Charlatanry

“ He will hear them affirm, that they only are radical reformers; that the fate of society depends on them; that they go to the bottom of corruption. That they go to the bottom, we believe; that they come out pure, is another question. That their specific is a cure-all, we happen to know is the common proclamation of all such charlatanry. ”

“ But those acquainted with the charlatanry in these days of what is called ‘Christian Science,’ and know the extent to which crass ignorance and predisposed credulity can be duped by childish delusions, may have some ‘idea how acute was the spirit-rapping epidemic some forty or fifty years ago. ‘At this moment,’ writes Froude, in ‘Fraser’s Magazine,’ 1863, ‘we are beset with reports of conversations with spirits, of tables miraculously lifted, of hands projecting out of the world of shadows into this mortal life. ”

“ But "seeing is believing," and I can fully appreciate the incredulity of reasonable minds as to phenomena which are not in line with our ordinary experience of life, and which, at the same time, are of extreme rarity, and require, for their investigation and actual observation, great patience and the sacrifice of much time and the exercise of much tolerance, surrounded, as the subject is, by gross charlatanry and fraud. ”

“ It may well be, however, that in the last analysis he not only deceived others but also deceived himself—that his charlatanry was the work of a man constitutionally incapable of distinguishing between reality and fiction in so far as related to the performance of feats contributing to the success of his "mission." ”

“ For, to Astro the Seer, modern science was but an allegory of the intellect and the emotions. By it he explained even his own charlatanry.
"Isn't it like absence? While our friend is present, he is bathed in the matter-of-fact light of day; he is radiant, luminous. When he disappears, for a time that impression of him lasts, like the phosphorescent glow. Then, the light fades and we begin to forget, all save those who truly love, who truly know, whose soul can still perceive the mysterious astral black light he radiates through the dark. ”

“ Antonyms: uncharitable, illiberal, intolerant.
charity, n. benevolence, good will, love, benignity, philanthropy, beneficence, bounty, liberality, tolerance. Associated words: eleemosynary, alms, dependent.
charlatan, n. pretender, quack, impostor, fraud, cheat, mountebank, empiric.
charlatanic, a. pretentious, empirical, quackish.
charlatanry, n. quackery, pretension, empiricism, charlatanism.
charm, n. spell, incantation, enchantment, conjuration; periapt, amulet, phylactery, talisman, fetich, abraxas; fascination, glamour, witchery, attraction, illusion, rhetoric; breloque (jewel) ”

“ Pretenders, getting less easily before the courts. would testify less confidently if they knew that all their statements were to be properly reviewed; science itself would be more fairly represented, public interests would be subserved, and charlatanry would be the only sufferer. ”

“ It is also doubtless true that much good may result from the employment of suggestion by a charlatan, in the form of a written medical charm, both parties being alike profoundly ignorant of the healing influence involved. ”

“ Because we have failed by fair means, we are sure the other fellows have succeeded by foul. And, moreover, one is apt to forget how much talent is needed to be a charlatan. Never look down upon a charlatan. Courage, skill, personal force or charm, great knowledge of human nature, dramatic instinct, and industry—few charlatans succeed (and no one is called a charlatan till he does succeed, be his success as low or high as you please) without possessing a majority of these qualities ”

“ The sagacious charlatan is aware of this state of things, and seizes every opportunity to gain the favor of all the gossips in town, and to enlist them in his service. Officious individuals may sometimes pay all their own medical bills in this way, and perhaps get some presents to boot. ”

“ This is a live world, a practical world; we want facts, results—something we can turn to account and make use of."
This impatience (and who can blame those who are suffering, or those who, being young and talented, [Pg 12] want to be led into the right path) throws the door wide open to all kinds of charlatanism—charlatanism which is honest and charlatanism which is dishonest, the former, being more readily trusted, often working the greater harm. ”

