QUACKERY. 449 



sad issue some doctor isn't blamed! Consider what large proportion 

 of quack remedies is for cancer and incurable female complaints: 

 ' The doctors all gave me up/ writes Figment A ; ' I know you have 

 tried the physicians in vain/ blares Humbug Z. It is here, upon affec- 

 tions which scientific medicine confesses it can not help, and also upon 

 maladies born of shrewd playing on one's fear of disease, that the 

 empiric waxes fat. