No one, after reading these extracts, will be inclined to doubt that Van Butchell was an original. His notoriety was such that many used to visit his house, not so much for the purpose of receiving advice as to see and converse with him. The success which he and contemporary quacks made led to the tax on “patent medicines,” which was imposed in 1783, and has now for over ninety years been a fruitful source of revenue. Of Van Butchell’s contemporaries, one of the most worthy of note was Katerfelto, of whom Cowper speaks in “The Task”—
Katerfelto was a foreigner who had “seen service,” and according to his own showing was both brave and learned. A notice of him which appears in an article on quacks says: “In a pamphlet on quackery, published at Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1805, it is stated that Dr Katerfelto practised on the people of London in the influenza of 1782; that he added to his nostrums the fascinations of hocus-pocus; and that with the services of some extraordinary black cats he astonished the vulgar. In 1790, or 1791, he visited the city of Durham, accompanied by his wife and daughter. His travelling equipage consisted of an old rumbling coach, drawn by a pair of sorry hacks; and his two black servants wore green liveries with red collars. They were sent round the town, blowing trumpets and delivering bills of their master’s performances. These were—in the daytime, a microscope; in the evening, electrical experiments, in which the black cats—‘the doctor’s devils’—played their parts in yielding electric sparks; tricks of legerdemain concluded the entertainments. He was a tall, thin man, dressed in a black gown and square cap; he is said to have been originally a soldier in the Prussian service. In one of his advertisements he states that he was a colonel in the ‘Death’s Head’ regiment of hussars, a terrific prognostic of his ultimate profession. He had many mishaps in his conjuring career; once he sent up a fire balloon, which, falling upon a hay-stack, set it on fire, and it was consumed, when