In and About Drury Lane, and Other Papers: Volume 2 by Dr. Doran - HTML preview

FOOTNOTE:

[1] It was his son, by a former marriage, who became Lord Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham.

[2] Graham first appeared in London in 1782. He was a graduate of Edinburgh, wrote in a bombastic style, and possessed a great fluency of elocution. He opened in Pall Mall a mansion which he called the ‘Temple of Health.’ The front was ornamented with an enormous gilt sun, a statue of Hygeia, &c. The rooms were superbly furnished, and the decorations, mirrors, &c., gave to the whole the appearance of an enchanted palace. Single admission to his lectures on health and the birth of children cost two guineas—a sum readily given. The Goddess of Health usually delivered a supplementary lecture when the doctor concluded. When two guinea auditors were exhausted, his two gigantic porters, decked in gorgeous liveries, deluged the town with bills stating that the lectures would be delivered at one guinea each. The descending scale ultimately reached half-a-crown, and at last he exhibited the Temple of Health itself at one shilling per head. Its chief attraction was a ‘celestial bed,’ with rich hangings and glass legs. The quack promised such results from merely sleeping on this enchanted couch that married persons of high rank and respectability were known to have given one hundred pounds for the accommodation. Persons more foolish still and as highly exalted were found who gave him one thousand pounds for a supply of his ‘elixir of life.’ He then, when dupes were not grown scarce, but required variety in the means of imposition, took to the practice and public exhibition of earth-bathing. He and his goddess stood an hour each day immersed to the chin in earth, above which their heads appeared, dressed in the extravagant fashion of the day. In this position he delivered a lecture on the salubrity of the practice at sums for single admissions which commenced at a guinea and ended at a shilling. When all London had heard and seen him he made a provincial tour; but, in spite of his elixir of life, he died at the early age of fifty-two; and, in spite of the facility with which he gained money, he died in poverty. The famous Mrs. Macaulay married his brother, and Dr. Arnold, of Leicester, the author of an able treatise on insanity, married his sister. In the profession of the most impudent quackery Dr. Graham has never been equalled, either for impudence or the success which attended it.