Weaponized Witch Bottles

Fighting Witches & Demons with bottles and other things ever since the 1600s

The year is 1644. You left your home in a bustling town in England and now find yourself living in a small house – not much more than a cabin – in the woods of the Massachusetts Bay Colony not far from Salem. All you can see beyond the land you’ve cleared is woods – on all sides. Your nearest European neighbor is a quarter mile away, but you and your family catch glimpses of the people you call Indians in the shadows of the trees, or even brazenly coming out in the open, walking up to one of your farm animals, or looking in a window, or even an open door. You sometimes refer to them as “savages” because their clothes, language, homes, and lifestyles are so different from yours; your minister has preached that they are servants of the Devil.

There’s much more to fear in the wilds of original Lynn, like bears, cougars, bobcats, moose, rattlesnakes, and wolves. Any day can become a nightmare. But nighttime makes it still worse.

Your house provides some safety from the wild animals and Indians at night, but evil can still find its way inside. In spirit form, witches and their familiars (animals like cats, rats, squirrels, and mice) can get into the house through the smallest openings: under the door, a hole in the wall, or even the keyhole, and most easily, down the chimney (Figure 1). Then nothing can stop them from cursing your child or spouse with sickness, pain, and even death.

Figure 1. Witch Attack. A witch in spirit form preparing to fly through an opening into the house. Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus: Or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions (1681)

The Bible Told Me So

Colonists had no doubt that witches and the devil were real because the Bible told them so. Exodus 22:18 reads, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” It was a clear statement that witches existed. And the Bible also stated many times that the Devil was very real and dangerous: “Be sober; be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walketh about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” 1 Peter 5:8

When a sickness seemed unusual or didn’t yield to available medicines, it was called “unnatural” and suspected to have been caused by a witch’s curse. The doctor who authored this book (Figure 2) had no doubt about the source of several unusual and uncommon sicknesses and diseases; they couldn’t be explained or cured and thus, he stated without any doubt, they were the work of witchcraft.

Figure 2. Diseases Caused by Witchcraft. “Unnatural” illnesses that were unknown and/or incurable by doctors must therefore have been caused by witchcraft. William Drage, Daimonomageia: A Small Treatise of Sickness and Diseases from Witchcraft (1665)

The fear of witchcraft was not simply a phenomenon of 1692 – it was widespread throughout New England and the limited existing records document over 200 cases starting as early as 1647 and there are 33 known executions (of which Salem accounts for only 19). The records for the fate of 69 others have not yet been found, so those put to death could be a higher number. 59 confessed to being witches, largely the result of fear, interrogation techniques, and the miseries of incarceration.

Their ministers preached that faith, obedience, and prayer were the proper defense against witchcraft, but terrible, unexplainable things were still happening to the faithful and some felt the need to do more than just pray. You might pray that a fox wouldn’t attack your chickens, but you were still going to get your gun and shoot, if it tried. So how could they better defend their loved ones? And how could they protect their families at bedtime, When the candles were all blown out?

One option was turn to the Bible for God’s clues for protection. The Bible was considered to be full of symbolic messages like the power of certain numbers:

• For example: 3 for the Holy Trinity (the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), 5 for the wounds of Christ, 12 for the apostles, and more.

• Bushes of mountain ash were often planted around the outside of the house because the 5-pointed pentagram pattern on each berry was believed to be a sign that God would protect the house against evil.

• A braid of 12 garlic bulbs hung behind an outside door was hoped to ward off witches and thieves.

Colonists also turned to the secret practices of family and friends. Some used methods of ritualized protection to keep their family and farm animals safe. When they had lived in Great Britain, they and their relatives and friends had folklore traditions for generations – of carving or drawing special protection symbols and hiding ritual objects in their homes and barns – all to keep their families and animals safe from witches. The protective marks and objects were designed to either trap or repel evil spirits. 

But ministers like Increase and Cotton Mather called it counter-magic and white magic. They warned that using white magic to fight a witch’s black magic was playing into the Devil’s hands because ALL magic was of the Devil  … but the fearful were desperate.

Figure 3. Two Hexafoils. It was a solar symbol, believed to invoke the light of the sun in the dark spirit world, thus keeping witches and other evil demons (who thrived in darkness) away from the house. Photograph by author.

