Of Quacks and Empiricism (and the answering defence of Dr Brodum), The Medical and Physical Journal, vol. 13 (1805)
period journal · 1805
LINK
SUMMARY
Contemporary medical-press source for the controversy over Brodum, used for the disconfirmation and biography. Read directly from the digitized public-domain volume (Internet Archive medicalandphysi05unkngoog). The journal printed an attack on Brodum's pretensions and a defence answering it; the volume read here records that Brodum brought a legal action over the published attack (the text refers to the suit of 'William Brodum, Esquire' against the publisher 'for the publication of this paper which appeared in the last Number of this Work, on the subject of Quacks and Empiricism'). The defence explicitly disputes the hostile biography: of the assertion 'Dr. Brodum was born in Copenhagen!' it states 'The assertion is given on no authority; and it is utterly false!', while acknowledging that he 'was born of Jewish parents' and had 'become a convert to the Christian faith'. Cited as evidence that Brodum's pretensions were attacked in the contemporary medical press, that he litigated against his critics, and that even in 1805 the claim of a Copenhagen/foreign origin was contested rather than settled. Not used to assert a birth name or birthplace as fact; the volume read did not yield a documented birth year, a verified composition, or a per-bottle price, so none is asserted from it.
NOTES
The Medical and Physical Journal of 1805 carried a sustained attack on Brodum (“Of Quacks and Empiricism”) and the correspondence answering it, the episode the patent-medicine historian Alan Mackintosh cites for Brodum’s biography. It is used here for the disconfirmation stage and for the contested nature of his origins. The digitized volume records that Brodum litigated over the published attack, and prints a defence that rejects the claim he was born in Copenhagen as “given on no authority” and “utterly false”, while granting that he was “born of Jewish parents” and had converted to Christianity. The source establishes that informed medical opinion attacked his pretensions and that the foreign-origin story was disputed in his own lifetime; it is not treated as settling his birthplace, birth year, or the composition of his medicines, none of which this bundle asserts from it.