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 MEDICAL QUACKS AND 
 QUACKERIES. 
 
 By FRANCIS J. SHEPHERD, M, D. 
 
 [Reprinted from The Popflar Science Monthly, June, 1883.] 
 
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MEDICAL QUACKS AND QUACKERIES. 
 
 Br FRANCIS J. SHEPHERD, M. D. 
 
 [HEPBiyTED FROM THE POPULAR SClElfCE MONTHLY, JUNE, 1883.] 
 
 11! 
 
 JOHNSON defines a quack as " a boastful pretender to an art he 
 does not understand," and perhaps the term is more often applied 
 to boastful pretenders of the art of medicine than of any other.* Prob- 
 ably, ever since man acquired the faculty of articulate language, quacks 
 and quackeries have flourished. In the ruder ages, man attributed all 
 disease to the influence of evil spirits, and sought by various means to 
 ward off or lessen their injurious and malevolent actions. Now, as an 
 eminent physiologist has lately said, the controlling of imknown pow- 
 ers has always been a matter of some difticulty, and one which ordinary 
 mortals with average ability could not successfully attempt ; hence 
 arose a class of specialists — men who, by their greater knowledge and 
 cleverjiess, Taade others believe that they were able to cope with the 
 unseen. These were the priests, and, without doubt, the first quacks. 
 They supplied charms and potions, and made use of incantations, not 
 only to cure, but to prevent disease. These services obtained for them 
 great power and influence and increased wealth. The ancient Egyp- 
 tians attributed all diseases to the anger of the gods. They worshiped 
 Serapis as a medical divinity, and the cure of disease could only be ac- 
 complished through the intercession of this deity's priests. Thus the 
 priests had the monopoly of medical practice, and their medical knowl- 
 edge was jealously concealed from the vulgar ; it was only divulged 
 to those who with extravagant ceremonies, wonderful mummeries, and 
 terrible vows of secrecy, were initiated into the Egyptian mysteries. 
 It was thus that Pythagoras is supposed to have obtained the founda- 
 tion of his medical knowledge and philosophy. Among the Israelites 
 the priests had charge of the health of the people, and in time of plague 
 and pestilence relied wholly on religious methods of cure. According 
 to the accounts thjit have come down to us, these methods were most 
 successful. In highly civilized Greece, priests, the direct descendants 
 of ^sculapius, cured disease by mysterious ceremonies, music, offer- 
 
 * (it I 
 
 ' Quack ' is said to be an abbreviated form of * quacksalver,' which is derived from 
 the Dutch Kwabzalver — from Kwab, a wen, and Zalver, an ointment." — Notes and Queries. 
 
3 
 
 inge, fastings, and such like. In Rome, when a plague broke out, the 
 priests endeavored to combat it by feasting the gods, or driving nails 
 into the right wall of the Temple of Jupiter. The early Christian 
 Church was strongly opposed to the progress of medicine. It V)elieved 
 that the power of curing disease had been transmitted from Christ and 
 his apostles to their bishops and ciders. They discarded altogether the 
 use of medicinal agents, and healed the sick by prayer, the laying on of 
 hands, and the anointing with oil. This form of treatment, being of 
 the mira(Milous order, needed no knowledge of the nature of disease, or 
 of the structure of the human frame. Heathen priests and physicians 
 were regarded as sorcerers and dealers in witchcraft, and so were burned 
 or otherwise put out of the way. For some centuries the monks mo- 
 nopolized all the medical practice and quackery. They made a good 
 living, selling for large sums of money remnants of ancient martyrs, 
 waters of holy wells, portions of the true cross, etc., as a protection 
 against sickness, witchcraft, evil spirits, and other ills that flesh was 
 heir to in those dark ages. They prayed to St. Anthony for inflam- 
 mation, St. Valentine for epilepsy, St. Clara for sore eyes, St. Appo- 
 lonia for toothache, St. Vitus for madness and poison, and so on.* It 
 was not till after the breaking up of the powers of the priesthood by 
 the Reformation, and the introduction of printing, that medicine began 
 to escape from the grasp of quackery and made rapid strides toward 
 the truth, perfecting knowledge of disease by accurate observation 
 and the study of the human frame and its workings in health. That 
 the emancipation of medicine from superstition did not immediately 
 take place is evidenced by the wonderful hold the belief in the cure of 
 scrofula by the royal touch had on the people, both medical and lay, 
 for many years after the Reformation, nay, almost down to our own 
 time. This most remarkable form of quackery, and one, according to 
 some, peculiarly English in its origin, was exercised in England for 
 neai'ly seven hundred years. Edward the Confessor was the first who 
 touched for the king's-evil, and transmitted the gift to all his success- 
 ors. His power was attributed not to his royalty but to his sanctity, 
 and there " seemed little reason why his successors, who were, as a 
 
 * The Medical Rose offers a peculiar and very approved remedy for epilepsy. Advis- 
 ing the patient to stand upright, saying the Lord's prayer with the mouth wide open to 
 prevent the first attack, and informing us that a lunatic, an epileptic, and a demoniaO 
 were the same, he gives the following sacrophysical directions : " When the patient and 
 his parents have fasted three days, let them conduct him to a church. If he be of a 
 proper age and in his right senses, let him confess. Then let him hear mass on Friday, 
 '''iring the fast of quatuor tcmporum, and also on Saturday. On Sunday let a good and 
 religious priest read over his head in church the gospel which is read in September in the 
 time of vintage, after the feast of the Holy Cross. After this, let the same priest write 
 the same gospel devoutly, and let the patient wear it about his neck, and he shall be cured. 
 The gospel is, ' This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.' " — (" Rosa Anglica," 
 p. 16, edition 1491 ; ib., p. 415, edition 1595 — quoted in Willcock's "Laws of the Medi- 
 cal Profession," p. 25, edition 1830.) 
 
 f 
 
 n 
 a 
 n 
 a 
 
 P 
 
 TV 
 
 B 
 
3 
 
 it, the 
 
 ; nails 
 
 riBtian 
 
 jlieved , 
 
 ist and ^ 
 
 ler the 
 
 g on of 
 
 >ing of 
 
 ease, or 
 
 iTsicians 
 
 burned 
 
 iks mo- 
 a good 
 
 nartyrs, 
 
 otection 
 
 esh wa8 
 inflam- 
 
 t. Appo- 
 
 on.* It 
 
 hood by 
 
 16 began 
 
 8 toward 
 
 jervation 
 
 h. That 
 
 mediately 
 
 e cure of 
 
 and lay, 
 
 our own 
 
 )rding to 
 and for 
 irst who 
 success- 
 sanctity, 
 vere, as a 
 
 )8y. Advis- 
 yide open to 
 a demoniad 
 patient and! 
 he be of a 
 on Friday, 
 a good and 
 smber in the 
 priest write 
 lall be cured, 
 isa Anglica," 
 of the Medi- 
 
