Quacks, Peddlers, And The Militia

PHOTO: Bloodletting as a medical procedure.

by Robert Hanaford Smith, Sr.
Weirs Times Contributing Writer

There are certain things and, to be honest, certain types of people, that try our patience either because they repeatedly do things that we find distasteful or they just become a nuisance.
That was as true in the early 1800s as it is today and back then it included quacks, peddlers, and the militia, all three groups which received some bad press in one 1834 Fall issue of the Farmer’s Cabinet newspaper published in Amherst, New Hampshire.
Quackery may sound like a place where ducks assemble, but it actually refers to fraudulent medical practices. Back in the 1800s a quack could refer to anyone who claimed to be an expert in any profession that they were not qualified to perform, though the practice of medicine was probably the most prominent and harmful business of quacks. A used car salesman once sold me a nice looking, white colored used car. It wasn’t long after I bought the car that brown spots started appearing through the white paint. A car covered with rust was painted over with white paint. I would call the owner of that business a quack.
“Medicines” in the form of elixirs were sold that were supposed to cure all sorts of diseases when the sellers were really quacks who knew little about healing. Foul! Most of those concoctions apparently contained alcohol as the main ingredient. There was no FDA back then to regulate medicinal potions.
In 1834 one of the most popular quackery methods of treatment was called the steam system or Cayenne pepper system. This system, according to a publication of the day, “consists of sweating the patient and administering doses of the essence of red pepper. A man fell from a frame and was considerably bruised, the physician was preparing to bleed him while the steam doctors gathered round and declared that blood letting would mean certain death, nothing but steaming would save him; but bleeding had the desired effect.”

The article said that people should realize that most of what were called drugs were vegetable: aloes, opium, manna, stramonium, and not of the roots and herbs of the native hills as they thought, but from foreign lands. Interestingly, today these drugs, some of which could be deadly if wrongly prepared or used, are still used by some in the medical field. Bleeding, on the other hand is, in most situations, now thought to be more harmful than helpful when used in an attempt to cure an ailing patient.
Among the nuisances of the early 1800s were the peddlers. The folk back then were not bothered by telemarketers calling on the telephone because they had no such thing. The traveling merchants did their telemarketing face to face. They would go to their customer and tell them what they were selling.
Today they confront you by recordings on the telephone. But the “pedlers” (the Farmers Cabinet’s spelling) and subscription sellers were said to be a “perfect nuisance” in New Hampshire,
The newspaper declared that scarcely an hour in the day went by without the householder being confronted by one of these pedlers who also gathered where any public event took place in an effort to sell their wares. Door to door salesmen were common during my childhood when Watkins and Raleigh product salesmen would call at our house, along with the likeable Grand Union representative, whom my Dad labeled “High-Pressure Homer,” and, on Fridays, the fish-man came calling.
But in 1834 the newspaperman complained that “On public occasions the ‘auctioneer pedlars’ are so numerous, noisy, vulgar and veracious, that it is high time our legislature should act up to the spirit of the times, and with other states stop their career.”
It was claimed that no other state, east of the Potomac, tolerated them, so they all came to New Hampshire. Some of these peddlers were no doubt the “quacks” that were selling their “miracle medicines,” but included those who sold tin goods, wooden ware, pottery, textiles, tools, books, and whatever else might be of use to the people of those days. Rural folk of those days relied on the occasional visit of the traveling salesman, but too much of a “good thing” obviously led to the cry of “nuisance.”
The third nuisance was caused by some militiamen, particularly at their musters. All three of these problematic items in this article were somewhat involved with each other. Concerning a muster held by the militia in Amherst the following commentary was printed: “The occasion attracted an unusual assemblage of spectators, pedlers, rumsellers, rumdrinkers, and gamblers; whose noise, ribaldry, intoxication, and violation of the laws in the face and eyes of the authorities, was disgraceful to the place, to the occasion, to those especially engaged in it, and to all who looked on and tolerated it.”

The actual Muster received a mixed assessment by the newspaper. It involved the Fifth Regiment of the militia under the command of a Col. Peabody. The troops paraded in the morning, being a Friday, and were examined by inspection officers and the Major General.
The opinion of the newspaper observer was that the militia had “depreciated” rather than improved from previous years. The reason for the lack of improvement was given as resulting from various causes, including the fact that the then present militia system was not popular. Though the States had banded together to defeat the British in the Revolutionary War, it is my understanding that after the war the idea of having a standing army was not popular, and the states relied on the militia to be ready when fighting men were needed.
The men of the Amherst militia were reported to have put on a respectable display “… in its various movements of marching, countermarching, concentrating, and deploying ,” and showed good conduct except for a few who fired their weapons recklessly long after they had been dismissed.
The conclusion of the Amherst newspaper was to let the people come to their own conclusions. It stated: “We leave it to the people to judge whether there be more good than evil derived from ‘making a muster’.
I’ll add an unrelated and uninformative but attention getting item from the 1834 publication. “The National Intelligencer of Saturday states that no ‘confirmation has yet reached this city of the reported engagement between the Pawnees and the Dragoons under Col. Dodge, nor has any official information even of the rumor of the fight been received. The rumor may be true, or it may be false; and, under all circumstances, seems to be as likely to be one as the other.’”

NH History