Ritual Protection Marks

The hexafoil is just one example of protective marks that have been found in homes still standing in what was Massachusetts Bay Colony (Figure 3). Also known as the “daisy wheel,” it is a solar symbol that has been traced back to Roman antiquity (the petals representing the sun's rays) [Hexafoil stems from the German word hexen, which means witches.]

Protective marks like the hexafoil were placed near doors, windows, and around fireplaces, the openings where evil could easily enter the home. Protective objects were hidden behind walls and under floors, the fireplace hearth, or the threshold of doors.  

  Protecting one’s home or barn from witches required no expense or special skills. The marks were easily made with the sharp point of a knife, scissors, compass, or nail, and ritual objects were items around the house and barn that were being repurposed instead of discarded. It was believed that these simple marks and ordinary objects magically transformed in the spirit world into weapons and traps to catch, repel, and even kill witches.          

The early colonists believed broken items in this world were whole in the spirit world; weak things became strong; what was dark here was light there; “dead” (or nonfunctioning) here became “alive” in the world of spirits, just like the crucified Jesus Christ was resurrected from death and became alive again. Thus, a hexafoil solar symbol carved into the wall around your fireplace was glowing like the sun in the spirit world, keeping witches and other demons (Satan’s minions loved darkness but hated light) away from the house and your family.

The protective marks are rarely dated but the protective objects often can be. Many ritual protection marks been found in the few 17th century New England homes still standing, but objects have been found in them that date as late as the 1890s. Other New England homes built after the 1720s have also been found to have ritual protection marks and objects. After 1692, the church and the law backed away from accusing and convicting suspected witches. Without the church and the courts protecting them, some people continued to protect themselves from evil and “bad luck” throughout the 1700s and 1800s, and even into the early 20th century. Here are a few examples.

In 1846 the Salem Register described supernatural events occurring in the 1600s very near the Corning family’s home in Beverly.

• One story was of a large number of black cats that tormented a man with their caterwauling “for some deed of darkness he had done”; he was only able to pacify them by psalm singing.  When the man died, “these supposed agents of the other world … completely covered his coffin; and upon being disturbed, all made their exit up the chimney, bearing, as was supposed, the spirit of their victim with them”  [an example of evil using the chimney as an entrance and exit from the house].

• Another “eccentric” individual on the same street was also described; he practiced “witchcraft and superstition .… Among other things, he kept by him the hand taken from the corpse of a first-born male child, in which he contended he could place a light of the most brilliant character and carry it anywhere, unperceived by anyone except himself” [another example of light in the dark spirit world.]

Ritual Protection Objects: Weaponized Bottles

Bottles had a key role in ritual protection from witches and evil. The first bottles the colonists used were the ones they carried with them from Europe – sturdy salt-glazed stoneware that contained beer or wine, or sometimes mercury. Once empty, the bottles were repurposed, just like the colonist's other few possessions in this new world.

Figure 4. Bartmann Bottle with “Angry” face, about 1650. At its base is a modern recreation of typical “witch bottle” contents: nails, a fabric heart pierced by bent pins, and human hair with fingernail clippings. Collection of author.

Figure 5. Close-up of a Bartmann Bottle with "Fear" face, about 1650. Collection of author.

These old bottles were called Bartmann (meaning “bearded man”) in the area of Cologne, Germany, where they were made, and Bellarmine in Great Britain and the colonies, where over 100,000 were used. Bartmann’s were anthropomorphic, with its face on the neck and bulbous belly, and there was something else that made them perfect for the task: those produced in the mid-17th century most often had either an angry or fearful expression. I believe the sinister facial expressions were a graphic reflection of the public’s terror during the intensive persecution and eradication of suspected witches from among family members and friends during those decades (over 2,000 were burned at the stake as witches in the area of Cologne, which had a population of just 40,000; so about 5 of every 100 people were executed for witchcraft), as well as showing anger towards their enemies whom they suspected were witches. The early Bartmanns (made in the 1500s) were crafted with faces that were jolly and smiling or no expression at all; but by the mid-1600s, during the witchcraft persecutions, the expression had changed to angry (Figure 4) or fearful (Figure 5).

