A Treatise on Swaim's Panacea (title page, Philadelphia, 1828 edition)
period print · 1828
LINK
SUMMARY
Wellcome Collection archival record for William Swaim's own 1828 promotional treatise (work bst63dyx, Public Domain Mark; IIIF manifest fetched directly from iiif.wellcomecollection.org/presentation/v2/b21157546). The title page (image b21157546_0005), viewed directly, is headed A Treatise on Swaim's Panacea and names, as the conditions the medicine claims to cure, scrofula (King's evil), mercurial and liver diseases, deep-seated syphilis, rheumatism, and disorders arising from a contaminated and impure state of the blood, matching the book's full title as catalogued. Below that list the page carries an engraved emblem depicting a muscular figure clubbing a multi-headed serpentine creature, captioned as Hercules destroying the Hydra, and is dated Philadelphia, 1828 at the foot of the page. Source for this case's account of the Panacea's marketed claims and for the lead/charismatic-practitioner artifact media.
NOTES
This Wellcome Collection record is the archival source for the title page of William Swaim’s own 1828 promotional treatise. The title page itself, viewed directly as a digitized image, states the full list of diseases the Panacea claimed to cure and carries an engraved emblem of Hercules destroying the Hydra beneath that list — Swaim’s own chosen image for a medicine claimed to overcome every named disease at once. The work carries a Public Domain Mark.