[Graham, James and Gustavus Katerfelto] | A league of showmen who are all talk and no skill.

[Graham, James and Gustavus Katerfelto]

The Quacks. London: W. Humphrey, 17 March 1783

Engraved print (254 x 355 mm). Matted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas.

Two renowned quacks demonstrate the superiority of each other's experiments and inventions in this satirical print. On the left, Graham, a quack, fashionable doctor, and visionary, stands on the glass insulators used in his experiments with electricity, which are placed on top of a podium in the form of an E.O. (gaming) table, a reference to the illegal gambling he patronized at his residence. He straddles a long tube signed "Prime Conductor | Gentle restorer | Largest in the World." Behind the table stand two gigantic porters employed at his medical establishment on fashionable Pall Mall in London, named "Gog and "Magog." The placard around Gog's neck, "The Temple of Health & of Hymen," is a reference to Graham's "Celestial bed" for curing sterility. For fifty pounds a couple could spend a night on the bed which was borne up on forty pillars of colored glass, perfumed with flowers and spices, and humming with vivifying electricity. Graham once declared: "The barren certainly must become fruitful when they are powerfully agitated in the delight." 

On the right side of the image, his opponent—the quack, conjurer, and showman Katerfelto—crouches next to a cylindrical conductor signed "Positively Charg'd." The trident inserted in the rear of the conductor touches a grindstone turned by the devil. Electric sparks shoot from the front end and from Katerfelto's right thumb and index finger. Some sparks drop on a toy cannon that is aimed at Graham. His podium is an open container constructed of flimsy planks posted with a sign "Reservoir for Dead Insects destroy'd by Dr. Katterf[elto]." Katerfelto arrived in Britain in 1776 and performed in London from 1780 to 1784. The widespread flu epidemic of 1782 made him famous as a quack, when he used a solar microscope to show images of microbes (i.e., his "insects") he believed were its cause. He was an accomplished conjurer, performing with an "evil" black cat and lectured on electricity and magnetism, inventing the terms "styangraphy, palenchics, and caprimantic arts" to impress his audience.

REFERENCE:

Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Division I, political and personal satires, v. 5, no. 6325. See https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1868-0808-4952