his standing as an irregular practitioner; the MD bought from Marischal College, Aberdeen, for 13 guineas; the estimated income of £5,000 a year; the celebrity attested by the 1802 Foley-House masquerade; and the later attempt to pass as a regular physician by attending Westminster Hospital as a 45-year-old medical student, which (with the July 1793 Leeds advertisements) is the basis for placing his birth around 1750. The article is cited for biography and commerce and for the historical verdict that Brodum was a byword for quackery, not for any clinical assessment of his medicines.