Cancer Curers in Boston in 1790

Today we think about cancer at a cellular level. In the eighteenth century, cancers were visible growths, usually breaking out of healthy skin.

I don’t know if doctors would consider all such growths as cancers today, but I have no doubt many cases of what we call cancer went undiagnosed back then.

It’s interesting to see that cancer medicine was already a specialty. Indeed, there were doctors who appear to have treated those growths and nothing else.

Osgood Carleton wasn’t even the only Bostonian offering both arithmetic lessons and a cancer cure in the 1790s. John Pope, a Quaker, had been advertising those services since 1779, and after he died in 1796 his wife Hannah took over on the cancer practice.

Toward the end of his career John used the title “Dr.” in his ads. Hannah listed herself as a “cancer doctor” in the 1800 town directory. The Popes’ sons also offered the family cancer cure in other New England towns, as I discussed back here.

To promote his cancer treatment, as quoted yesterday, Osgood Carleton shared testimonials from two women in Haverhill, where he had lived before settling in Boston. In his 1995 article on Carleton, David Bosse suggested that he might have learned this cancer treatment from John Pope, perhaps being the Haverhill agent for that cure.

I think that’s unlikely since Carleton declared that he offered “a Powder, of his own manufacturing,” and never mentioned the more established Pope as a mentor. Indeed, once Carleton moved to Boston, the men were in competition in two fields. I expect there wasn’t much love lost between them.

Unfortunately, cancer specialists like the Popes and Carleton kept their methods secret. That makes it hard to compare their cures, understand how these cures were supposed to work, and assess if they did.

However, the vital records of Haverhill do tell us more about the women who signed those certificates for Carleton in 1787. Elizabeth Lecount, daughter of James and Mary (Davis) Lecount, was born on 14 Sept 1729 and died 23 Mar 1829, or more than forty years after applying Carleton’s powder.

Eunice (Stuard) Cass, widow of William, died 18 Sept 1820. Her birth is not listed in those records, but she and William had children from 1758 to 1775, suggesting she was in her fifties in 1787 and in her eighties when she died. It’s possible the person who signed this certificate was that woman’s teen-aged daughter Eunice, born in 1770; she married Asaph Kendall in 1794 and lived to 1808. Either way, considering the awful symptoms the certificate described, that looks like a success.

TOMORROW: Cancer treatment in Salem in 1790.

A Cancer Case from 1799

On 2 Aug 1802, the Connecticut Courant newspaper ran this article by Capt. Samuel Hall, then sixty-seven years old and living in East Haddam. He described Dr. John Pope, born in Boston in 1769 to John and Hannah Pope, a Quaker couple who had both listed themselves in town directories as “cancer doctors.”

About the year 1789, when living in Plainfield, in the state of Connecticut, I discovered a small spot on the calf of one of my legs, from which I soon began to experience considerable inconvenience. This spot gradually and regularly increased, till a malignant tumour formed under it, and the surface became covered with a dry scab.

The sore now became virulent and troublesome, and I applied for medical assistance. The best advice that could be obtained in that vicinity was improved; but without any beneficial effect. Eminent practitioners were procured from some distance from my residence: They pronounced the disorder a cancer; and applied every method of cure within their knowledge, yet all their exertions were vain, every mode of treatment proved ineffectual, and every experiment failed. My disorder increased to an alarming degree, baffling all medical skill, and my case becoming desperate, my physician totally gave me over and declared that I must die.

I then resigned all expectation of being restored, settled my earthly affairs, and gave myself up for a speedy dissolution. While I lay principally confined to my bed in hopeless anguish, suffering in my imagination the approaches of death, I was informed of Doct. John Pope of Providence, who it was said was eminently skilled in the cure of cancers. I was advised by my friends, one in particular (Mr. Smith, who had experienced the cure of the same disorder) to make immediate application to Doct. Pope for assistance. . . .

I accordingly applied to him on the 14th of June, 1799. The Doctor examined my complaint, but gave me small encouragement of relieving me. He considered the cancer as having advanced to such a state of inveteracy, and so radically fixed in my constitution, as to have become very doubtful of cure; and it was with reluctance that he attempted the cure at all.