 
 rule, no saints, should be bo specially favored." The kings of France 
 also claimed the right to dispense the gift of healing, and traced their 
 right to Clovis. Queen Anne was the last to exercise this gift in Eng- 
 land, and it is well known that she touched, among others, the cele- 
 ^brated Dr. Johnson, who was brought to the King by his mother on 
 the recommendation of Sir John Floyer, a distinguished physician of 
 Litchfield.* William III had too much sense to pander to the su- 
 perstitious feelings of many of his subjects, and never employed 
 the touch but once, and then he said, on laying his hands on the 
 patient, " May God give you better health and more sense ! " Queen 
 Elizabeth was averse to the practice, but extensively performed it. 
 Charles II excelled all his predecessors and successors in this cere- 
 mony. During his reign he touched nearly one hundred thousand 
 persons for the evil. One year (1682) over eight thousand suffer- 
 ers were subjected to his sacred touch. The patients were first 
 examined by the King's surgeons, and, if thought to be fitting ob- 
 jects of relief, they were given tickets to admit them to the royal 
 presence. When admitted, the patient knelt and was touched by the 
 King. The clerk of the closet now handed his Majesty a gold coin, 
 to which was attached a piece of white ribbon, and, while the King 
 hung this round the neck of the patient, others read the prayers and 
 ceremonies specially appointed for this purpose. We are told that the 
 gold was a token of good-will, and r.ot necessary to the cure, as many 
 were healed without it, or with silver eraj)loyed instead. Evidences 
 of the efficacy of the royal touch are not wanting : Jeremy Collier says 
 of Edward the Confessor : "That this prince cured king's-evil is be- 
 yond dispute, and, since the credit of this miracle is unquestionable, I 
 see no reason why we should not believe the rest." John Browne, sur- 
 geon to Charles II, and a man of eminence and reputation in his 
 profession, wrote an " Anatomiek-Chirurgical Treatise on Ghmdules 
 and Strumre, together with the Royal Gift of Healing or Cnie tliereof 
 by Contact or Imposition of Hands," etc. In this treatise he gives 
 " many wonderful examples of cures by the sacred touch " of Charles 
 II ; he also relates several cases of scrofulous tumor and sore cured 
 by being touched with handkerchiefs which had been dipped in the 
 blood of the martyr Charles I, and asserts that the usurper Cromwell 
 tried in vain to exercise this royal prerogative, " he having no more 
 fight to the healing power than he had to regal jurisdiction." Wise- 
 man, in his work on surgery, which was the best book on the subject 
 at that time, says : " I myself have been a frequent eye-witness of 
 many hundred cures performed by his Majesty's touch alone, without 
 any assistance of chirurgery " ; still it does not appear that he sent his 
 patients to the King, and he gives his own method of curing scrofula 
 with great minuteness. This evidence as to the cures is apparently 
 
 * The gold coin presented to Dr. Johnson by the Queen is at the present time in the 
 British Museum. 
 
most complete, and is that of men Hkilled in the medical art who were 
 eye-witnesses and assisted in the ceremonies. Of course now no one 
 believes that there was virtue in the royal touch any more than that 
 the philoMiipher's stone eould convert baser metals into tjold. If the/ 
 King could cure scrofula, how is it that during Charles ll's reign scrof- 
 ula was more prevalent than for many years [treviously ? No doubt 
 it was because ])eoj)le neglected ordinary methods of treatment, in their 
 desire to be cured miraculously. 
 
 The only way it, is possible to explain the evidence of Urowne and 
 Wiseman is that they were ardent royalists, an<l held the efficacy of 
 the royal touch to be as much a party tenet as the divine right of 
 kings, and that by doing so they pleased the court and so advanced 
 their own interests. Had they doubted it, tliey would have incurred 
 the suspicion of being disaffected to tlie government.* Failures of 
 cure were attributed, as in our own day, to want of faitli, as one writer 
 puts it, " none ever failed of receiving benefit unless their little faith 
 and credulity starved their merits." 
 
 Curing diseases by ^he laying on of hands was practiced with great 
 success by Valentine (irealraikes, an Irish gentleman of good family, 
 who served under Cromwell both in a military and civil capacity. At 
 the Restoration, being deprived of his offices, he undertook to cure the 
 king's-evil by touch, or stroking, as it was called ; he succeeded so 
 well in this that he extended the field of his laI)ors and treated epi- 
 lepsy, asthma, convulsions, deafness, etc., by the same method. The 
 latter diseases being all due to disorders of the nervous system, benefit 
 was no doubt frequently obtained through the effect of the imagina- 
 tion, "Imagination," says Lord Bacon, "is next akin to a miracle- 
 working faith." Greatraikes's fame soon spread, and he was sent for 
 from far and near ; the Earl of Orrery and Lord Conway patronized 
 him, and he even deceived the great Robert Boyle. At length he 
 arrived in London, where for some time he was most popular. The 
 majority of his admirers were ladies, and on the more hysterical of the 
 sex he performed marvelous cures. Soon, however, the tongues of 
 slander and I'idicule assailed him, and he retired to his native country 
 and obscurity. Many others succeeded Greatraikes. John Everett, or 
 Leverett, the seventh son of a seventh son, and a gardener, practiced 
 the "manual exercise," and declared that after touching thirty to 
 forty a day he felt the goodness go out of him. No doubt these peo-\ 
 pie practiced unconsciously what Mesmer many years after practiced' 
 by design. On the subject of Mesmerism and spiritualism I do not 
 propose to enter. Of late years cures by the laying on of hands, 
 
 r 
 
 I 
 
 * One Thomas Rosewell was actually tried for high treason in 1684 for saying that 
 " people made a flocking to the King, upon pretense of being healed of the king's-evil, 
 which he could not do, but that they, being priests and prophets, could by their prayers 
 do as much." Rosewell was tried by the celebrated Judge Jeffries and found guilty, but 
 afterward pardoned. — (Wadd's " Mems and Maxims," p. 136.) 
 
ng that 
 ig's-evil, 
 prayers 
 ilty, but 
 
 aHsisfod, howcvpr, hy jmiyor, and the anointing with oil, havo be- 
 come very coiimion, eHjjeeially in tlie Ignited States, the Iiot-lfcd of 
 4ill sortH of (juaelveries. This sunnner there lias been a " faith con- 
 vention " at Old Orchard, in Maine, where many ])eoi>le were piddiely 
 cured by this method; all the diseases treated a])i)eared to be, from tho 
 indetinite history of cases reported in relii^ioiis lu'wspapers, atfections 
 of the nervous system. Many hystt'ri<'al cases were possibly henelited 
 purely by the effect of the imajrination : as the disases are ones of the 
 imajiji nation, so arc the cures. We have yet to hear of a ease of actual 
 disease, such as is daily seen in our hospitals, cured by this method. 
 
