The Quack Doctor, 1866 (w/c & bodycolour on paper)

A quack sells a green bottle of some remedy from the back of a fly to the gullible populace of a country village, whilst his accomplice at the reins is ready to take flight if things get difficult, as they might now that a suspicious parson (to the left, on horseback) has arrived. Quacks were part of life in the mid Nineteenth Century, making outrageous claims: one, ‘Dr.’ Sibley, even went so far as to claim that his Reanimating Solar Tincture would ‘restore life in the event of sudden death.’ Perhaps the most successful quack was ‘Professor’ Thomas Holloway, who marketed his pills and ointments with huge advertising campaigns. It was said that he once sent Dickens (whom Green knew well, having illustrated The Old Curiosity Shop) a cheque for £1,000 if he would just mention his remedies in one of his serialised novels (Dickens didn’t).