Quack doctor

“ The quack doctor does not handle a variety of medicine; he knows just enough of anatomy and materia medica to make his speech sound scholarly—but his remedy, costing less than the price of one visit from a physician, will cure all the ills of the human body. Like De Soto, we are seeking the fountain of perennial youth—the elixir of life. ”

“ The quack-doctor, continues the writer above mentioned, must have been a fashionable style of man, not meddling much with the poor, and familiar with boudoirs, curing the new disease with new and wondrous remedies.
May not the word quacke, asks Stylites, another enquirer, as above used, mean quake or ague? For an ague-doctor must have had much employment, and if successful, great renown, in those days of fens, marshes and undrained ground. ”

“ It can hardly matter whether the inventor of the general remedy be learned doctor or impudent charlatan, the medicine, as soon as ever it assumes specific powers, and is to be administered by or to anybody, is quack, not only in the proper acceptation of the term, but in its original signification. Quacks are, with a few notable exceptions, a very different body now from what they were in the last century, when they killed more than they cured, and when drugs were compounded with a recklessness which seems quite impossible in these moderate days. ”

“ The youth gave his melancholy smile.
"To you it should be, even if there is no one else to set a value on it, sir."
"I will pay your price."
"Well, then," said the doctor, sour that he had not asked more, "we waste time; the cure must begin at once."
Mr. Beauchamp rose.
The quack's little eyes glinted over his frail elegant person.
"You have no time to lose," he remarked. ”

“ With the emperor's permission he went to the room where the hopeless cases were. Even the most healthy of them had only two or three days to live.
The Quack Doctor. On seeing them our quack almost fell in a faint.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I am going to cure you in the only possible way. The great magician Faramalla has taught me a wonderful system of curing. There is no invalid who cannot be healed by it. Hear it:
"It is necessary for me to kill one of you and burn his heart. ”

“ Well, old rogue, an hour's delusion were cheap for a hundred guineas. Let this only make me think I shall live—live!"
"Sir," said Joshua Ward, a little discomfited, yet master of himself, "you talk like the ignorant. Did I not cure the King?"
"I think," smiled Mr. Beauchamp, "he was not so sick as I am."
"Unbelief will counteract any cure," announced the quack. "Yet, even if you doubt, that medicine will do you much good."
The patient's grey eyes fixed themselves in a wistful fashion on the self-satisfied, impudent face of the doctor. ”

“ The distinction between a quack doctor and a qualified one is mainly that only the qualified one is authorized to sign death certificates, for which both sorts seem to have about equal occasion. Unqualified practitioners now make large incomes as hygienists, and are resorted to as frequently by cultivated amateur scientists who understand quite well what they are doing as by ignorant people who are simply dupes. Bone-setters make fortunes under the very noses of our greatest surgeons from educated and wealthy patients ”

“ There might be sure a world of fun.
with a quack doctor
Drawn by Rowlandson
Quæ Genus with a Quack Doctor.
Anodyne.
"This the first rule that I shall trace:—
You must command a solemn face;
Nor suffer objects to beguile
Your features to familiar smile.
Here, I must own, you oft may see
What may court transient pleasantry;
For e'en 'midst misery and pain,
You'll find such whims and fancies reign,
Hear patients cough and grunt and sneeze
In such uncouth, discordant keys,
That without care, I should not wonder
Your muscles into laugh might blunder. ”

“ I am indeed a doctor, but if I had announced myself as such I should not have had as large a clientèle as I have as a quack-healer. Now that all my clients know that I have studied medicine, however, and that I am a properly qualified medical man, they will desert me in favour of some quack who can assure them that he has never studied, but cures simply by inspiration. ”

“ Another has said, "Doctor no good," and some have shown the strongest predilection for quack medicines. They seem to know instinctively what is genuine and what is not; and they cling as strongly to the latter as any of the Europeans. They seem, too, to have the same regard and respect for irregular practitioners as the whites; and some will greedily take medicine from the hands of a person who pretends to a knowledge of physic when they will actually refuse the draught that medical skill has made ready for their cure. ”

“ He is, in fact, the Physician of the Fools—a body whose numbers and respectability are by far too great to admit of anything of the kind. However, as there are some people in the world who are not fools, and who will not, when they want a doctor, have recourse to a Quack, if they can help it, the practice of the latter ought certainly to be limited to its proper sphere. For this end we could certainly go rather farther than Sir James Graham's sympathies permitted him to proceed last session. ”

“ But the younger doctor has turned the tables upon their accusers, and has openly reproached his Nazarene colleagues with the Immorality of endangering life itself, he has clearly demonstrated to the world that their trustful and believing patient was shrinking beneath their very fingers, he has candidly foretold these Christian quacks that one day they would be in the position of the quack skin-specialist at the fair, who, as a proof of his medical skill, used to show to the peasants around him the skin of a completly cured patient of his. ”

“ But the doctor wished to know with whom he dealt.
"Who are you, sir?"
The other roused himself to some show of animation.
"Whether I am a strolling player or an earl, I can pay you what you want. My name is Henry Beauchamp."
"Well, Mr. Beauchamp," said the doctor, "you should have come to me before. You are a very sick man indeed. Without my help you would have only a brief while to live." ”

“ Then the physician may have occasion to comment, in the lecture-room, upon this class of diseases; and he would then show how many circumstances must be considered and estimated before the true mode of treatment can be known. And as quacks thrive upon ignorance and credulity, he might gratify the curious student by an exposition upon the facility with which imaginary cures might be effected. He might show that by the employment of quack medicines the diseased part might be made to assume the appearance of health. ”

