Through Our Exchanges.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 33, 30 May 1914, Page 5

Through Our Exchanges.

A CRAVING FOR “PHYSIC.”

SEVENTY-EIGHT PILLS A DAY*

We are all out for records, but few would care to own to a record for the taking of doses of medicine. Yet there are people, mostly monomaniacs, who could not live without a daily dose of something. Pills, of course, are the most easily accessible and easiest to take, and some people as regularly as possible take one or more pills daily. This, however, is not a modern innovation.

In the year 1814 one man created a record by swallowing no fewer than 51,500 pills. His name was Samuel Jessup, who died at Heckington, in Lincolnshire, in 1817, aged 65. He was an opulent grazier, a bachelor, without known relatives, and for the last 30 years of his life possessed a craving for what was then called “physic.” In 21 years lie took 226,934 pills, supplied by an apothecary of the name of Wright, who resided at Bottesford. This is at the rate of 10,806 pills a year, or 29 pills each day, but towards the end he took 78 a day. Notwithstanding this, he took 40,000 bottles of mixtures, juleps and electuaries. Some of these particulars were disclosed at a trial for the amount of an apothecary’s bill at Lincoln assizes shortly before- his death.