The tumour had now become so enormously increased as to be full as big as a four pound shot [i.e., cannonball], the surface entirely ulcerated, and was declared by every one to be a perfect rose cancer. My ancle, leg, knee and thigh were so much swollen as to be almost twice their natural size; and below my knee nearly all the way of a bigness. My leg was of a dark purple, very angry, and covered with watry blisters and scabs, which extended above my knee. My appetite was lost, my body emaciated, and my constitution so much impaired, that when I arrived at Providence, it was with extreme difficulty that I could support myself on my feet.

I was in this situation when Doct. Pope undertook the cure. By his attention and skill, I was, to the astonishment of every one, in about four months entirely cured of the cancer, and restored to my natural health. The tumour and the virulence of the cancer became totally dispelled, and my blood so entirely purged of all cancerous humors, that I have since enjoyed my health in as great perfection as at any time previous to the first appearance of the cancer.

I consider not only the health, but the life which I now enjoy, under God to be wholly owing to the skill and attention of Doctor Pope. To his care I shall therefore recommend all persons who are in danger of the fate, from which I have been thus surprizingly rescued.

Unfortunately, Hall didn’t describe Dr. Pope’s treatment—probably because the doctor wanted to keep those methods proprietary.

In Medical Common Sense (1868), Dr. Edward B. Foote wrote:

a rose cancer...looks at first very like a rose-bud, and, as it enlarges, opens and expands like a rose. This generally attacks the womb, vagina, and nose, but may locate in any other part of the system. It is very painful, and sometimes grows to an immense size.

These days, we don’t have to wait for cancers to appear outside the body, but try to catch and treat them at the cellular level. As a result, the medical terminology has changed, and cancers are identified by the types of cells they grow from, not by their outer appearance.

Capt. Samuel Hall, formerly of Plainfield, lived another decade and died at age seventy-eight in Brutus, New York, according to the 5 July 1813 Connecticut Mirror.

TOMORROW: A traditional physician responds to a cancer doctor.

John and Hannah Pope: cancer specialists

Writing about Richard Stockton dying of cancer in 1781 reminded me that I had some information about a cancer specialist on my hard drive. A few years ago, historian Clayton Cramer came across an entry in the 1800 Boston town directory for “Hannah Pope, cancer doctor.” He wrote about that fact on his blog, and later mentioned it on an email list we both subscribe to.

So I did some checking in my resources. Several Boston newspapers noted the death of Hannah Pope in March 1805. The first was the New England Palladium, which identified her as widow of Dr. John Pope, aged 61, “a member of the Society of Friends and exemplary in her virtues,” and up until quite recently living at 63 Newbury Street. (Bostonians started numbering their houses after the war.)

Knowing Pope was a Friend led me to check George Selleck’s Quakers in Boston, which contains a complete list of the town’s Quakers in 1774. In that year John and Hannah Pope were members of the Society of Friends, along with John’s parents and uncles and Hannah’s father, James Raymer. John was four years older than his wife. They had a son named John and a daughter named Hannah. John Pope was described as a surveyor as well as a doctor, and indeed in 1785 he advertised that he taught surveying, mathematics, and other skills in the evening.

According to Peter Benes’s article on itinerant healers in the Medicine and Healing volume of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, the Boston directory for 1789 listed Dr. John Pope as a specialist in “cancers and malignant ulcers” as well as “school-master and surgeon.” He claimed to have been curing people since 1768 with an external “Plaister” and an internal “Balsamic Elixir.”

Hannah Pope must have carried on her husband’s profession after his death, also calling herself a “cancer doctor.” The Quakers were unusually respectful of women’s abilities (for the times), and perhaps that gave Hannah the impetus to operate on her own. (She was never called “Dr. Hannah Pope,” though.) The couple’s sons John (b. 1769), Samuel (b. 1781), and Benjamin (b. 1783) all followed in the field, advertising their skills in Providence and Hartford in the early 1800s.

TOMORROW: Cancer treatment in 1799.