MEDICAL QUACKS AND QUACKERIES. 161 



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 

 sore-throats diphtheria, and so on, and so boast of their wonderful cures, 

 when Nature alone deserves the praise. In no country in the world 

 are quacks more abundant than in the United States. Every city 

 teems with faith-cure men, rubbers and strokers, clairvoyants, homoeo- 

 paths, eclectics, bone-setters, cancer-doctors, etc., etc. The advertising- 

 columns of the daily and weekly press, in the smaller towns especially, 

 are principally filled with quack advertisements, some of them of the 

 most disgusting and disgraceful nature, and these too in perfectly 

 respectable sheets, which find their way without question into family 

 circles. Religious newspapers are no exceptions to the rule ; in them 

 the advertisements have a religious gloss to attract the holy. Per- 

 haps texts are quoted, or the advertiser poses as a philanthropist or 

 clergyman, and treats the poor gratis y at the same time he hints that 

 the only reason he is so generous is that he enjoys 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 physicians 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 death, and perhaps something worse ; or perhaps we 

 have a " Golden Medical 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 liver, 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 Holloway, 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 



VOL. XXIII. 11 