“ Mental quackery rests on the same platform as all other quackery. The chief plank in this platform is the Mental charlatanism doctrine that Science has two principles in partnership, one good and the other evil, — one spiritual, the other material, — and that these two may be simultaneously at work on the sick. ”

“ The charlatans, whether they deal in moral or in physical wonders, form a race which is never extinct. They migrate to the different zones of the social system, and though they change their place, and their purposes, and their victims, yet their character and motives remain the same. ”

“ Once the synonym of all that was honorable and reverent, of a possessor of learning and wisdom, it has become degraded into an epithet to designate one who is a pretender and a juggler; a charlatan, in short, or one who has “sold his soul to the Evil One;” who misuses his knowledge, and employs it for low and dangerous uses, according to the teachings of the clergy, and a mass of superstitious fools who believe the magician a sorcerer and an enchanter. ”

“ CHAPTER XIX QUACKS AND QUACKERY (CONTINUED)
An English physician, who practised during the early part of the reign of King James I, described the charlatan of that period as shameless, a mortal hater of all good men, an adept in cozening, legerdemain, conycatching, [223:1] and all other shifts and sleights; a cracking boaster, proud, insolent, a secret back-biter, a contentious wrangler, a common jester and liar, a runagate wanderer, a cogging [223:2] sychophant and covetous exactor, a wringer of his patients. In a word, a man, or rather monster, made of a mixture of all vices. ”

“ In the feudal ages medicine and quackery were the same, as far as any principles of science are concerned. The only difference between the physician and the charlatan was, that the former was a fool and the latter a rogue. Men did not meddle much with the healing art. ”

“ It is here that some degree of charlatanism comes into play, for the operating medicine-man will presently produce a tangible object from his mouth, a bit of stick, a thorn, a fishbone, or anything of a similar description, and inform the patient and his friends that this is the material form which had been assumed by the evil spirit which he has drawn bodily from the flesh of the sick person. ”

“ The hope that to the last lurks in the breast of the veriest wretch under heaven's canopy, whether his trials come from broken health, or an empty pocket, or wronged affection, speaks aloud in saddest tones, as one thinks of the multitudes who, worn with bodily malady and spiritual dejection, ignorant of the source of their sufferings, but thirsting for relief from them, have gone from charlatan to charlatan, giving hoarded money in exchange for charms, cramp-rings, warming-stones, elixirs, and trochees, warranted to cure every ill that flesh is heir to. ”

“ Add to those things all the knavery and artifice which the charlatans put in practice to deceive and delude the people, and then can we be surprised that they succeeded in imposing on them and gaining their belief? But let it not be imagined, nevertheless, that everyone was their dupe, and that amongst so many blind and credulous people there were not always to be found some men sensible and clear-sighted enough to perceive the truth. ”

“ I live by my wits—so do poets and lawyers, and all the charlatans of the world; I am a charlatan—a chameleon. 'Each man in his time plays many parts:' I play any part in which Money, the Arch-Manager, promises me a livelihood. ”

“ Amigo George, tell me--what are we doing in this world?"
"Do you mean all the people, everybody?"
"No, only people like you and me. Simple people, in this world which is eaten up with charlatanism of all sorts so that even we, the simple, don't know any longer how to trust each other." ”

“ Some newspaper articles falsifying the science, calling it mesmerism, etc., but especially intended, as the writer informed us, to injure its author, precipitated our examination of mesmerism in contradistinction to our metaphysical science of healing based on the science of Life. Filled with revenge and evil passions, the mal-practitioner can only depend on manipulation, and rubs the heads of patients years together, fairly incorporating their minds through this process, which claims less respect the more we understand it, and learn its cause. ”

“ In fact, there is no other department of spiritism to which the taint of fraud has so thoroughly attached itself. It is obvious that any clever charlatan, by persuading his sitters that darkness is necessary for the development of occult phenomena, can produce most mystifying effects, and the records of scientific investigations, to say nothing of the records of our police courts, abound in evidence that swindlers have not been slow in availing themselves of this opportunity to prey on the credulous and superstitious. ”

