Inside the York home which is a shrine to medical quackery

“I was 11 years old and one weekend a couple of friends and I decided to explore the old Victorian rubbish dump in the woods behind the school,” he says. “That’s what passed for a healthy pastime 40 odd years ago; to us it seemed like quite the playground.

“As we were digging around, I saw a piece of blue glass glinting in the light. I dug out this tiny blue ink bottle and I don’t know why, but I just loved it. I lived pretty close to the school so after that I asked the headteacher for permission to go digging there during the school holidays. I was hooked.”

That original glass bottle still sits on Jeremy’s sideboard, but it is now surrounded by dozens of others and his York home has become a bit of a shrine, not to ink, but to Georgian and Victorian medical quackery.

“I’ll admit it’s a bit niche, but then I guess some of the most interesting collections are,” says Jeremy, who worked overseas as a marine biologist before returning to Yorkshire 15 years ago. “Back in the 118th, 9th and early decades of the 20th century there were hundreds of different medicines that claimed to be able to cure all sorts of diseases. There was very little science behind any of them, but the most popular ‘remedies’ sold in their millions.”

Among Jeremy’s collection there are bottles with labels like the Great Dr Kilmer’s Swamp Root, which purported to offer relief from kidney, liver and bladder problems, and William Radam’s Microbe Killer, which featured a man beating death with a club on its side just in case anyone dated to doubt its miracle properties. One of the most popular of all was Daffy’s Elixir. Mentioned in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, it claimed to cure everything from consumption to piles, rickets and asthma.

However, while it listed aniseed, cochineal, fennel seed, rhubarb and saffron among its key ingredients, there was little natural about the treatment which later chemical analysis showed to be little more than a laxative made mostly from alcohol.

“There was definitely a placebo element to many of these quack medicines,” adds Jeremy, who as well as collecting the physical bottles has also researched the history of the men behind them. “I guess if you were feeling a bit grim and let a glug of Daffy’s Elixir run its course you would at least feel your system had been cleared out.

“Also back then syphilis was rife, incurable but and something of a taboo. Some thought that flushing your system out would cure sufferers of the disease. It didn’t, but many of these treatments preyed on people’s anxieties and fears nonetheless, including trying to persuade healthy people that they were actually at death’s door.

“Just like today people wanted a quick fix for their ailments, real or imagined, and if they could reach for a swig of tonic, which claimed to include some secret ingredient, that was good enough. I guess isn’t so different to today where people buy all sorts of bogus treatments online.

“A 150 years ago a lot of these so called medicines were relatively expensive, costing say 10 shillings when the average monthly wage was a little over 10 times that. There was an idea that if it cost a lot it must be good and the fact that almost all these cures were advertised in the pages of newspapers it gave them a sense of legitimacy.”

While these days Jeremy is no longer a regular at Victorian rubbish dumps, mainly because getting permission from landowners is trickier than it was when he was a schoolboy, he is always on the lookout for new additions to his collection and by browsing second hand bookshops he has also amassed an impressive library of related titles like Dr Brodum’s Guide to Old Age and the Indiscretions of Youth.

“The bottom of hedgerows and river banks are always worth a look, because that’s where bottles were often thrown when they were empty and they can lay there undisturbed for decades.

“Having said that, the great majority will have become chipped or broken, so when you do an unearth a particularly good example there is a real sense of satisfaction. However, these days I’ll admit that I get most of my bottles from either eBay or house clearances.”

Jeremy’s collection ranges from 1750 to 1850 and while the dates are slightly arbitrary that 100 years covers the period before the introduction of stringent medical regulation.

“Some of these treatments were marketed by people who genuinely believed in what they were selling,” says Jeremy. “However, while a number were one step up from the potions dished out by a local wise woman, many others were quite cynically driven by big business.

“In the 19th century securing the necessary patents to copyright a treatment cost around £500. That was a lot of money, but if you advertised it right these medicines were a licence to print money and some people became very rich on the back of them.”

Turlington’s Balsam of Life was among the most lucrative. Developed by English merchant Robert Turlington, he succeeded in obtaining a royal patent from King George II in 1744, which gave him the right to pursue anyone attempting to pass off their own product as his.

In his patent application Turlington claimed that the balsam contained 27 ingredients, and was effective in the treatment of “kidney and bladder stones, colic” and slightly more vaguely, something he described as “inward weakness”. With those claims expanded upon in a 46-page brochure, Turlington’s Balsam of Life quickly became popular in both England and American.

“Until the middle of the 19th century medicine was completely unregulated and in the 18th and 19th century a lot of it wasn’t very good, so it’s little wonder that people were happy to put their trust in something they could buy easily over the counter.

“For the most part these treatments didn’t do any good, but on the whole they also didn’t do any harm. However, some were genuinely dangerous.”

Mrs Wilmslow’s Soothing Syrup was one of them. Marketed as a cure all for fussy babies, it did exactly what it said on the label, but often with disastrous consequences. A mixture of morphine and alcohol, the recommended dosage was far too high and many babies given the syrup never woke up again.

“Some people might complain about the failings of the NHS today, but it’s not all that long ago that people really were taking their life in their hands every time they took a spoonful of so called medicine.”