The Universal Restorative at Wendlebury Bridge

The bridge at Wendlebury had lost a pier, and the railway company, which had advertised the permanence of its works rather freely, was conveying its passengers across the river in a borrowed sheep-barge. I record this on 17 September 1864, while my boots dry beside an inn fire whose chief product is smoke. The interruption gave me two hours upon the western road, where I encountered a man selling health from the back of a yellow carriage. His board announced him as Mr Septimus Quill, Travelling Doctor and Alchemist. Beneath this stood a considerable catalogue of ailments, all apparently susceptible to the same brown liquid. I had gone over to enquire about the bridge; having read the board, I found that I had acquired another obligation.

Quill was a handsome Human of perhaps fifty, with magnificent cuffs and a voice admirably suited to making expenditure seem prudent. He was explaining to a Dwarven wheelwright that his Universal Restorative assisted whichever organ required assistance. I asked how it discovered the organ. He replied that the body possessed an intelligence of its own. I allowed that it managed digestion without consulting him, then asked what evidence connected this accomplishment with his bottle. “You are in the medical line, sir?” he said. I gave my name and chair, and explained that I was a scholar. He immediately offered me the professional discount. The wheelwright, whose name was Hessa Brant, laughed so heartily that Quill added laughter to the indications of returning vigour, although she had yet to purchase anything.

I requested leave to examine an opened bottle. Its brown colour and sharp odour suggested spirit carrying some bitter vegetable extract, and I said as much with a confidence which the subsequent examination did not justify. Quill obligingly brought out his ingredients: burnt sugar, water and a fragrant marsh-root sold locally for flavouring cakes. There was no spirit. I had mistaken an odour familiar from cordials for evidence of the substance in which I usually encountered it. Quill received my correction with intolerable grace. “We are both learning, Professor.” I told him that one of us had begun rather earlier, but acknowledged the error plainly. None of these ingredients, separately or together, supplied evidence for the extensive promises upon his board. He thereupon informed me that the virtue entered during preparation.

This virtue, he explained, was alchemical and could be recognised by a trained practitioner through a gentle warmth in the palms. I asked whether he employed a mage. He did not: concentration would have made production uneconomical. I told him that whether his preparation left any lasting change in the mixture was a fair question, and that the warmth in his palms at least gave us a claim we could test. He welcomed examination with the expansive air of a man who expected it to consist of further conversation. I purchased one bottle, borrowed four identical cups from the barge keeper, and proposed that Hessa fill two with restorative and two with river water while we turned our backs. Quill was to identify his preparation without touching or tasting it. He agreed, provided that hostile thoughts were excluded. I said I could undertake silence.

He selected two cups with beautiful deliberation. Hessa uncovered them; one contained each liquid. He explained that the river water had acquired a sympathetic influence from its neighbour. On a second trial he selected both cups of water, which he attributed to the greater freedom with which the influence travelled through an unmedicated fluid. Several passengers had now gathered, and I saw him preparing to turn their amusement into custom. I therefore congratulated him upon a discovery which would permit every purchaser to replenish a bottle indefinitely. Quill’s expression altered by perhaps a quarter of an inch. Dilution, he said, preserved the detectable influence while diminishing the curative force. This distinction had escaped him until the moment it threatened his receipts. I asked him to write it upon the board so that future purchasers might enjoy the benefit of our research.

Instead, he invited me behind the carriage to discuss the higher branches of the subject. I went, taking Hessa with me; she had conducted the experiment and was entitled to its interpretation. There I offered him a proposition: if the preparation itself possessed no demonstrated medicinal action, yet the ceremony of taking it encouraged a weary person to sit down and drink something, I could understand why an occasional customer reported feeling better. Would he permit me to describe his practice in those terms? He considered me carefully. “You may say, Professor, that I supply the occasion upon which the constitution remembers its duties.” I asked whether plain sweetened water, administered with equal ceremony, would supply the same occasion. “In a man of your attainments,” he said, “very probably.”

I pressed him. What, precisely, did he add which the customer could not obtain from a kitchen? He touched the label. “An expectation of improvement.” Hessa asked whether that was what she would have bought for eighteen pence. “Together with the bottle,” he replied, “which is of excellent glass.” I confess that I enjoyed this admission enough to overlook, for a moment, the woman waiting at the carriage with a child asleep against her shoulder. She had heard that the restorative could cure the shaking fever. Quill began to speak of supporting recovery, and I interrupted him. I made him tell her, in language requiring no interpretation, that he had no evidence it would cure her child. He did so, then offered directions to the infirmary at East Wendlebury. I paid her barge fare. Quill returned the coin she had already given him, observing that consultation remained complimentary.

Before we parted, I required him to remove the fever claim from his board. He objected to “required”, with some justice, since I possessed no authority over him; I replied that I possessed a loud voice and another forty minutes before departure. He fetched a rag. By the time the barge came, he had reduced his promises considerably and begun advertising a Pleasant Travelling Cordial, though I cannot claim to have reformed him. As I stepped aboard, he raised my purchased bottle for the assembled passengers to see. “Professor Veyne,” he announced, “has personally investigated the preparation and carries it away with him.” This was accurate. I explained, equally audibly, that I intended to use the bottle for collecting pond water. “An excellent closure,” he called after me. “You will find it keeps whatever virtue you put into it.”