“ The malpractioners on the list of our students have been expelled from the Christian Scientists' Association, and are about one per cent. Those few having departed morally from the rules and Principle of our system have lost its science, and destroyed their own practice by the committal of crimes and trying to destroy the honest success of others. The method of the malpractioner is mesmerism in ambush, practised with or without manipulation. ”

“ With no more, however, than a moderate allowance, for man’s notorious diathesis towards lying, for pleasure or profit, it is truly wonderful, that credulity should preserve its relative level, as it does, and ever has done, since the world began. Many, who will not go an inch with the Almighty, without a sign, will deliver their noses, for safe keeping, into the hands of a charlatan, and be led by him, blindfold, to the charnel-house. ”

“ Evil speaking, slander, detraction, gossip, scandal, are different names for one of the chief dangers to be guarded against in conversation; and you are doing much towards defending yourselves against it by the generous mental culture which you enjoy in this seminary. The demon of slander loves an empty house. A taste for scandal betrays a vacant mind. Furnish your minds, then, by useful reading and study, and by habits of reflection and mental industry, that you may be able to talk about subjects as well as about people,—about events too long past or too remote to be interwoven with slander. ”

“ A charlatan, who had slyly watched him for some time, now stepped up to him, and before long drew from the unsophisticated mountaineer a detailed account of his long cherished hopes and of his present bitter disappointment.34 After listening with feigned sympathy to the whole story, the charlatan suggested that if the peasant’s means would not permit his buying a foal, he ought to purchase a mare’s egg; adding that a cow could hatch it, and suckle the foal until it was old enough to eat grass. ”

“ When once the victim is within the web, flattering, intimidations, and extravagant promises, one or all, generally will accomplish their aim. As they never expect to see a special victim again, they squeeze the last dollar from the unfortunate wretch, giving therefor nothing—worse than nothing! I sent a pretended patient to one of these charlatans not long since, and, with crocodile tears in his eyes, he related his [Pg 182] case to the soi-disant doctor, who with great sympathy heard his case, and assured him it was “heart-rending, and, though very dangerous, he could cure him;” ”

“ Hundreds of thousands of impostors, idle, licentious, and impudent, who are hated and despised even by those who think they need their religious aid. And all this abomination is carefully hidden under a close veil of tinsel and finery, and foolish, empty ceremonies, in all ages the charlatan’s conditio sine quâ non. ”

“ And as many, who are incapable of being real orators, study most faithfully the tricks of oratory, and so far succeed as to deceive the superficial and the ignorant, so there is many a physician, who, instead of bestowing all his energies upon the management of disease, wastes them in learning the tricks of the charlatan, which will enable him, like the mock orator, to make a show of skill and acquire the reputation of possessing it with the multitude. ”

“ It is not a very serious offense, and you and I have no great interest in the case, but of course the public has got to be protected from charlatans, and the only way to do it is to brand as guilty those who pretend they are duly licensed to practise medicine when they are not. ”

“ By the help of this magic, we may extract the sting of guilt from every known sin; and, if we have but wit enough, may be as wicked as we please with a safe conscience. 239
If the features of this corrupt casuistry have not been overcharged; or, indeed, if there be any such thing in the world as a corrupt casuistry, it may concern us to reflect, that this pest of society could not have arisen but from a contempt of the Apostle’s rule, of being simple concerning evil. ”

“ It is not that this percentage is wicked, nor is it strikingly good, neither is it necessarily feeble-minded, but it shows itself so entirely unimaginative and inane that it is no wonder that the charlatan in religion, politics, and education rampages over the world through a perfect maelstrom of bouquets. Nothing impersonal ever seems to stir the sluggishness of their "souls." They feel nothing that does not hit them straight between the eyes. They never perceive the tragedy behind the smile, the wrong behind the justice of the law, the piteousness and helplessness of men and women. ”