Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Quackery, Medical Treatment, Disease, Gender

    Discusses two extracts from a 'contemporary' (i.e. another periodical). The first puffs 'Du Buncombe's Delicious Health Restoring Polenta Syriaca Food' as an alternative to expensive, harmful, and ineffective 'pills and other medicines' used for gastric disorders. The second puffs 'Gulloway's' (i.e. Thomas Holloway's) pills as unsurpassed solutions for 'regulating digestion'. Points out that these extracts appeared without headings and might be taken to be editorial statements, and goes on to stress the contradictions between them. Believes that 'Old women and others who have read the foregoing contradictory species of puffery, will be as much puzzled as wiser persons are by the opposite tenets of numerous gentlemen who sign the thirty-nine articles, and yet unite in condemning Dr. Rowland Williams'. The reference is to the prosecution of Williams, starting in December 1861, for contributions to Temple 1860 considered by the Anglican authorities to be contrary to the church's teachings on the plenary and verbal inspiration of the Bible.