A household in the American colonies that was troubled by witchcraft would repurpose the bottle by adding the urine of the sick person and sometimes their hair, nail clippings, and a piece of fabric cut into the shape of a heart. The bottle thus filled with body parts and fluids of the family member who was believed to be bewitched with some unnatural illness was designed to trick the spirit of the witch into attacking the decoy bottle instead of the actual person. The iron nails and pins (usually in multiples of three) it contained would then impale the witch’s spirit that had dove into the bottle, causing the actual witch pain, either killing her or getting her to stop her bewitchment of the sick family member. X-rays have shown such bottles found that have been with contents that included nails, hair, and pins floating in liquid that was subsequently analyzed to be urine (Figures 6 & 7).      

Figure 6. Bartmann X-ray, showing nails and finernails floating in a liquid. Photo: Alan Massey / R. J. Bostock

Figure 7. Bartmann bottle with dry contents removed, including 9 nails, 1 pin, and a fabric heart. (c) Museum of London,

Continued Use of Witch Bottles: 19th-21st Centuries

The idea of putting counter-curses or charms in bottles has continued ever since the days when people had intense fear of witches and their demons. They’re still being found buried and hidden in old buildings and washing up on beaches. Just a few examples are included here from Virginia, Louisiana, and Texas.

Figure 8. Civil War era Witch Bottle; Virginia, ca.1862-1863. Blog post, "Possible Civil War witch bottle found in Virginia," The History Blog, 24 JAN 2020.

Figure 8 shows an aqua squat soda embossed CHAS GROVE / COLA PA that was found near an old brick hearth at the site of an old fort ("Redoubt 9") in York County, Virginia. Archeologists have dated the find to 1862-1863 and the bottle was "full of broken nails"; its contents and location near the old hearth made them speculate that it was used to repel evil - a possible Civil War era witch bottle.

Figure 9. Mid-19th Century Voodoo (?) Bottle; found in New Orleans, Louisiana. Article, "Eerie 'witch bottle' dug up on west bank. Worried observers tell finder to 'Put it back!' " Doug MacCash, Times Picayune, 10 JUL 2020

Suspected of being an instrument of voodoo, the bottle in Figure 9 may have been constructed to fight evil or to cast a spell. It was found in a house site dated to the mid-1800s at Algiers Point in New Orleans, Louisiana. A news report explained, "[It] may have beenused as a protection spell for the property. It also may have been used in voodoo to cast a different spell. ... [It was] said to have been found in an area formerly populated by a Catholic church, Afro-caribbean voodoo practies, and 'witchy-type fortune teller people.' " Its contents included an unknown (and not yet analyzed) liquid, hair, a tooth, and an earwig. Public reaction to the possible voodoo find has been to put the unsettling bottle back where it was found, apparently to avoid the possibility of bad mojo. (Are we really so different from our superstitious colonial ancestors?)

Figure 10. Ocean Witch Bottle; Texas coast. Mid-late 20th century. Article, “Eerie “witch bottles’ found along Gulf of Mexico, and even researchers are creeped out,” Christina Coulter, Fox News, 26 NOV 2023.

The final witch bottle shown in this article was found rolling in with the waves onto a Texas beach (Figure 10). It is a mid- to late 20th century light aqua whiskey bottle covered in barnacles and mollusks that have attached to the surface, but inside is a lot of unidentified plant matter and liquid, deliberately placed and sealed. Multiple bottles have been found on beaches from North Padre Island to Matagorda Island. The Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi believe these bottles that have been washing ashore likely originated in the Caribbean or South America. The plant matter and liquids have not yet been analyzed by the university. A mysterious message from another place.

WHAT DID YOU FIND??

I would like to document all possible finds of witch bottles in the United States and my bottle hunting friends are in the best position to find such bottles. If you find a bottle with any combination of liquid, nails, pins, hair, teeth, bones, thorns, hear shapes, and finger or toenail clippings inside, please let me know about your find! What was found, where, by whom, and when. Was it found behind a wall or under where a fireplace, door, or window was located? Maybe YOU have found America’s next “witch bottle”!! I will post all finds here on promisingcures.com!

Write to me at promising.cures@gmail.com and send me pictures of your possible witch bottle find!

