Joshua Ward

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about 17th-century English pharmacist and experiment chemist. For the 19th-century American slaveholder and rice farmer, see Joshua John Ward.

Joshua Ward (1685–1761)

Joshua Ward (1685–1761) was an English doctor, most remembered for the invention of

House of Commons
from 1715 to 1717.

Life

Ward was born in

Member of Parliament for Marlborough, through the artifice of one of the mayors, but was unseated on petition in 1717.[2]

Ward went to France where he practiced as a quack doctor, but returned to London in 1734.[2] He invented a medicine called "Joshua Ward's drop", also known as the "Pill and Drop". It was supposed to cure people of any illness they had, gaining acclaim and notoriety for Ward.[3][4] Ward is widely cited as an example of a quack.[5][6] His pills, which he claimed could cure any illness, are suspected of containing large amounts of antimony, which is poisonous and could cause permanent liver damage.[7][8] The pills were artificially coloured red, purple and blue.[9] The historian Jeremy Black has noted that "his remedies killed as many as they cured".[10]

The chemist Joseph Clutton published an analysis of Ward's pills in A True and Candid Relation of the Good and Bad Effects of Joshua Ward's Pill and Drop in 1736. He found that two of the pills contained antimony and cobalt and the other arsenic.[11]

In 1736, Ward set up the Great Vitriol Works in

sulphur trioxide, which combines with water to produce sulphuric acid. This was the first practical production of sulphuric acid on a large scale.[12]

Ward was in many ways quite generous to those living in poverty. He opened hospitals for the poor in Westminster as well as in the City of London, and the clinics did not charge people for their service. It is estimated that he gave around the sum of £3,000 to charity.[13]

Ward is buried in Westminster Abbey.[14]

Memorials

A statue of Ward, by his good friend Agostino Carlini, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

References

  1. ^ Dictionary of British Sculptors, 1660–1851, Rupert Gunnis
  2. ^ a b "WARD, Joshua (1685–1761)". History of Parliament Online. Retrieved 18 August 2018.
  3. ^ Nicolson, Marjorie H. (1968). “Ward's ‘Pill and Drop’ and Men of Letters.” Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (2): 177–196.
  4. ISBN 2-88124-549-8
    . Whether Ward, or his partner, John White, was the chemist is uncertain, ...
  5. ISBN 0-19-262950-6
  6. ISBN 978-9004006171
    "Joshua Ward (1685–1761) was a quack doctor famous for his "drop and pill", the efficacy or otherwise of which excited heated controversy."
  7. ISBN 978-0233050652
    "Ward died a wealthy man, but the secret of his drop and pill died with him. If, as suspected, they consisted of antimony taken internally, they were damaging to the liver and resulted in dangerous purgings of the stomach. Larger doses could – and did in the case of some of Ward's unfortunate patients — result in colitis and even death."
  8. ISBN 1-928831-22-2
    "Ward fled to France, where he promoted a quack medicine known as "White Drop of Ward and the Pill," which, if used in excess, caused permanent liver damage. Ward advertised this noxious medicine as a cure for all diseases. He was spared imprisonment in the Bastille by his friend John Page, and traveled back to England to market the drop and the pill to the public."
  9. ISBN 978-0-7611-8981-7
  10. ISBN 978-0-230-53749-1
  11. ^ Hancox, Joy. (1994). The Queen's Chameleon: The Life of John Byrom: A Study of Conflicting Loyalties. Jonathan Cape. pp. 122–123
  12. ^ Sulphur surplus: Up to our necks in a diabolical element, BBC, 18 July 2014
  13. ISBN 978-0-7459-6895-7
  14. ^ 'The Abbey Scientists' Hall, A.R. p35: London; Roger & Robert Nicholson; 1966

External links

Parliament of Great Britain
Preceded by
Sir William Humphreys
 		Succeeded by
Sir William Humphreys
Gabriel Roberts
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