As mentioned in previous posts, I am working on a project on mercury in eighteenth-century chemistry and medicine. Over the past few weeks, I have been researching the use of mercury as a drug in eighteenth-century Britain and the Netherlands, and I found some fascinating yet disturbing stories.

In the early eighteenth century, England was the scene of what would go down in history as the ‘Quicksilver Controversy.’ For centuries, mercury and mercury preparations had been used to cure all kinds of intestinal blockages and venereal disease. However, most physicians were well aware of the potential dangers of mercury, and prescribed it only if all else failed. Not Thomas Dover (1662-1742), alias the Quicksilver Doctor. Unlike his contemporaries, he believed crude mercury to be a cure-all for all kinds of blockages. Although he was vehemently opposed by many of his colleagues, there were enough people desperate enough to try his ‘cure.’

To which this could lead was shown in the case of Barton Booth (1681-1733), one of the most famous tragedy actors of his time.

From 1727, Booth was afflicted by ill health: it began with a fever lasting forty-six days, followed by returning bouts of jaundice. Desperate for a cure, Booth eventually called for Thomas Dover, who prescribed him quicksilver. Within a week, Booth ingested almost two pounds of mercury, and died. When a post-mortem examination was carried out, it was found that Booth’s intestines had turned black and were lined with crude mercury, spreading ‘a most offensive cadaverous stench.’[1]

There are no accounts of other quicksilver doctors as extreme in their views as Thomas Dover,  but popular eighteenth-century literature suggests that the Netherlands too saw quicksilver doctors. In a comedy from 1727 which has been ascribed to the Amsterdam hack writer Gysbert Tyssens (1693-1732), a ‘graduate cobbler,’ Doctor Hans, is ridiculed because he prescribes his patients mercury:

They are very good, ensuring that the sick never have to fear disease again.

Because he will cure them fast with a lethal quicksilver;

And the deceased cannot tell what was the cause of their death;

And in this way Mercury cures all illnesses.[2]

Although most physicians were extremely careful when prescribing mercury, there were clearly also men who were more interested in their own finances than in their patients’ health. Some even used their care for their patients as a pretext; a flimsy cover-up for highly profitable schemes. In the late 1750s, a small pamphlet on a new drug against venereal disease, ‘Helvetische essentie of mercuriale droppels’ (Swiss essence or mercurial drops) was printed in Dutch.

The Dutch translator Ponty, a medical doctor from Rotterdam, states in his introduction that the exact contents of the Helvetian Essence is not revealed in the pamphlet to protect patients from quacks who try to reproduce it. However, the last page suggests an entirely different reason for this secrecy: a two-ounce bottle of this miracle cure sold for 12 Dutch guilders – an amount that would equal over 100 Euros today.[3] The only selling point in the United Provinces? Ponty, the translator.[4]