 The immediate ])ro<fenit()r of our present race of cpiacks is Para- 
 celsus, who Nourished in the sixteenth century ; lie jrenerally styled 
 himself I'hiiipitus Aureolus Thenphrastus Paracelsus IJondjastus von 
 Tlcdieidieim. His father, who was the natural son of a prince, gave 
 him an excellent education, lie studied niedicine, and afterward waa 
 for some lime professor at Hasle, in Switzerland. Paracelsus denied 
 the utility of knowinj^ the cause or mode of ori<;in of disease ; ho said 
 all he wanted to know was, how to cure it. He styled himself the 
 monarch of physicians, and asserted that the hair on the back of his 
 head knew more than all tho writers from Galen to Avicenna, and ho 
 publicly burned their 1)ooks. He invented a nostrum called "azoth," 
 which he vaunted as the philosopher's stone, the tincture of life. He 
 proclaimed that he had the ])ower of makinj^ man immortal, yet he 
 died at the age of forty-eight. Still, by the aid of opium, antimony, 
 and mercury, lie performed some wonderful cures, and to him must 
 be awarded the ci'edit of first drawing the attention of the ])rofession 
 to the value of these remedies in the treatment of diseases. He also 
 liclj>ed medicine to advance by showing contempt for traditional 
 methods of treatment and the humoral pathology of the ancients, 
 ■which had lield sway for over two thousand years. 
 
 The most reniarkable example of credulity and superstition of the 
 ])ublic is found in the history of two quackeries which flourished in 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I refer to the tcc((pon-oint- 
 mott and si/mjyathetfc-powder cures. The weapon-ointment was used 
 in healing wounds ; but, instead of the ointment being applied to the 
 wound, it was applied to the weapon which caused it. This was for- 
 tunate for the people so treated, as the applications to fresh wounds in 
 those times were most barbarous. The ointment was prepared in various 
 ways, and its ingredients were most diverse, consisting of human fat 
 and blood, muramj'^, moss from a dead man's skull, bull's blood and fat, 
 etc. At one time there was a schism in the weapon-salve school, and a 
 serious and acrimonious discussion arose as to "whether it was neces- 
 sary that the moss should grow absolutely on the skull of a thief who 
 had hung on the gallows, and whether the ointment, while compound- 
 ing, was to be stirred with a murderer's knife." The mode of applica- 
 tion was this : The wound was first washed, bandaged, and ordered to 
 
G 
 
 be kept at rest, and then the offending weapon was anointed with the 
 salve, carefully wripped tip, and placed in a safe position. If the weap- 
 on was left iimlisturhed the wound healed in a few days, hut, if anythiiif]^ 
 happened to the anointed weapon the wound would hreak out afresh. 
 In Dryden's version of Shakespeare's '* Tempest," he makes Ariel say, . 
 in reference to the wound received hy Ilippolito from Ferdinand : 
 
 " Ho iMiiHt bo (h'ossod iiKuin, as I liiivc tloiiu it: 
 Anoint tho sword which piorced him witii this wonpoii-Hiilvu; 
 Wrap it cloao from air, till I have time to visit him apiin." 
 
 In Glapthorne's comedy, "The Hollander," the doctor saya, "The fiame 
 salve will cure at any distance, as if a person hurt should l)e at York, 
 the weapon dressed at London, on which the hlood is," That the be- 
 lief in this salve was not universal is proved by an attack made on it 
 by John Hales, of Kton, in a letter "to an honorable person" in 1030. 
 He declares it is a child of but yesterday's birth, one among the 
 pleasant fantasies of the Rosicrucians ; and, as for the cures it ha» 
 worked, " the effect is wrought by one thing, and another carries off 
 the glory," etc.* ' 
 
 The tii/ni/»i(f/h'ti(' powder was much the same kind of remedy, and 
 was introduced into England by Sir Kenelm Digby, a gentleman of 
 the bedchamber of Charles I. It is said that a Carmelite friar, re- 
 turning from the Kast, brought the recipe for this powder with him. 
 Sir Kenelm did him some service, and was rewarded by obtaining the 
 secret of the syn- pathetic powder. It consisted merely of blue vitriol 
 prepared with laysterious cercnutnies. Digby revealed the secret to 
 James I, who disclosed it to Dr. Mayerne, his physician. The latter 
 sold it to many distinguished ])ersons, an<l then it soon ceased to be a 
 secret. A solution of the powder was made, and some of the wounded 
 man's blood-stained garments immersed in it, the wound at the same 
 time being Avashed and bandaged, and strict abstinence being enjoined 
 on the patient. As maj' be inferred, the sympathetic jjowder, like the 
 weapon-salve, was quite as efficacious at a distance as near by. These 
 remedies did one good : they taught people how soon woimds heal if 
 kept clean .and undisturbed, and, in fact, opened the way to our pres- 
 ent method of treating wounds. Surgeons learned that, in their healing, 
 Nature was a powerful factor, and must be aided, not interfered with.f 
 
 It woidd be impossible for me to describe a tenth part of the quacks 
 who flourished in England during the eighteenth century. There waai 
 Joanna Stevens, to whom Parliament voted £'»,000 in 1739, for dis- 
 
 * Chambers's " Book of Days," vol. ii. 
 
 \ A Hoinewbat siiuilai- superstition exists in many parts of the country to this day,, 
 I well remember, when a child, that, having my hands full of warts, they were rubbed by 
 my nurse with a piece of raw meat; the meat was then placed under a stone, and I was' 
 told (and this was frenerally believed) that as the meat decayed the warts would disap- 
 pear. The result of the experiment I can not remember, but I imagine the warts re- 
 mained for some time after the deeav of the meat. 
 
 I 
 
 rw- 
 
and 
 
 ret to 
 atter 
 
 o be a 
 
 uncled 
 
 same 
 
 oineJ 
 
 ke the 
 
 These 
 
 neal if 
 
 ir pres- 
 ealing, 
 with.f 
 quack& 
 
 ere was 
 or dia- 
 
 this day, 
 rubbed by 
 and I was 
 uld disap- 
 
 warts re- 
 
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 closinjj the secret of her remc(ly for dissolving Htone. The wonderful 
 fleeret remedy eonsisted i-hietly of powdered snail- and ej;g-HhellH, and, 
 iiotwitliHtanditij; its disclosure, " there have heen as many human cal- 
 culi siuce form<Ml by liis Majesty's licge lithotomlcal subjects as would 
 macadamize one side of Lincoln's Inn Fields," says Wadd. David 
 Hartley, the philosopher, was a j^reat supporter of Joanna Stevens, and, 
 after eating two hundred poiindh' weight of her remedy, ho himself 
 died of the stone. There was Sir William Rea<l, originally a tailor 
 and cobbler, and afterward a (juack oculist, knighted by Queen Anno, 
 and who not only had the care of her eyes, but also treated George I. 
 There was the clever but vain Hill, who (piacked a gout specific called 
 ■*' tincture of bandatui," and of whom Garrick has happily said : 
 
 " For |>!iysic niul fiircwH IiIh eqiml there scarce is — 
 Ills tarco is a physic, liis physio a furce is." 
 
