An alternative medicine guide, supported by the Prince of Wales, has become the latest sore point between the mainstream medical profession and advocates of traditional remedies.

This battle of the healers has existed since professional doctors first began to take business away from the village herb expert. Yet, amid the claims and counter-claims about the efficacy of alternative treatments, no supposed remedy has made the impact of the 18th-century wonder cure, Balm of Gilead.

Selling at 10s6d a half-pint bottle, the concoction was the invention of Britain's best-known celebrity doctor then. Samuel Solomon had come a long way from his childhood as a street urchin. True, he had purchased his MD from the cash-strapped Marischal College, Aberdeen, with the endorsement of two almost certainly forged doctors' certificates. But as a salesman he left his better-qualified peers standing.

Solomon maximised all the available avenues of publicity to reach out to the wider nation. He started in 1796 by publishing an instant bestseller, his Guide to Health. So popular was this tome that it was frequently cited as the book most households owned after the Bible.

A succession of brilliant marketing wheezes boosted sales. For instance, the second edition was followed by the publication of what purported to be the 42nd edition. It also mixed quack remedies with passages of genuinely useful advice. The particularly vivid passages on sexual urges, natural or otherwise, proved compelling to semi-literate maidservant and Oxford don alike.

By 1800 he was spending £5,000 a year on publicity. Local and national newspapers were carrying ads for his remedies and, in the hope of gaining further business from him, running supportive editorials. Having conquered Britain, he started exporting his cures all over the world.

Solomon specialised in promoting the self-diagnosis of depression and nervous disorders caused by the stresses of modern life. For these, he claimed his Balm of Gilead was a cure-all. Many formerly self-absorbed patients came forward to say they felt much more exuberant after taking it.

No doubt they did. For, unbeknown to them, the reviving Balm was brandy infused with a few herbs and lemon peel. What was more, not only were they enjoying alcoholic intoxication, they were getting addicted to the medicine. Truly, Solomon had come up with a brilliant business model.

With the proceeds, this rags-to-riches quack built for himself the magnificent Gilead House near Liverpool. But the foundations rested upon a sham. After his death in 1819, his business went into steep decline and in the 1840s a railway line pronounced the last rites, smashing its way through the giant classical family mausoleum that Solomon had built.

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