Quacks – Paul Weatherhead

The Corsets of Immortality: Professor Charles Munter

In June 1912 over one hundred music teachers, singers and physicians gathered at the New York Music Teaching Convention at Columbia University. They were to witness an extraordinary musical demonstration that seemed to come straight out of a lurid novel. Professor Charles Munter, a little man in a white suit and green waistcoat, introduced theContinue reading “The Corsets of Immortality: Professor Charles Munter”

The Brighouse Bigamist Quack

Here’s a sad and curious tale from a Weird Calderdale chapter on local quacks that was left out due to space constraints… John Holmes was a ‘dispenser of herbs, barks, draughts’ and other unconventional treatments, though his critics, and there were many, would call him a quack.[i] Details are sketchy, but he came to theContinue reading “The Brighouse Bigamist Quack”

The Quack That Cured The King

This is the story of the Rochdale quack that cured the King of England.[i] The king was George the Third, the so called mad king who lost America. The quack was John Taylor, one of the so called Whitworth Doctors, an extended family of practitioners based in the village of Whitworth, near Rochdale. The conditionContinue reading “The Quack That Cured The King”

Weird Calderdale Bonus Chapter ~ The Halifax Witch Doctor

Here’s a chapter about a strangely comic episode from the mid 19th century that didn’t make the final edition of the book due to space considerations…. The Halifax Witch Doctor ‘The plaster and the pills, and the bottle that I gave him would fotch t’ watter from him. The pills are harmless. I know whatContinue reading “Weird Calderdale Bonus Chapter ~ The Halifax Witch Doctor”