“ Of course he received no pay except experience, since the dispensaries in the Quaker City, as a rule, do not give salaries to their doctors; and the vilest of the poor prefer a “pay doctor” to one of these disinterested gentlemen, who cannot be expected to give their best brains for nothing, when at everybody’s beck and call. I am told, indeed I know, that most young doctors do a large amount of poor practice, as it is called; but, for my own part, I think it better for both parties when the doctor insists upon some compensation being made to him. ”

“ It is not uncommon to see their dentists wandering through the streets with rows of old fangs suspended from their necks like necklaces, trophies of their skill; and every dead wall in the city has its vermilion posters, advertising some great quack medicine, so that it is quite evident that the science of medicine has reached that pitch of refinement where a host of quacks can ply their arts with as much success as among the western barbarians. ”

“ What the quacks cure are not always imaginary ills, but often ills that are very real, at least to the patients, and the symptoms of which are relieved by the confidence aroused in the new remedy and the representations of the supposed discoverer, who, in spite of the exaggerated claims which he makes, somehow succeeds in catching the trust of patients. Very often this process initiated by the quack is really only the beginning of the cure. ”

“ All this tendency of human nature to respond to anything that is done for it, provided the promise of cure goes with it, is taken advantage of by the quack, sometimes unconsciously, for his own purposes. Results, as a rule, are secured, in spite of the remedies that he suggests, which in most cases do harm rather than good. Of the thousands of remedies that have been introduced by quacks, not one now remains, though every one of them produced {53} wonderful cures on a great many patients at some time or other. ”

“ All experience shows that mankind are ever more ready to believe pleasant falsehoods than disagreeable truths. Quackery takes advantage of this proclivity, and therefore caters for the universal appetite. A perfect quack is a most obsequious sycophant — his medicines are always exactly what the patient wants. They are never disagreeable, are perfectly safe in all cases, and always certain to cure. These are what every sick man wants, and therefore strives with all his might to believe, and often does come to believe against the strongest evidence and clearest reason. ”

“ Giving utterly false assurances to the patient is a very different thing from merely exciting the hope in his mind to such a degree as the case may allow, that the remedies will produce the desired relief. The latter can be consistently done by the upright and high-minded practitioner, but the former is to be expected only in the ignorant pretender, and the dishonorable and unprincipled physician. The quack always gives assurances of a cure to those whom he undertakes to dupe ”

“ Do not regular practitioners kill also? or rather, do not their prescriptions fail? If a quack cures, they will tell you that it was by mere accident. I suspect that there is more of accident in the practice than the faculty are ready to admit; and Heaven knows they so change about themselves, that it is clear that they feel no confidence in the little that they do know; and it is because medicine is so imperfect that every half century we have a new quack, as he is termed, rising up, and beating the regular practitioners out of the field. ”

“ Indeed, with the diffusion of information in modern times the quack has secured a wider audience. Superficial ideas of science are disseminated by the newspapers and by the magazines, people think that they understand all about it, and then these ideas are turned to their own advantage by the irregular practitioners of medicine. We have quacks by the score in all the centers of population, making a livelihood by exploiting the ailing, and serving to no small extent to create a feeling of popular discontent towards the physician, because that serves the purpose of quackery. ”

“ There is only one medicine for the disease of the world, and that medicine is the Blood of Christ. Ultimately, one believes, that will be applied; but evidently it will not be applied in any broad way as a social treatment till all the quack remedies have demonstrated their uselessness. The last two centuries have been the flowering time of quacks. The mere history of their theories fills volumes. Our own time shows no decline in productiveness, nor decline in hopefulness in the efficacy of the last remedy to bid for support. ”

“ In many places in the United States, public opinion has elevated quack practitioners above regular physicians. Perhaps no city in the world affords better means for clinical instruction than the city of New York. ”

“ I appeal to any of my brethren who have been gratified, as I often have been, with the Demosthenes-like torrent which has been so frequently poured forth, in our medical societies, by this “child and champion” of the Galenical throng, against quackery and all its appurtenances, whether it were fair to surmise, as some unconscionable rogues have done, that Dr B. has absolutely himself become the proprietor of a quack medicine. ”

“ Some physicians always have a troop of busy-bodies trumpeting their fame. They have a tact in drawing such persons into their train, and they do it by precisely the same means by which the quack accomplishes the same object. The quack and the quackish physician are alike in this respect. The prompting influence, thus exerted, may not always be obvious, and sometimes is least so when it is the most effectual. The old adage, that the highest evidence of art is in the concealment of art, is applicable here. ”

“ He does not spare those physicians who follow medicine as a trade, instead of pursuing it as a profession, “and study the science of patient-getting to the neglect of the science of patient curing,” while in showing the processes of the quack in experimenting on the credulity of his victims, he has done an essential service to the health of the community. We can but reiterate the hope that the volume, full as it is of practical wisdom, will be extensively circulated, and do its part toward enlightening the most quack-ridden people on the face of the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He loves to see the credulous, whether learned or unlearned, gaze at his wonders, and to hear the loose tongues of gossipers busy in his praise. He aims at a reputation for performing great cures in cases in which others have been said to fail—a reputation which no honorable physician ever has, however eminent he may be, because he does not seek after it. Every quack seeks for it, and acquires it to a greater or less extent. The physician can have it if he will make it his aim, but in doing this he puts himself on a level with the quack in the common field of empiricism. ”