ABSTRACT
Speaking of the state of the medical profession in 1823 in the preface to the first volume of the Lancet, the editor, Thomas Wakley, wrote:
We hope the age of ‘Mental Delusion’ has passed, and that mystery and concealment will no longer be encouraged. Indeed, we trust that mystery and ignorance will shortly be considered synonymous. Ceremonies and signs, have now lost their charms; hieroglyphics, and gilded serpents, their power to deceive. 1
In addition to other benefits, Wakley hoped that by reading the articles in the Lancet, ‘Man’ will be furnished ‘with a test by which he could detect and expose the impositions of ignorant practitioners’. 2 The threat felt by the medical profession from impostors or ‘quacks’ was real enough, and Wakley went further in his efforts to dispel the mystery from professional knowledge in the journal’s first issue by publishing the ingredients that made up such popular remedies as ‘Scot’s Pills’ and ‘Daffy’s Elixir’, thus revealing the ‘Compositions of Quack Medicines’. 3