One final point of interest: the first U.S. souvenir spoon ever made was the Salem spoon in 1891. It features a witch with just her broom – no cat, crescent moon, or bats – She seems agitated, aggressively pointing either to the name Salem or  further down the stem to three round-headed pins. 2 centuries had passed since the Salem Witch Trials, but those who designed the spoon still remembered that the pins were put in bottles to fight witches – perhaps it was a little reminder, just in case Salem had another witch scare!

Figure 11. Witch Bottle Reminder. The country’s first souvenir spoon was created two centuries after their famous witch trials and executions; a tribute to Salem, Massachusetts, it showed a witch pointing to three pins that were symbolic of those that had been put in “witch bottles” to destroy her or at least force her to remove her curse of an afflicted family member. Collection of the author.

Advertising trade card, ca. 1895. The witch door knoker is to the left; to the right is the Lincoln Imp door knocker, based on the stone carving of it is found in the Lincoln Cathedral, England. The imp was sent by the devil to cause havoc in the church but was soon turned into stone by an angel, or so the story goes. Knock on that for a minute. Collection of the author.

Postscript

While the silversmith in the U.S. was perpetuating the symbolism of ritual protection against witches in his spoon design, another entrepeneur in Great Britain had designed a "Witch Door Knocker," complete with the devil riding on the back of the witch whom he controlled to do his bidding against people. Perhaps the symbolic message of the homeowner was meant to be, "We know who you are; you can knock but you can't come in!"

Fear of evil in the form of witches and devils continues on today, mixed into our psyche, making us still nervous about things that go bump in the night. ... Uh-oh, I've gotta go: I think I just heard a strange sound in that dark corner over there ...

Until next time, this is Promising Cures and I'm you're host --Andy Rapoza

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine

The Big Green Bottle, Full of Miracles & Tragedy

In the early 1880s, Jacob Welch had accomplished having the biggest furniture store in Lynn, Massachusetts, and he felt he could achieve the same success running a medicine business, just like his friend Charles Pinkham was doing. Brimming with money, Welch just needed to find some medicine in which to invest.

For many decades, Robert W. Lougee, alias Dr. Lougee, had been making and selling his three medicines: Dr. Lougee’s Vitalizing Compound, the Juniper Kidney Cure, and Clover Cure “for female weakness,” and he was happy to share an enthralling backstory of how they came to be.

He told his tale of being a “bright and active boy” of thirteen, “unusually intelligent and observing for his years,” and having been the assistant of an Indian doctor “in the wilds of the Granite State” (New Hampshire), tasked with gathering roots and herbs for his medicines, “the potent arcana of the forest that formed his dwelling-place.” But at 70 years old, after a long career of making and selling the medicines on his own, he was ready to sell his secret recipes and his name. In Jacob Welch he had found the prize – an enthusiastic investor. Welch sold his share of the furniture business for $25,000 in 1885, and with those funds, started the Lougee Medicine Company in Lynn.

The formulas that Lougee turned over to Welch were full of the botanical ingredients he had learned about as a youthful assistant to that Indian doctor; they ranged from pumpkin seeds in the Clover Cure to juniper berries in the kidney cure. The Vitalizing Compound was an especially involved mixture of ten ingredients steeped in whiskey: one pound each of wormwood, mandrake, and burdock root; two pounds each of wintergreen, buchu, sarsaparilla, black cherry bark, blood root, and Peruvian bark; and one quart of burnt sugar, all to stand in a barrel of whiskey for about ten days. Now the furniture mogul and the old backwoods healer would work together at making this medicine business a success, just like the Pinkhams had been doing less than a mile away.

Welch took what Lougee had started and redesigned it around a compelling new Lynn testimonial that he hoped would be symbolic of his medicines’ efficacy and profitability:

Lynn, Mass., April 12, 1887. Eight years ago our daughter, Lena, then eight years of age, had a severe attack of Diphtheria, resulting in blood-poisoning, which developed into Scrofula. A malignant ulcer appeared upon her throat, eating away the flesh, and exposing the cords and muscles of the neck, till there was danger of some of the arteries being severed, and she would bleed to death. Another equally virulent ulcer attacked the right leg at the knee, seriously affecting the entire limb. The flesh under the knee was completely eaten away, laying bare the cords and tendons, presenting as did also the throat, a most repulsive and sickening sight. She was completely prostrated; her sufferings were most intense, and her condition in every sense was truly pitiable. … Five years ago last March an experienced and skillful Lynn physician was called, and by his advice she was taken to the country. There she received treatment for three months, after which time, unimproved, she was brought back to Lynn. Another skilled physician of this city then took the case, and at the expiration of two weeks advised her removal to the Massachusetts General Hospital, with the remark, “It is a critical case.”