 ITe commenced life as an apothecary, and ended by making a consid- 
 erable figure in the fashionable world and niarrying tlie sister of Lord 
 llanelagh. 
 
 Three of the most notorious (juaeks who imposed on the credulity of 
 the public during the middle of the eighteenth century attained suffi- 
 cient fame to be made the subject of ;i satirical picture by Hogarth. 
 The picture was called " The Tudertaker's Arms," with the motto " Et 
 pliirwia mortis eA'/r///o," and the most prominent figures in it were — 
 first, Chevalier Taylor, a quack oculist of unparalleled effrontery, who 
 wrote a niost marvelous biography of liimself, which at one time had 
 a great sale ; second, Joshua Ward, originally a footman, who invented 
 a pill and drop ; he was called in to see the King, who, in spite of the 
 remedies administered, recovered — Ward for his services received a 
 vote of thanks from the House of Commons, and got leave to drive his 
 carriage through St. James's Park ; and, third, last but not least, the 
 •celebrated Mrs. Mapp, the Amazonian bone-setter of Epsom, who sur- 
 passed all her rivals in (juackery, and whose strength of arm was only 
 equaled by her strength of language. She was the daughter of Wallis, 
 a bone-setter, and sister of " Polly Peachem," who married the Duke of 
 Bolton. She drove about London in a coach-and-six with outriders, 
 and the most exalted in rank and station eagerly sought the company of 
 this drunken female savage. She succeeded Taylor and Ward, and is 
 fiung of as follows by some Grub Street poet : 
 
 , "In physic as well as in fashion wo find 
 
 The newest Ims always the run with mankind ; 
 Forgot in the bnstle 'bout Taylor and Ward, 
 Now Mapp's Jill the cry, and her fame on record. 
 So what signifies learning, or going to school. 
 When woman can do without reason or rule? " 
 
 England in the eighteenth century has been truly named the " Para- 
 ■dise of Quacks." Our ancestors were assuredly a nostrum-loving lot, 
 from the King to the peasant. Truly they must have thought with the 
 
8 
 
 i 
 
 prophet, " The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth ; and he 
 that is wise will not abhor them " (Ecclesiasticus xxxviii, 4). Perhaps 
 the most remarkable of unblushing quacks who flourished toward the 
 end of the eighteenth century was Dr, Graham, a graduate of Edin- 
 burgh, and a fellow-student of Sir James Mackintosh. He introduced 
 Mesmerism into England, and was nearly as successful as his master^ 
 In 1780 he went to London and occupied a magnificent mansion, Avhich 
 he designated tlie " Temple of Health and Hymen." It was gorgeously 
 furnished, and a fortune was spent on the decorations. The spacious 
 rooms were adorned wuth marble statues, stands of armor, plates of 
 burnislied steel, and superbly lighted with wax-candles ; sweet strains 
 of distant music were continually floating through the air, and delicious 
 perfumes were alwayts burning in swinging censers ; at the door were 
 stationed two gigantic porters, clad in showy liveries covered with 
 gold lace. In this " Enchanting Elysian Palace " Dr. Graham deliv- 
 ered his lectures on health and procreation at two guineas a head, and 
 he did not want for hearers. In liis seances he was assisted by a beau- 
 tiful woman, whom he called \ estina, the rosy goddess of health — she 
 who afterward became Lady Ha\nilton, the favorite of Nelson. In 
 the daytime he was assisted in his electrical experiments by Dr. IMit- 
 ford, the father of the celebrated ;iuthoress. In this temple was a 
 celestial bed standing on glass legs and ornamented with the I'icliest 
 hangings ; he pretended that childless inarried pairs avIio slept in this 
 bed would be certain to have heirs. The price was £100 a night, and 
 many persons of high rank eagerly accepted the terms. He then 
 advertised an elixir of life, which, it is said, he sold to more than one 
 noble simpleton for £1,000. One mode of treatment he recommended 
 for prolonging life was the frequent use of mud-baths. Soon, from 
 his religious exti-avagances, Graham became unpopular, and, retiring 
 from public life, he died poor in the neighborhood of Glasgow. 
 
 A species of quackery called "Perkinism," which made a stir in the 
 world in the beginning of the present century, I must now shortly 
 describe, for, among the delusions which have succeeded in imposing 
 on men of education and position, it is pre-eminent. It orignated in 
 America, and to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes I am indebted for most 
 of my information on the subject. Dr. Elisha Perkins was born in 
 Connecticut, in 1740 ; he practiced with success for many years, but, 
 being inspired by the recent discoveries of Galvani, he conceived the 
 idea that metallic substances applied in a certain manner might remove 
 disease. In 1796 he gave to the world his metallic "Tractors." These 
 consisted " of two pieces of metal, one iron and one brass, about three 
 inches long, blunt at one end and pointed at the other." They (so he 
 affirmed) "cured rheumatism, local pains, inflammation, and even tumors, 
 by drawing them over the affected parts for a few minutes." Dr. Per- 
 kins patented his discovery, and soon found numerous adherents, many 
 of them being men of wealth and position. His son, Benjamin Doug- 
 
 I 
 
 Jic 
 
9 
 
 id he 
 rhapft 
 a the 
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 laster, 
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 |Dr. Per- 
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 1 
 
 'S 
 
 lasB Perkins, crossf^d the Atlantic with the tractors, and in 1798 they 
 were employed in the Royal Hospital in Copenhagen. In London 
 their reputation was quickly established, and they soon became the 
 fashion. The Royal Society accepted Perkins's tractors and book, and 
 passed a vote of thanks to him ; by 1804 a " Perkinean Institution " 
 had been founded, which published transactions and held annual din- 
 ners. Lord Rivers was the first president, Governor Franklin vice- 
 president, and Lord Ilenneker, a fellow of the Royal Society, one of 
 the members. All this time Douglass Perkins was coining money 
 by selling tractors at five guineas each, which cost about ninepence, 
 A hospital was built, where the ojily treatment was " tractoration." 
 Persons in the higliest positions willingly gave testimonials, telling 
 of the marvelous cures wrought on themselves and their friends by 
 these wonderful tractors. The bi^linps and clergymen on both sides of 
 the Atlantic were most eager to thrust forward evidence on this medical 
 topic ; whole pages of panegyric were contributed by them. One writes, 
 "I have used the tractors with success in several other cases in my own 
 family, and, although like Naaman, the Syrian, I can not tell why the 
 waters of Jordan should be better than Abana and Pharpar, rivers of 
 Damascus, yet since experience has proved them so no reasoning can 
 change the opinion " (" CuiTents and Counter-Currents," p. 85). 
 
