About the College

Mountebank College is a small institution of confident scholarship. It takes its name honestly, which is more than the original mountebanks managed. When the word enters written English in 1577, it names a man who mounted a bench in the public square and announced cures for more diseases than any one bottle could plausibly address. From that bench, this institution descends.

The collection is drawn from a genuine archive: patent-medicine advertising, druggists' trade catalogs, natural history plates, and almanacs of the great confident century. The College sources its holdings from the public domain and leaves their original claims exactly as it found them.

The College is a work of satire. It holds no accreditation, offers no instruction, and confers nothing. It does not consider the materials offered here to be medical, legal, financial, nutritional, spiritual, or navigational advice, and neither should you. Correspondence directed to the Registrar will be received in the spirit in which it is answered.

Trade and press inquiries may be directed to registrar@mountebankcollege.org.

I will do't;
And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratch'd withal; I'll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.

— Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7