Critique of Secondary Source
This essay examines a secondary historical interpretation of evidence in detail. For students and teachers, this section is meant to illustrate the critical perspective required when drawing on secondary sources.
Quack, Quack, Quack
William H. Helfand, Quack, Quack, Quack : The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera & Books : An Exhibition on the Frequently Excessive & Flamboyant Seller of Nostrums as Shown in Prints, Posters, Caricatures, Books, Pamphlets, Advertisements & Other Graphic Arts over the Last Five Centuries (New York: Grolier Club, 2002).
William H. Helfand’s Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera & Books, is the catalogue to an exhibition of the same title held at The Grolier Club in New York in the fall of 2002 and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2005. It is an entertaining collection of graphic images regarding quackery and nostrums from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries in Europe and the United States. Among the issues that come to mind when examining a book of this nature are: what are the challenges in writing a book that is both scholarly yet appeals to a general audience, and to what extent can a book like this aid us in our own scholarly research? In our estimation, Quack, Quack, Quack is a good resource from which one can get a general overview on the subject of quackery and become exposed to a handful.
The book is comprised of fifty pages of introductory prose followed by nearly two-hundred pages of pictures with captions. The introduction and images are organized into subsections; in the pictorial section, each subsection is accompanied by a brief framing introduction. The prose is extremely valuable in providing the reader background about the history of quackery. One useful insight, for instance, is Helfand’s note of the variation in printed material’s ability to inform us of the times. The language in newspaper advertisements, for instance, was toned down from that of handbills (Helfand, 38). Observations such as these help us to more carefully and accurately interpret the graphic and print images in the book as well as those found when conducting archival research. The picture captions are equally informative in contextualizing the images. The success of the captions in providing insight to the reader about each graphic makes them particularly delightful.
The format of the book, however, forces Helfand to sacrifice some discussion of complexity and nuance in framing the phenomenon of quackery. One example of this shortcoming is Helfand’s suggestion that esteemed people, even royalty, consulted both credentialed physicians and quacks. (Helfand, 15) Unmentioned by the author are questions the reader might have in response to this. Did the patrons themselves consider their “irregular” medical caregivers to be quacks? Earlier in the book, Helfand denoted that the term was used as a pejorative, so it seems confusing to indicate that patients used the term “quack” in their relations with their own healers.
Such contradictions likely arise from the book’s intended audience of general readers and enthusiasts. Works geared specifically to generally audiences often attempt to cover an overly broad time span or topic in a space insufficient to fully contextualize the material. The range in time span can at times give the book’s content a somewhat trans-historic quality. Consider the Anonymous engraving of “Doctor Heller.” (Helfand, 16) This German steel engraving, made circa 1885, portrays the wigged and bespectacled doctor standing on the stage (in front of a sign bearing his name ) with hands raised, signifying that he is calling out to the busy, bustling, and otherwise occupied crowd in front of him, a jester at his side. This picture (an example of several similar images that appear in the book) evokes the frenetic energy of the marketplace and performativity of the quack’s advertising exhortations—a visual image that adds another dimension to printed material.
Compare the scene of Dr. Heller’s stand with this quote by Daniel Defoe, cited by Helfand, depicting seventeenth century urban life:“How the Posts of Houses, and Corners of Streets were plaster’d over with Doctors Bills, and Papers of ignorant fellows; quacking and tampering in Physick, and inviting the People to come to them for Remedies; which was generally set off, with such flourishes…” (Helfand, 36)… of fantastic promises of the curative abilities of their wares, similar to those found in advertisements for nostrums from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Such juxtapositions make quacks seem at certain points of the narrative to exhibit the same characteristics at all times.
Perhaps Helfand is implicitly suggesting that despite the long swath of time he considers, quackery does exhibit some rather stable forms and traditions. This very well may be the case, but as historians we should be suspicious about portrayals of phenomenon as historical context (granted, even though this one is implied).
The expansive time span of the book arises in another way when the graphic material exhibits silence about certain settings. None of the images, for instance, directly pertain to the topical concern of this site, the understanding of American quackery in the 18th century—most of the very evocative pictures dated in the 18th century are from other countries, and none of the American images are from the 18th century. It is difficult to know if the dearth of 18th-century American images is due to a dearth of sources (we suspect it might be—another Helfand book more concerned with American quackery also contains very few images from the 18th century).
This criticism of the range in time-span also holds for the geographic span Helfand includes. However, an interesting observation arises when considering the book as a whole. A look at the sources—most of them secondary—reveals that Helfand is drawing from several sources also noted by Roy Porter which are sited in France, Italy, and other European locales in Quacks and Health For Sale. This suggests that this pool of work likely represents the best current work in quackery of the 18th century; its geographic diversity perhaps appropriate given the geographic diversity of the images.
Despite these critiques, William Helfand’s Quack, Quack, Quack provides astounding images and exposition which for an overview provides a satisfying amount of heft. For the general reader this is an excellent overview of quackery and for the uninitiated junior scholar it serves as an inviting, if slightly under-elaborated, first taste. Though the prose at times jumps from one setting to another, muddling our sense of changes in quackery over time and space, this may simply be the result of the challenges to writing thoughtfully to a general audience about a topic that is somewhat removed from our everyday conceptions of medicine and easily oversimplified.
William Helfand comments: In critically evaluating secondary sources, it is important to keep in mind the purposes for which such works are produced. This catalogue did not attempt to be a history of quackery, but was assembled from available exhibitable material, and the emphasis was devoted to presenting information on the images shown. Because there are no images of quacks in America in the 18th century, it was not possible to include any in the catalogue. Nor was the exhibition intended to be primarily American, or even primarily 18th century. To critique the catalogue for these omissions is to neglect the intention of the text and images in the book.