 Many ministers of religion Avero furnished with tractors gratui- 
 tously, and Di'. Holmes remarks that one of the risks of infancy he 
 had to encounter was Perkins's tractors. The medical profession was 
 ever hostile to the new revelation, and their hostility by many was 
 attributed to jealousy and self-interest. The Connecticut Medical 
 Society, in 1T9T, expelled Dr. Perkins, for violating their regulations 
 against nostrums and secret remedies. The bubble was burst by Dr. 
 Hay garth, of Bath, who experimented on patients with bogus tractors 
 made of wood : he Avas ([uite as successful with them as with Vie five- 
 guinea ones ! These experiments did not immediately destroy the be- 
 lief of the real Perkinistic enthusiasts, because, as Froudc says, " be- 
 lief in the marvelous does not rise from evidence, and will not yield 
 to it." After a time, however, Perkinism ])assed away so quietly that 
 the date of its death is unrecorded. Lord Byron, in his " English 
 Bards and Scotch Reviewers," refers to these celebrated Tractors : * 
 
 Within the last few years, a form of Perkinism, or rather " metal- 
 lic medicine," has appeared in I*aris, clothe«;^ in the garb of science, 
 and under the protecting influence of the great M. Charcot. Gold, 
 silver, and other metals, in the form of coins, are applied to relieve 
 
 * " Thus saith the Preacher, ' Xaught beneath the sun 
 Is new,' yet still from change to change wc run ; 
 What varied wonders tem])t us as they pass ! — 
 The cow-pox, Trncfors, galvanism, gas, 
 ' In turns appear to make the vulgar stare, 
 
 Till the swoU'u bubble bursts — and all is air ! " 
 
 "^ 
 
10 
 
 the manifestations of the graver forms of hysteria. It has become 
 quite the ' mode ' to visit the Hopital de la Salpetri^re, and witness 
 the sensational cures performed publicly on the victims of hystero- 
 epilepsy. This notoriety is both pleasing to the patients and the 
 public. If a nervous disease is treated by unusual methods, it be* 
 comes common ; hysterical subjects having always a morbid desire 
 to make themselves remarkable, and so be the center of attraction, it 
 pleases their vanity and self-love. The consequence of the introduc- 
 tion of metallo-therapy into Parisian hospitals as a mode of treat- 
 ment is, that in Paris and its neighborhood an enormous number of 
 these rarer forms of hysteria and hystero-epilepsy have been, so to 
 speak, created, and the wards of some of the hospitals there are 
 crowded with female patients, eager to be treated in a sensational and 
 novel manner. They certainly derive benefit from the treatment, be- 
 cause, as a writer in the " Lancet " has said : " The symptoms for 
 which metals are applied can not be ascertained without calling the 
 patient's attention to their existence ; the strange and unusual remedy 
 of application of a string of coins cah not be adopted without exciting 
 expectation of a local result — an expectation which it has been often 
 demonstrated is sufficient to determine the disappearance of local symp- 
 toms in this remarkable disease." 
 
 My paper would be very incomplete should I fail to mention the 
 most successful quack this century has produced, John St. John Long. 
 He was the son of an Irish basket-maker, and was born near Done- 
 raile. In his boyhood he assisted his father, but, soon tiring of rush- 
 weaving, being a clever, pushing youth, he attached himself to a 
 Dublin portrait-painter, from whom he obtained some knowledge of 
 painting. When next we hear of him he is starring the provinces as an 
 historical and portrait painter, and an instructor in the art of painting 
 in oils. It was at this time that he adopted the name St. John. With 
 the Limerick gentry he was a great favorite, because of his entertain- 
 ing maimers, and his ability to ride straight across country. Becom- 
 ing disgusted with provincial life, and feeling that his talents could 
 be more profitably employed in a larger sphere, he went to London. 
 Here, by his pleasant address and persuasive tongue, he managed to 
 get introductions into several respectable houses, and was elected a 
 member of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic 
 Society. But he could not live on these honors, and was glad to color 
 anatomical drawings for the lecturers and students at the various 
 schools of anatomy. In this way he learned something about the 
 human frame, and before many months had passed he proclaimed to 
 the world the discovery of a wonderful liniment, which, when applied 
 to a healthy part, was as harmless as water, but when applied to a 
 surface covering a diseased organ caused the morbific humor to ex- 
 ude. His success was immediate and great. Patients from London 
 and all parts of the country rushed to cousult the miracle-worker in 
 
become 
 witneBS 
 lystero- 
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 rker in 
 
 11 
 
 Ilia house in Harley Street. Ladies of the highest rank hastened to 
 place themselves and their ailing daughters under his care. Long 
 was shrewd enough not to ini ' rtake the cure of cases which were 
 apparently hopeless. He pre >: d to cure consumption by the appli- 
 cation of his liniment, and of 'v.irse, as nine out of ten of his patients 
 were women, and a large majority of these hysterical or perfectly 
 healthy, his success was marvelous. For several years his income ex- 
 ceeded £13,000. He went out into fashionable society, and was a 
 lion in the most aristocratic circles ; his ready wit, fascinating man- 
 ners, intellectual countenance, and handsome figure, procured him a 
 host of admirers, among whom were Lord Ingestre, the Marquis of 
 Sligo, Lady Harriet Kavanah, the Marchioness of Ormond, th. Count- 
 ess of Buckinghamshire, and many others. Long was a superb horse- 
 man, hunted regularly, and rode magnificent animals. '* On one occa- 
 sion, as he was cantering round the park, he saw a man strike a woman, 
 and, without an instant's hesitation, he pulled up, leaped from his 
 horse, seized the fellow bodily, and flung him over the park-rails." 
 He had many offers of marriage, but declined them all. He wrote 
 a book called " Discoveries in the Science and Art of Healing," which 
 was well padded with letters from grateful patients, and testimonials 
 of miraculous cures from his aristocratic friends. Soon misfortune 
 came upon him ; his liniment was applied to the back and breast of a 
 perfectly healthy girl, inflammation set in, followed by gangrene, and 
 in a few days his patient was no more. Long was convicted of man- 
 slaughter, and fined only £200 by a partial judge. In his trial he was 
 supported and petted by his lady admirers, who gave evidence in his 
 favor. One nobleman swore that Long had abstracted pure quick- 
 silver from his head. Soon another patient fell a victim to his treat- 
 ment ; he was again tried for manslaughter, and again had the sym- 
 pathy of his female friends, but this time he was acquitted. These 
 trials had no effect in lessening his popularity : he went about pro- 
 claiming himself a martyr, comparing his case to that of Galileo, 
 Harvey, and others. He died while still young, in 1834, retaining 
 a large practice to the last. His admirers raised a magnificent 
 monument to his memory in Kensal Green Cemetery, adorned with 
 a long and laudatory inscription. After his death, his property be- 
 came the subject of very tedious litigation. Among the claimants 
 was a woman of humble station in life, who proved to be his wife. 
 This explained his preference for bachelorhood. The wonderful lini- 
 ment turned out to be acetic acid, which looks much like water., He 
 of course substituted a bottle of water when he did not wish the 
 *' morbific humor" to come out, and so gulled his willing victims. 
 •George Eliot, in " Middlemarch," alludes to St. John Long and his 
 quackeries. 
 
 Ilomceopathy ig another form of quackery to which I must shortly 
 allude. It originated in 1796, with Hahnemann, a German physician. 
 
