Roll up! Roll up! Event on Friday 10 July

Street traders in a market square. Oil painting, ca. 1850.
Wellcome Library no. 45034i

BBC News has put on the web an attractive slideshow with audio commentary on the history of Quacks and Cures. The “quacks” are medicine vendors who use methods derived from the marketplace to sell their goods and services (irrespective of the quality of the products), as distinct from the controlled profession of the pharmacist or apothecary. The “cures” are due to products which relieve the symptoms of disease, which were widely regarded as synonymous with the disease itself.

The webpage forms a curtain-raiser for a free event which anybody who can be in London on Friday 10 July 2009 and is interested in the history of medicine or pharmacy would not want to miss.

Created by Alex Julyan, the Quacks and cures event will include a panel of three doctors from different centuries giving their diagnoses and prescriptions, an “Orthodox” versus “Alternatives” quiz, a Victorian medicine show, and other spectacular presentations of medical history, accompanied by music and fortified by tonics. It draws on the resources of the Wellcome Library and some of the star talents of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London.

(No booking is required, drop in at anytime.)

FRIDAY 10 JULY 19.00-23.00 AT THE WELLCOME BUILDING,
183 EUSTON ROAD, LONDON NW1 2BE

This may be your only opportunity to see this REMARKABLE PERFORMANCE!!!