Five doctors at the hospital told the family to just make Lena as comfortable as possible because that was all that could be done for her at that point. The most recent Lynn physician they had consulted was a Boston surgeon specializing in scrofula, but his efforts didn’t help either, so the parents then took their daughter to a lady physician who treated her for 15 months. While she relieved Lena’s suffering somewhat, no cure was accomplished.

Then we resorted to patent medicines. She took nearly two hundred bottles of one remedy in fifteen months, and followed this with forty bottles of another. As she continued to fail … Dr. R. W. Lougee was sent to us. … Upon taking Dr. Lougee’s Vitalizing Compound she began at once to improve, and our pardonable skepticism as to its great virtues was speedily removed. Soon the ulcers began to heal and the cavities to fill with new and healthy tissue, built up by this truly wonderful remedy. To-day nothing remains to indicate the frightful condition of which we have spoken … Her recovery is looked upon … as little short of a miracle, and our gratitude to Dr. Lougee for his agency in that blessed consummation is unspeakable. We hope the knowledge of his great specific, rightly named the Vitalizing Compound, may be spread far and wide. … Our residence is 677 Boston street. We will be pleased to answer all inquiries.

                                                              Mr. R. C. Judkins.

                                                              Mrs. R. C. Judkins.

Label on the bottle's back side.

To keep this miracle in the minds of every shopper, the big green bottle of Vitalizing Compound was adorned with an equally large label featuring a striking image of a healthy, vibrant Lena Judkins preparing to place a floral crown on the head of the venerable, seated doctor. In equally dramatic and varied Victorian type styles the message surrounding the trademarked image read,

Dr. Lougee Your Vitalizing Compound Saved My Life.

Lena’s parents had twice suffered the devastating loss of their other two children within the first two years of life; they were frantic to keep their teenage daughter Lena alive, and by their observations, it seemed that Lougee's Vitalizing Compound succeeded where all others had failed – Lena had healed! Their glowing testimonial of gratitude concluded with the final praise, “Is it not eminently fitting that our daughter, whose life he has thus saved, should crown the aged physician with an immortal wreath of honor?” Lena and Dr. Lougee would live on forever in the drawing on the label.

Unfortunately, from the outset, the Welch’s new medicine business sputtered, despite the miracles it performed upon Lena. Sales and cures came in fits and spurts, while expenses, especially from advertising, oozed steadily like a festering wound. There were occasional customers that said they received some benefit from the medicines, but more letters came in  from those who did not and were looking for their money back. The money was returned to a semi-literate man from Ossippee, New Hampshire, who had written,

I baut this bottle full of your Medicine and they gave me one trial bottle down to rochester on the fair ground[. I] carred it home and took it acording to Derections the man that sold it to me Booked my name and residence and all and thare was a soap man with him[.] they both told me to take it and if it did not do me any good they would return the money if I sent them the bottle to Dr Lougee Lynn Mass. I took both bottles and I want [wasn’t] so well as I ws when I begun to take … .

Similarly, another dissatisfied customer from Claremont, New Hampshire, wrote, “Sins [since] your Medicine has no effect on me I shall expect the dollar by return mail. the medicine does not help me at all.”  Like the others who bought with hope, a man from Concord, New Hampshire, wrote to “Dr Lougee” as submissively as a patient consulting in person with his doctor, even though he was very worried about his situation:

I comence to take your Medicine having Been troble with Schofler [probably scrofula] for a Number of years very Bad. Having a Soure [sore] on my side that had not been heald for 8 years. I have taken 2 Bot[tles] of your Vitalizing Compond and the out side of my Bodie came out all coverd with humor and it Itched all the time. Please Inform me if this is the way the Medicin work on Schofler [scrofula] it is almost a week Since it came out so. I can not see any thing that done it But the Medicin. … .

