Quack medicine

“ A very slight acquaintance with the advertisements of quack medicines is enough to show that a knowledge of the causes of the disease for which a cure is promised is in no wise necessary for the composition of either the medicine or the advertisement, in fact, it is impossible to believe that the extravagant claims and absurd statements made could be put forward by persons having any knowledge of disease. ”

“ The quack advertisements and pamphlets are the source of incalculable evils to youths between the ages of seventeen and thirty. They are impelled by fear to visit the quack's den, where they are "played" as long as practicable. Sometimes exciting drugs, like cantharides, are given in the medicine, and thus intensify the evil. The quack, of course, ascribes the result to the patient's alarming condition, who is growing worse, in spite of his medicines, and who can only be cured by more powerful and costly drugs. ”

“ In England, there is a large class of persons who believe that a certain pill is able to cure all diseases, however opposite their natures, and however different the constitutions of the patients. It is in vain the analytical chemist describes publicly the component parts and real qualities of the quack medicine—their faith is unshaken. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The writer of the letter asks whether the Adulteration Act cannot be brought to bear upon those who sell this "pernicious confectionery;" but the bringing an Act to bear upon an evil is a slow process. The true preventive of mischief from the use of quack medicine is entire abstinence from its use.' Who can doubt the propriety of this advice? Let quack medicines be universally abandoned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Have we done right in trusting to this man, who, I am afraid, is a great rogue? I do not much like mixing with these gipsy people, for such I am sure he belongs to.”
“I really, do not see how we can do better,” replied Timothy. “The world is all before us, and we must force our own way through it. As for his being a quack doctor, I see no great harm in that. People put their faith in nostrums more than they do in regular medicines; and it is well known that quack medicines, as they call them, cure as often as others, merely for that very reason.” ”

“ A step has been just taken in Germany which is more needed here, and which yet there is hardly any hope that we shall profit by. The union of German apothecaries has addressed a petition to the Federal Council demanding that the secret medicines concocted and advertised by quacks shall be officially tested before they are permitted to be sold. A more creditable and needful step was never taken, or one which was more indicative of enlightenment and high civilization. Quack medicines are on the whole a curse to mankind. ”

“ 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 in medicine than in any other science? Because the medical quack attributes to himself what is due to Nature. Nature can not build a railway, but she can very often cure disease. A witty Frenchman has said that medicine amuses the patient while Nature cures the disease. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The country, even in this age of progressing wisdom, is deluged with quack medicines, which credulous people say are not directed against the constitution, but only against the pocket, and that they are too insipid to do either good or harm; but were this the case, there would have been no occasion for the exemplary punishments with which it is recorded quacks of all sorts have at various times been visited. Be it known, there can be no such thing invented by man as an universal remedy to prevent or cure all kinds of diseases ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. [1] Probably, 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. ”

“ And at the present day it is not at all an uncommon occurrence for medical men to be called in to prescribe for children, to whom the strongest purgative quack medicines have been previously exhibited by parents, for the removal of symptoms which, upon investigation, are found in no way connected with or produced by worms. The results of such errors are always, more or less, mischievous, and sometimes of so serious a nature as to lay the foundation of disease which ultimately proves fatal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One person I would earnestly warn you against, and that is the Quack Doctor. If the real Doctor is a sort of God of healing, or rather our God's cobbler for the body, the Quack is the Devil for the body, or rather the Devil's servant against the body. And like his father, he is a great liar and cheat. He offers you what he cannot give. Whenever you see a medicine that cures everything, be sure it cures nothing ”

“ Depending, as they do, for their success on the lure of some subtle drug concealed under a trademark name, or some opiate not readily obtainable under its own label, these are the most dangerous of all quack medicines, not only in their immediate effect, but because they create enslaving appetites, sometimes obscure and difficult of treatment, most often tragically obvious. Of these concealed drugs the headache powders are the most widely used, and of the headache powders Orangeine is the most conspicuous. ”

“ They have, too, the sagacity to perceive that audiences, in general, love to be addressed in the technics of a scientific style, whether rightly used or not. The vender of quack medicines has discovered [Pg 841] the same secret; and hence he, too, has his array of causes and effects, and fluids, and mediums, and counteracting forces, and grand systems of circulation, and positive and negative states. To be thus addressed raises the hearer or reader at once in his own estimation, and thus prepares him, sometimes, for the reception of almost any kind of nonsense. ”

“ It is the duty of physicians, who are frequent witnesses of the enormities committed by quackery, and the injury to health and even destruction of life caused by the use of quack medicines, to enlighten the public on these subjects, to expose the injuries sustained by the unwary from the devices and pretensions of artful empirics and impostors. ”

“ Moreover there is a kind of belief in empirical treatment, which is probably a "survival" from the ancient belief in charms and witchcraft; else how can people possibly put trust in medicines which are advertised as being adapted to cure all manner of diseases of thoroughly differing characters?
'But even among quack medicines there are degrees. There are some of which ordinary medical men readily avail themselves, and which under proper direction may be found really useful. ”

“ I have known cases in which injury done by these quack medicines has been incalculable. There is a Hindu proverb that the skill of no physician is to be trusted unless at least one thousand patients meet death at his hands. ”

“ It is a curious fact, that the true has always been more opposed at the outset than the false; the circulation of the blood and vaccination nearly lost their discoverers credit and practice, while some vender of quack medicines makes a rapid fortune. ”

“ It is amusing to watch the movements of the community in relation to quack medicines. Of these there are a multitude constantly appealing to the credulity of the public. Some of them in some way, acquire a currency above their fellows, and from the extent to which they are used, and from the tales of their wonder-working from all quarters of the land, and from all conditions of life, one would suppose that these remedies would never go out of use until mankind cease to be sick. ”

“ The terrible losses sustained by whole communities of farmers, planters, foresters, &c., from plant diseases have naturally stimulated the search for remedies, but even now the search is too often conducted in the spirit of the believer in quack medicines, although the agricultural world is awakening to the fact that before any measures likely to be successful can be attempted, the whole chain of causation of the disease must be investigated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, I believe one hundred quack remedies fail for one that succeeds, and millions must have been wasted in placards, bills, and advertisements, which never returned half their value to the speculator. I think I shall some day beguile my time with writing an account of the principal quack remedies which have met with success. They are few in number, after all, as any one must know who recalls the countless pills and tonics which are puffed awhile on the fences, and disappear, to be heard of no more. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The formula of the quack—“cancer treated without the knife”—appeals with great force to the public who do not know the terrible long-drawn-out agony which those treated with caustics have to undergo. Of this a vivid description was given by a well-known naturalist, the father of a distinguished man of letters, in a little book in which he related the suffering of his own wife; she was treated by an American cancer-curer by caustics. ”