The Mighty Healer: Thomas Holloway's Victorian Patent Medicine Empire

by Verity Holloway

Verity Holloway’s nineteenth-century cousin Thomas Holloway’s patent medicine empire was so ubiquitous, Charles Dickens commented that if you’d murdered someone with the name Holloway, you’d think their spirit had come back to torment you. Advertising as far away as the pyramids in Giza, it was said Holloway’s Ointment could cure lesions on a wooden leg.

Bottling leftover cooking grease in the kitchen of his parents’ Cornish pub, Thomas’s dubious cure-alls made him one of the richest self-made men in England. Promising to save respectable Victorian invalids ‘FROM THE POINT OF DEATH’ (his capitals), the self-proclaimed ‘Professor’ Holloway used his millions to build the enormous Gothic Holloway College and Holloway Sanatorium for the insane.

But Thomas was a man of contradictions. To his contemporaries, he was simultaneously ‘the greatest benefactor to ever live’ and no better than a general who led millions to their deaths. Aware of the uselessness of his own products, he believed the placebo effect was well worth the subterfuge and never ridiculed his customers. A ruthless businessman, he was deeply in love with his wife and cared for the education of young women.

The Mighty Healer charts Thomas’s rise and the realization of his worst fear – that rival company Beechams would one day take him over – plus the very Victorian squabbling over his fortune by his respectable and not-so-respectable relations. It draws on primary and secondary sources to ground Thomas’s life in the social issues of the day, including women’s education, Victorian mental healthcare, contemporary accounts of debtors’ gaols, and of course the patent medicine trade of the mid-Victorian period; the people who took the medicine, and those who fiercely opposed it.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

256 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2016

About the author

The short version…

Art, history, folklore, and bad medicine. I wrote Pseudotooth, Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs and The Mighty Healer. I have Marfan syndrome, but my symmetry is still fearful.

And the long…

Born in Gibraltar in 1986, I grew up following my Navy family around the world. Always on the move, dealing with the effects of my connective tissue disorder, Marfan syndrome, I found friendly territory in fantasy, history, and Fortean oddities.

In 2007, I graduated from Cambridge’s Anglia Ruskin University with a First Class BA in Literature and Creative Writing. I went on to earn a Distinction Masters in Literature with special focus on Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The House of Life.

My short stories and poems have been variously published. My story Cremating Imelda was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and in 2012 I published my first chapbook, Contraindications. My ‘delightfully weird’ novella, Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs, was released in 2015, and in October 2016 Pen & Sword will publish my first non-fiction book, The Mighty Healer: Thomas Holloway’s Patent Medicine Empire, a biography of my Victorian cousin who made his fortune with questionable remedies. Unsung Stories published my novel Pseudotooth in March 2017.

Find me at verityholloway.com.

Reviews

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Verity Holloway in "The Mighty Healer: Thomas Holloway's Victorian Patent Medicine Empire" which I won through Goodreads Giveaways takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the life of her nineteenth-century cousin Thomas Holloway who not only made his wealth selling a homemade concoction that was advertised as a cure-all, but also became one of Britain's leading philanthropists generously building a college for women and a sanatorium for the insane. A hard-nosed businessman he not only collected works of art like Landseer's infamous painting "Man Proposes" but also the profitable Holloway Bank loaned money to the French in the war against Prussia. Yet although he was a quack and adopted "Professor" before his name, Thomas was a man of contradictions living humbly, loving his wife and becoming one of the nation's greatest benefactors.

Yet Thomas's life was not without problems. In a business that spread beyond the shores of England he had to deal with harsh criticism, competition, and fraudsters in America, fearing the worst near the end of his life; that a rival company would one day take over his enterprise. Although deeply in love with his wife Jane, the couple never had any children so after his death his fortune became a bone of contention among his relations.

In a period in history when a doctor's care was expensive and they were still ignorant of most contagious diseases, the working man turned to affordable pills and ointments becoming prey to quacks who were happy to supply them for a price. Although Holloway's pills were made from kitchen ingredients and little more than a laxative, others brought death with additives like mercury. Yet with his eye for advertising, a positive endorsement probably because of their placebo effect, and his adoption of "Professor" behind his name Thomas Holloway's wealth multiplied as his cure-call gained popularity.

A well-researched memoir complete with photographs and quotes, Verity Holloway brings to life an historic age and a staid society where an ambitious son of a Cornish publican uses his intellect to formulate a fraud that would bring an overabundance of wealth which he used to invest in the future of his nation, building the Gothic Holloway College for the education of women and a sanatorium that promised a cure for the mentally insane. Although a ruthless businessman Thomas Holloway seems more of a hero than a villain with his love for his wife, his humble lifestyle and a kind heart that was preyed upon by his financially destitute relations.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Thomas who the Egyptians called "a healing genius", and will recommend this novel to others.

[RRenske · Rating 4 out of 5]

*I received a copy of this book through a Goodreads Giveaway, thank you! However, it doesn't affect my review.*

As a daughter of two doctors, this book seemed an interesting read. Verity Holloway wrote a insightful book about the life and work of Thomas Holloway. Her writing style is pleasant and clear, while the book contains a ton of details. The different chapters gave me a good sense of the core information about this quack doctor. I think Verity was very thorough while writing this book and also gives the reader a good sense of the Victorian time Thomas lived in.

In my opinion, this is a very good book, but my ratings also reflect how much I enjoyed reading a book. I did enjoy reading this book, but I wasn't captivated enough by it to read it all in one go, hence the 4 stars.

[Mich Must Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

The mighty healer is about a Victorian man named Thomas Holloway. He was one of the most famous quacks of the age who was a philanthropist. He was also a champion of women’s education, which was really rare for the time. Even many women thought that a woman’s life was about “being” rather than “knowing”. While this book is about Holloway and his deeds through life, my deep interest in this book became the larger picture of Victorian society. There is quite a bit of information about institutions such as debtors prisons, asylums and the general public's view about who were in them. This is an excellent book for anyone interested historical marketing, and commerce. By telling this specific story, you understand a bit of the commerce and business practices of Victorian business people. This includes the mindset of potential customers of the time as well. For instance, Victorians often took many different types of “curatives” at one time, including those prescribed by a real physician. The reasoning being that one would hit the intended target. Alongside this lovely historical narrative are pictures of the marketing, product packaging, and satire from the time. All of this lent to a book that I read in no time. Excellent!

www.michmustread.com