Label on the bottle's front side.

By August 1888, Welch had used up all $25,000 of his money to build up the business but had poor results – only about $7,000 in sales. He spent far more than he should have on advertising, not to mention his contractual obligation to bankroll old doctor Lougee twelve dollars weekly. There were also the medicine production costs and the expenses and salaries of his traveling salesmen that all kept cutting into dwindling capital. His medicine company had quickly become an open wound, hemorrhaging money. Panicking, he then made matters even worse for himself, trying to staunch the bleeding by lending the business his own money - what he had saved to take care of himself and his family.

Disillusioned and despondent, Welch arranged with Charles Pinkham to take over the manufacture of his medicines at the Pinkham laboratory. The Lougee Company formulas and business records were turned over to Charles and all of its stock and fixtures were loaded into the Pinkham laboratory; then Welch went to New Hampshire where a few weeks later, in a final act of utter desperation, he committed suicide by cutting his throat. He had left his wife and two children with almost nothing on which to live; their future lay in Charles Pinkham’s hands and stacked up on his laboratory floor.

In honor of his friend’s memory and for the sake of Welch’s wife and children, Charles tried to make the Lougee products work, but he was careful not to invest Pinkham company money in the risky Lougee business and aggressive advertising. At Charles’ recommendation, Welch’s family turned over the company to the advertising agency in less than two years. Pinkham’s medicine business soared into history but Lougee’s disappeared into oblivion.

The only known memorial to Dr. Lougee or Jacob Welch are the scarce bottles of Dr. Lougee’s Vitalizing Compound. It is an unusually large and heavy medicine bottle; standing at nine inches tall and weighing in at a chunky 1 lb 8-plus ounces (without liquid contents), it was a commanding presence on store shelves and in a shopper’s hands. It just wasn’t good enough to cure customers or to keep Jacob Welch alive. 

For more on Dr. Lougee and Jacob Welch, see:

PROMISING CURES, Vol.3,

Chapter 9: Heroine Addiction

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine

Mercy Quimby & the Clairvoyant Physician

It happened one night about 35 years ago at an ephemera show in Boston, Massachusetts – a few minutes of my life that I haven’t forgotten. It’s one of those unremarkable yet unexplainably vivid memories that stays with you until you, too, become a memory.

I was searching for something at the show that was searching for me. I didn’t know what it was; I just knew that when I found it, I would know. The words would reach out and touch me in a way that told me they were from a life that was reaching out through decades or centuries, waiting for me to recognize them for the precious treasure they were – the only remaining words of a life that was at the brink of being forgotten forever.

In a quietly dark album stored behind the brilliant flashes of colorful advertising trade cards and shouting broadsides, was a small, old letter written in fading sepia ink, to the point that you instinctively blinked and squinted to have any chance of reading the faint writing. Despite the difficulties, the story shared itself – a century and a half past the life that had lived it.

It was the letter of a sick woman, desperate for health but with wavering faith that it would ever return to her. Lots of research later gave form to the correspondent: Her name was Mercy Quimby, age 54 and apparently too sick to write the letter herself; her 17-year-old daughter, Eliza, scribed for her mother. The well-intentioned teenager struggled with spelling and punctuation but at least had good penmanship.

“I have been to see a Clairvoyant Physician and Spiritual Medium Mrs Morrill(.)  I will send you her card.” And there it was – a porcelain card, still escorting the letter after all those years, foxed with the deterioration and imperfections that come to paper with age – its own form of liver spots:

MRS. J. H. MORRILL,

Clairvoyant Physician, and Spiritual Medium,

will examine and prescribe for the sick, at the following

PRICES:

First examination and prescription when the person to

be examined is present, $1.00, when absent, $2.00.

Each subsequent examination and prescription, half price.

Eliza noted that she was writing her mother’s letter from Thetford, Vermont, on July 29th, 1855. Thetford was one of those quiet, remote, boon-dock towns in a rural state full of boonies. It’s population of under 2,000 in 1855 had been on a two-decade slide and would continue to fall for 90 years more. And it was in this isolated area that Mercy Quimby feared she might not be long for the world. A year earlier she could walk a few miles and easily get in and out of a wagon. But “now I am so dizzy and weak I can scarsly perform the task and I am seldom able to walk to our nearest neighbour,” a distance of about a third of a mile.

