Quacks, Eccentrics and Alternative Therapies,
Tales of Colonial Medicine

is divided into 3 themes:

1. Quacks

With no effective regulation of propriety medicines or medical practitioners, the nineteenth century was the golden age of quack potions, apparatuses like the electric belts, and the rather suspect practitioners and medical institutes, such as the Freeman and Wallace Electro-Medical Surgical Institute.


2. Eccentrics

Colonial medicine in Victoria was not without its eccentrics such as "Diamond Jim" James George Beaney who operated with diamond rings on his hands, and David Hailprin whose strange rituals for healing the sick included using dog fat. Both men were noted amongst their colleagues as somewhat unconventional in their theories and practice of medicine.


3. Alternative Therapies

Alternative therapists were very successful in the Australian colonies and offered the sick alternative treatments not available in conventional European medicine.


This exhibition includes such individuals as: Dr. James Lam See, Bendigo practitioner in Chinese traditional medicine; Johannes Gunst who founded the Homeopathic Hospital; George Milner Stephen, former Acting Governor of South Australia, who was renowned for his miraculous faith healing.


image - half our ills are catarrh - 44K image - man in bath - 17K

forward to Acknowledgements

back to previous page



Back to HMM Home Page] Published by the Australian Science Archives Project on ASAPWeb, August 1997
Prepared by: Lisa Cianci
Updated by: Elissa Tenkate
Date modified: 12 September 1997

[ Top of page | HMM Home Page | ASAPWeb ]