12 
 
 Hahnemann laid down, as necessary to his system, three great founda- 
 tion truths : 
 
 1. Shnilia similihus citrantur. This means that diseases are to> 
 be cured by the adininistration of substances which, in healthy indi- 
 viduals, produce the same symptoms or group of symptoms as the dis- 
 ease itself manifests. This idea was not original with Hahnemann. 
 Hippocrates distinctly enunciates it, and since then it has been held 
 by many physicians and others, including Paracelsus, who was the 
 inspircr of Hahnemann. 
 
 2. That it is necessary to give remedies in infinitesimal doses. Sub- 
 stances which are given by the regular school in doses of four to five 
 grains, homceopaths should give in quantities of two decillionths of a 
 grain and less. Hahnemann says, in his "Organon": "IJut, if the pa- 
 tient is very sensitive, it will be sufHcicnt to let him smell once of a 
 vial containing a globule of sugar the size of a raustard-sced ; after the 
 patient has smelled it, the vial is to be recorked, and will thus serve for 
 years without its medical virtues being perceptibly impaired." This 
 second "great truth" was, as has been lately pointed out by Dr. 
 Holmes, adopted from Van Hclmont, a ])hysician who flourished in 
 the early ])art of the seventeenth century. He denied the existence of 
 the four elements, and held up to ridicule the practice of letting blood 
 for the cure of disease. 
 
 Van Helmont, in his "Ortus Medicinal," describes a method of 
 treatment made use of by one Butler, an Irishman, who was formerly 
 physician to James I, and at that time was confined in prison in 
 Belgium. According to Van Helmont, Butler performed wonderful 
 cures with a pebble he had in his possession. He dipped this pebble 
 quickly into a teaspoonf ul of olive-oil, poured this " magnetized oil " 
 into a large vessel of oil, and directed the patient to take one drop 
 occasionally. When one drop was put on the head of an old woman 
 suffering from hemicrania, the pain instantly disappeared. An abbess 
 was relieved of loss of power in her right arm by merely touching her 
 tongue to the pebble. Xo doubt reading this book first suggested in- 
 finitesimal doses to Hahnemann. 
 
 Hahnemann's " third dogma or truth " was, that seven eighths of 
 all chronic disease- are produced by psora, or itch. " This psora," says 
 Hahnemann, " is the sole, true, and fundamental cause that produces 
 all the other countless forms of disease, which go under the names of 
 hysteria, hypochondriasis, debility, insanity, melancholy, idiocy, epi- 
 lepsy, cancer, gout, paralysis," etc., etc. (I shall not complete the list). 
 He tells the reader in a foot-note tliat it took him twelve years to trace 
 out the source of all these diseases. This third dogma was original 
 with Hahnemann, and no one now wishes to detract from the laurel* 
 he may have won by thus simplifying the etiology of diseases which 
 hitherto have been so obscure in their origin. 
 
 Unfortunately for his theory, since the discovery of the sarcopti» 
 
 \ 
 
13 
 
 drop 
 
 hominis, or itch-insect, the dogma about the psora being such a pow- 
 erful factor in the i aisiition of disease has fallen to the ground, and 
 homoeopaths are not fond of referring to it. Like Paracelsus, Hahne- 
 mann paid no attention to the pathology * or cause of disease, but only 
 sought for symptoms. For instance, in a case of dropsy, the cause^ 
 whether it be from the heart, the kidneys, or tlie liver, is not inquired 
 into, but the symptom dropsy is treated. Dr. Black, in his " Practice of 
 Homoeopathy," tells us : " If tlio cause of the disease be an inflamma- 
 tion of the brain, a remedy has to be chosen which produces this patho- 
 logical condition ; and, if the exciting cause can be traced to the 
 abuse of alcoholic liquors, a remedy shouhl be selected which is near- 
 est akin to alcohol in its action." Tliis is what is called " a proving." 
 
 The dilutii>ns are directed to be prepared by Hahnemann with as 
 much mystery and jugglery as the " sympathetic powder." The follow- 
 ing directions are taken from Hahnemann's " Organon" : "A grain of 
 the substance, if it is solid, and a drop, if liquid, is to be added to 
 about a third part of 100 grains of sugar of milk in an unglazed porce- 
 lain capsule, which has had the polish removed from the lower part of 
 its cavity by rubbing with wet sand ; they are to be mingled for an 
 instant with a bone or horn spatula, and then rubbed together for six 
 minutes ; then the mass is to be scraped together from the mortar and 
 pestle, which is to take four minutes, then to be again rubbed for six 
 minutes with equal force. Four minutes are then to be devoted to 
 scraping the powder into a heap, and the second third of the 100 grains 
 of sugar of milk to be added. Then they are to be stirred an instant 
 and rubbed six minutes, again to be scraped together for four, and 
 forcibly rubbed for six, once more scraped together for four minutes- 
 and rubbed down for six. Then the last third of the 100 grains of 
 sugar of milk is to be added and mingled by stirring with a spatula. 
 Six minutes of forcible rubbing, four of scraping together, six more 
 of rubbing, finish the process. Now to one grain of the powder so 
 manufactured is to be added a third part of 100 grains of sugar of 
 milk, and the whole mixed in a mortar, and having triturated each 
 third portion for six minutes, and scraped for four minutes, the whole 
 powder is placed in a corked bottle and marked with its degree of 
 attenuation, which will be the jo^iViro ^^ second dilution. The same 
 method is observed for this powder as Avas detailed for the last for 
 making any attenuation up to a decillionth and quintillionth." 
 
 The method for making fluid dilutions is the same, but instead of 
 sugar of milk alcohol is used. The scrapings and triturations are ex- 
 changed for shakes of the bottle in certain directions. Toward the 
 close of his life Hahnemann I'cduced the number of his shakes. He 
 
 * A new school, which has arisen within the last few years, also pays no attention to 
 pathology. The nvembers of this school do not wait for symptoms even, but endeavor to- 
 " jugulate " the disease at once. They call themselves the " Dosimetric School," because' 
 they treat disease by granules containing alkaloids and metallic salts in fixed doses. 
 
14 
 
 says, " A long experience and multiplied observations upon the sick 
 lead me within the last few years to prefer giving only two shakes to 
 medicinal liquids, whereas I formerly used to give ten." 
 
 Now to give one an idea of the potency of these drugs : to obtain 
 a grain of the original substance in the third attenuation, one would 
 have to swallow four hundred-weight of sugar ; or, to get a drop of 
 the original tincture, a barrel of alcohol would have to be imbibed. 
 Now, this is only the third dilution. In the eighth dilution, to obtain 
 a drop of the tincture the whole Atlantic Ocean full of alcohol would 
 be necessary. Dr. Black, to whom I have referred, says he uses the 
 first, third, sixth, ninth, up to the thirtieth dilution. Imagine the 
 ■effect of one-drop doses of the thirtieth dilution ! The finite mind can 
 not comp'*ehend the infinitesimal when thus expressed. 
 
 Homeopathy, although not yet deceased, retains hardly anything 
 of its original character but the name. The efficacy of infinitesimal 
 <loses is doubted by the leaders of the school, and even the doctrine of 
 similia similihus curautur is not now considered universal. Dr. 
 •George Wild, Vice-President of the British Homoeopathic Society, in 
 a letter to the London "Lancet," June, 1877, says that he believes 
 *' palpable doses of medicine are generally more efficacious in the treat- 
 ment of disease than infinitesimal ones." Also, that "some diseases 
 are best treated by similars and some by contraries." 
 
 The third dogma, with regard to the psora, or itch, has been, since 
 the discovery of the itch-insect, effectually disposed of forever. As 
 Dr. Holmes remarks, "What there is left of the three-legged stool 
 after one of its legs is pulled out, and the other two sawed half or 
 three quarters through, seems hardly worth sitting down on." 
 
 The name homoeopathy has a charm for the public, and so is re- 
 tained to juggle with. When, in 1833, the edition of the "Organon " 
 from which I have quoted was published, the translator, in the pref- 
 ace, mentioned that this new system of mtdicine was spreading 
 through the Continent of Europe with the rapidity of lightning. In 
 1880, in an address read before the Institute of Homoeopathy, in Mil- 
 waukee — "How can we best advance Homoeopathy?" — the author 
 says : " It can not be denied that homoeopathy has not advanced, and 
 is not advancing, as rapidly as we once had just and reasonable 
 grounds for expecting. In Great Britain there are but two hundred 
 and seventy-five homoeopathic physicians, and in the United States 
 there is not one legally recognized school of homoeopathy." He con- 
 ■cludes by saying that there seems to be everywhere stagnation, if not 
 retrogression. Dr. Smyth, in his book on " Medical Heresies," men- 
 tions that a short time since the County Hospital, Sacramento, was in 
 charge of homoeopathic physicians ; quite recently they have been re- 
 lieved from further attendance by the managers, because of the ex- 
 travagant expenditure of money for drugs. Among the items are 
 three pounds of salicylic acid and four thousand grains of quinine. 
 
16 
 
 In Ontario, up to ten years a^o, homoDopaths were yearly regis- 
 tered by scores ; since then tlicy have to pass througli the same 
 courses and examinations as the regular sttulents, in all but thera- 
 peutics and pharmacy. The consequence is, that in ten years there 
 have only been two or three applications for examinations as homoeo- 
 paths. Homoeopathy, being a system utterly devoid of any scientific 
 foundation, is now dying a natural death. 
 
 It is difficult to give the exact reason or reasons why quackery is 
 so prevalent. The causes are very various and obscure. Southey 
 says : " Man is a dupable animal ; quacks in medicine, quacks in reli- 
 gion, and quacks in politics know this, and act upon that knowledge. 
 There is scarcely any one who may not, like a trout, be taken by 
 tickling." It is extraordinary what a hold the mystic and marvelous 
 still have on many people ; there seems to be in almost every one a 
 vein of credulity and superstition against whicli argument is useless. 
 The disposition to be humbugged })reponderates in human nature over 
 reason and common sense. Education, at least the education of the 
 day, apparently has no influence in depriving people of this quality. 
 Men of education are the very ones wlio have been, and are now, 
 duped by clever quacks. A man may be an able politician, distin- 
 guished in literature, of great shrewdness in the ordinary business of 
 life, and yet believe in spiritualism, homceopathy, Perkinism, and tar- 
 water. When he is ill he will probably, after taking in vain the vari- 
 ous much vaunted and advertised panaceas, call in some quack who 
 promises a cure in a certain time and in some uncommon manner. 
 
 Bishop Berkeley is an example of a man of great attainments,, 
 whose mind was obscured by quackery, Ilis tar-water he considered. 
 an infallible remedy for all ailments, and wrote a book describing its 
 universal efficacy in curing disease. Dr. O. W. Holmes says : " He 
 might have lived longer, but his fatal illness was so sudden that there 
 was no time to stir up a quart of the panacea. He was a very illus- 
 trious man, but he held two very odd opinions, that tar-water was 
 everything, and that the whole material universe was nothing ("Cur- 
 rents and Counter-Currents," p. 72), Alfred Russel Wallace,* the emi- 
 nent naturalist and evolutionist, Mr. Crooke, the celebrated physi- 
 cist, and Pasteur, the scientist, are ardent spiritualists, and believe 
 that diseases may be cured by means of spiritualism. Disraeli was a 
 homoeopathist ; Sir Robert Walpole patronized a quack medicine, said 
 
 * Mr. Wallace, in liis book on " Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," holds that the 
 theory of a future existence as taught by spiritualists is the " only one yet given to the 
 world that can at all commend itself to the modern philosophical mind," and in the spirit- 
 ual world the law of '' progression of the fittest " takes the place of the grand law of the 
 " survival of the fittest " in the material world. lie also holds that witches were what 
 are now called " mediums." Owing to the number of witches destroyed for several cen- 
 turies, the production of spiritual phenomena became impossible, which accounts for 
 spiritualism being of comparatively recent origin. 
 
16 
 
 i 
 
 to dissolve the stone ; Lord Bolingbroke died from the effects of a 
 <]uack cancer-remedy ; and I could enumerate many more men of 
 equal talents who were similiarly affected with thi>i mental obliquity. 
 
 Probably the greatest supporters of quacks and quackeries, next to 
 the fair sex, are ministers of religion ; hardly an advertisement of a 
 quack-roinedy can be road without coming across testimonials from 
 them. They are generally the first to support any new form of char- 
 latanism. In tht^ country parts, especially, while administering to 
 diseased souls they love to e«say the cfiicacies of new cure-alls on dis- 
 eased bodies. This weakness may be attributed to their well-known 
 benevolence, and desire to do good to their fellow-men. 
 
 If anybody is bold and unblushing enough to assert that he has a 
 remedy which cures every disease, and reiterates it often and loudly 
 enough, he is sure to have a following of believers, among whom 
 will be found men of ability and jiosition. Human credulity is too 
 strong to resist the frequent and positive assertions of the quack. 
 Persons who are not trained in scien'tific methods of thought, and who 
 know nothing about physiology, even if in the every-day affairs of 
 life they are most clear-headed, ai'e perfectly incompetent to form just 
 opinions on medical matters. 
 