She diagnosed herself as suffering from what Eliza wrote down as “apoplex shock.” Back then, the term was used to describe a variety of conditions, including an actual stroke, but much more often it was used to refer to seizures, or a quick onset of physical or mental exhaustion, and a flagging desire to do anything requiring energy. The apoplex shocks “follow me so closely,” Mercy dictated to Eliza, that she avoided sitting still for more than a few minutes at a time, for fear that the attacks would continue. “Last Thursday I had an unusual drowsy time for an hour and a severe shock succeeded it; [for a while] I thought my days wer finished.”

But the clairvoyant physician and spiritual medium had given her some hope.

“I went about three miles to see this lady We went into a retired room [a back room](.) she sat down shut her eyes and in a moment or two she says you have suffered a great deal(.) she acted and told me my complaints as to appearance as plain as you could disern anything with your naked eye(.) Then She began to direct me how to precede with my self and then precribe the medicine which I find makes me more comfortable while I live. I don’t know as it will lengthen it any …”

Eight years later, a mention of Mrs. J. H. Morrill in a spiritualist newspaper praised the clairvoyant physician as low-key and successful: “She does not advertise, or put out a sign, but has as many patients as any physician … and has effected more cures with her eyes closed than most M.D.s have after years of study and practice.”

Since Mercy had been told that Asa Risley’s wife (the friends to whom she was having her daughter write) had suffered apoplectic shocks after sitting and sewing for a while, her letter shared the directions the clairvoyant had given, thinking her friends might benefit too. While Mercy was only about three miles away from the clairvoyant, the Risleys lived about thirty miles away, across the Connecticut River in Piermont, New Hampshire, so figuring that they were too far away to visit the mysterious physician, sharing her remedial instructions was just something a friend should do:

“First when you rise in the morning before dressing have a pan with a little warm suds made of Castile soap(.) set your feet in it(.) taik a large cloth Squeeze it out in the suds rub your head and neck get some one to rub your back thoroughly keep the cloth warm with the suds then rub the whole system till the skin looks red(,) feet and all(.) for a change ocationaly take a damp cloth & sprinkle on mustard or Cayene(.) rub the whole system thoroughly with that(.) Drink no s(t)ale coffee(.) drink domestic coffee(;) if you wish drink allittle tea to keep your spirits good(.) let your food be vegatable much as you can eat(.) no warm bread of any kind(;) shun all pastry and biscuit(;) eat a little Brown bread verry light(;) wheat bread crackers suit me best(.) make no use of salt vituals nor any thing sour nor pepper(.) drink no cold water(.)

I know much of your trouble is humor in the blood and so is mine … I think you will be benefitted by following these directions(.) I think you will be able to take a little spirit which will warm and stimelate you and make your blood to circulate(.)”

Mercy told the Risleys that the clairvoyant physician’s instructions had helped: “Saturday I had quite a comfortable day”; but even with her endorsement of Mrs. Morrill, her letter suggested the relief was more shallow than deep, more temporary than permanent: “if you are able to make us a visit do not fail to come(.) it may be the last interview.”

Several more days passed before the letter was sent, almost as if her somber prophecy was being fulfilled. On July 30th she found herself dizzy and weak, deprived of energy and stamina. On the 31st she wrote, “Today rather more feeble … how tiresome are the passing hours especially toward night. ….” The next day, August 1st, bore the last and most ominous entry, “I am aware That my strength Daily decays(.)”

Mercy Quimby did, indeed, die of apoplexy … but she had cheated death by living for 28 more years, dying at 82 years old on 4 July 1883. Perhaps she hadn’t been as sick as she had thought, or maybe nature and her constitution were stronger than she had given them credit. But in Mercy's time of fear and need, a clairvoyant healer had closed her eyes and read her like a book, telling her what to do and giving her enough hope to get her through the rough times.

The older I get and the more my skin foxes, I feel privileged to be the steward of Mercy Quimby’s fearful moments and her gesture of kindness shared with friends. It is a treasure and a sacred trust; I hope I have honored her memory since she was so kind to reach out to me that night, long ago.

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine