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Charlatans, Quacks, and Joanna Stephens

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Book cover Urolithiasis

Abstract

Introduction and Objective

For whatever reasons, stone disease seems to beget a certain amount of skepticism, and charlatans have been attracted to this particular problem. In addition, it appears that patients, sufferers of stone disease, seemed to figure out that traditional, Hippocratic, and Galenic medicine offered no help, and they turned in droves to alternative treatments.

Methods

It is almost impossible by today’s standards to understand the absolute bizarre notion of a nation willing to pay a “king’s ransom” for the secret formula of the most famous hoax ever for the treatment of stones and gravel. Joanna Stephens was able to parlay her secret lithotriptic into a fortune and started a scientific debate that pulled in the best medical and chemistry minds in England and France to focus intently upon the burgeoning stone problem. Yet, Joanna Stephens appears to have been in a long line of paid iatrochemists who tried to make their fortune. King Charles II of England paid £6,000 for Goddard’s famous recipe for “spirit of skull.”

Results

The £5,000 sterling was paid to Joanna Stephens on March 5, 1740. She promptly disappeared and became enshrouded in mystery and myth. To many she is typically vilified and lampooned as the great charlatan. There have been numerous other highly suspect therapies applied to the stone sufferer throughout time, no surprise when the complex nature of this disease was not known, and alternatives were as gruesome as “corpse medicine” itself.

Conclusions

Joanna Stephens has left a legacy of perfidy that probably does not accurately portray her role in the history of stone disease. There were many quackish therapies that those desperately suffering would try almost anything, and they did. The quacks and patent medicines never achieved the notoriety of Mrs. Stephens’ lithotriptic; however, the ensuing chemistry that was spawned to investigate her medicine directly led to the fathers of stone chemistry that followed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. American Urological Association, William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History, Linthicum, MD, USA

    Michael E. Moran MD

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Moran, M.E. (2014). Charlatans, Quacks, and Joanna Stephens. In: Urolithiasis. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8196-6_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8196-6_10

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