 The arguments in favor of the different forms of quackery are 
 always the same. They say, " I was ill, I took a certain remedy or 
 went through a certain form of treatment, and got well." This argu- 
 ment is irresistible, and "therefore quackery is immortal." Now, nine 
 out of ten, nay, I venture to say nineteen out of twenty people, suffer- 
 ing from the ordinary acute diseases, if left to nature, get well. In 
 every case of illness a quack administers remedies, and, of course, if 
 the patient recovers, his recovery is attributed to the remedy ; conse- 
 quently the proportion of cures is lai'ge, and the nvimber grows in the 
 telling. In oidon times, when diseases were treated by charms, fast- 
 ings, prayers, and ceremonies, many of the physicians and priests, not 
 understandirg the power of nature, thought themselves favored with 
 supernatural assistance. The quack of to-day, however, thoroughly 
 understands what an able partner Dr. Nature is. If you ask a be- 
 liever in some form of quackery the modus operandi of the drug or 
 application, he tells you that there are many mysteries in nature which 
 it is impossible to understand. If you attribute the effect to imagi- 
 nation, he answers that the remedy is quite as efficacious adminis- 
 tered to young children and brute beasts, but, as Dr. Haygarth ob- 
 serves, " In these cases it is not the patient, but the observer, who is 
 deceived by his own imagination." 
 
 Now, when any remedy has to be tested as being useful in a 
 ■certain disease, we have, first, to be sure that the disease exists ; 
 secondly, that it was cured ; and, thirdly, that the remedy cured the 
 disease. 
 
 It is very common for quacks to call carbuncles cancers, ordinary 
 
17 
 
 nis- 
 ob- 
 o is 
 
 the 
 Hary 
 
 aore-throats dipht/ . 'a, and so on, and so boaat of their wonderful cures, 
 when Nature aloiv ileserves the ])raise. In no. eountry in the world 
 are quacka more abundant than in the United States. Kvery city 
 teems with faith-eure men, rubbers and strokera, clairvoyants, homoeo- 
 paths, eclectics, bone-setters, cancer-doctors, etc., etc. The advertising 
 <3olumns of the daily and weekly press, in the smaller towns especially, 
 are principally tilled with quack advertisements, some of them of the 
 most disgusting and disgraceful nature, and these too in jierfectly 
 respectable sheets, which find their way without question into family 
 circles. Religious newspapers are no exceptions to the nile ; in them 
 the advertisements have a religious gloss to attract the holy. Per- 
 haps texts are quoted, or the advertiser poses as a phila)ithro])ist or 
 clergyman, and treats the poor iiratls ; at tlie same time he hints that 
 the only reason he is so generous is that he etijoi/s the luxury of doing 
 good to suffering humanity. Quacks have many ways of advertising. 
 One asserts, as a scientific fact, that all diseases originate in disorders 
 of the nervous system, and urges every one, before it is too late, to come 
 and drink of his nervine tonic. Another states that phy>ici:ins now 
 admit that all diseases are due to impure blood, and vaunts the efficacy 
 of his magnetic blood-purifier. Then comes a vile woodcut of the in- 
 ventor, with a list of the testimonials of the most laudatory character, 
 showing how this more than human doctor had snatched the writer 
 from the jaws of deatli, and perhaps something worse ; or perha])s we 
 have a " Golden ^ledical Discovery," and are told that the receipt for 
 this medicine was found in the luggage of a deceased Zulu chief, or 
 that it had been a secret of the medicine-men among the Yucatan In- 
 dians for hundreds of years, and was providentially discovered by the 
 advertiser. To suit patients who dislike internal remedies, artful and 
 designing quacks have furnished Mver, stomach, and kidney pads, and 
 magnetic belts, giving illustrations at the same time to show how these 
 should be applied. I have been told by a wholesale druggist that thou- 
 sands are sold by the trade, monthly, to the credulous who are con- 
 tinually seeking for new medical divinities. Their action is much the 
 same as Perkins's Tractors. That these advertisers are successful in 
 selling their wares is shown by the enormous prices they pay for adver- 
 tising, and the colossal fortunes which men like HolloAvay, Helmbold, 
 Ayer, and others have made. If bread-pills were to be advertised, 
 until they came into notice, as some wonderful vegetable compound 
 from the center of the " Dark Continent," and that they cured all dis- 
 eases, they could not fail to acquire celebrity, for, of the thousands 
 who would take them, a certain number would be sure to get well. 
 
 Another kind of quack is one who does not charge for advice, but 
 when a patient consults him he terrifies him into believing he has some 
 serious disease which only his medicine can cure. This is a very old 
 form of quackery. Robert Pitt, in a book called " The Crafts and 
 Frauds of Physic exposed," published in London in 1703, says, " A 
 
18 
 
 quack is a practitioner who taken no fee in specie, but makes the de- 
 luded patient pay very extravagant fees by the intolerable prices he 
 puts on all cheap medicines, and by passing upon him very many more 
 doses than the disease re(|uires or t})e constitution can bear." 
 
 That this, the last quarter of our nineteenth century of progress 
 and boasted enlightenment, is as rich in credulity and superstition as 
 any of the preceding ones, is proved by the fact that thousands yearly 
 visit shrines and sacred springs, if Catholics, and attend " faith conven- 
 tions," if Protestants, to be cured of bodily ailments. Not long since 
 one of England's ])roudest nobles traveled on a pilgrimage to Lourdes 
 in the hopes that Notre Dame de Lourdes would make his only son, 
 who is a deaf-mute, hear and speak. Every day in our own immediate 
 neighborhood, hundreds and thousands of the maimed end the blind 
 make pilgrimages to the sacred spring of Ste. Anne de Beaupro and are 
 miraculously healed — have they not a mountain of crutches bearing 
 witness to the fact ? Lately in this city (Montreal), a noted female 
 quack has made the blind to see and the lame to walk — at least I 
 have been told so by eye-witnesses — and in consequence has attracted 
 crowds of infatuated simpletons, who could not hand in their dollars 
 fast enough to secure a bottle of her wtmderful nostrum. The priests 
 of a neighboring city, jealous of poaching on their own grounds, 
 denounced her as a charlatan, and told the afflicted that, instead of 
 being duped by this unholy woman, they should make a pilgrimage to 
 Ste. Anne de lieaupre and be healed ! 
 
 The success of this mode of treatment in hysterical cases is being 
 recognized in France by physicians : they now, when they have an hys- 
 terical patient of a devout frame of mind, on whom they have exer- 
 cised their skill in vain, as a dernier ressort advise that a visit should 
 be made to the shrine of Notre Dame de Lourdes. Thus imagination 
 often works a cure where medicine fails. These cures, as I said above, 
 only take place when the disease is one of the imagination. 
 
 Why is quackery so much more prevalent hi medicine than in any 
 other science ? Because the medical quack attributes to himself what 
 is due to Nature. Nature can not build a I'ailway, but she can very 
 often cure disease. A witty Frenchman has said that medicine amuses 
 the patient while Nature cures the disease. 
 
 Is there ever any chance of quackery becoming extinct ? I fear 
 not as long as human nature exists in its present condition. Still, no 
 doubt, there is a probability of the number of believers in quackery 
 being diminished by a greater diffusion of philosophical habits of*, 
 thought and a more general knowledge of physiology. A writer 
 many years ago, in one of the London medical papers, said : "The final 
 though distant extinction of quackery is to be hoped for ; it formS) 
 a fragment of that final triumph of reason and virtue which is the- 
 secret consolation of every philanthropist." 
 
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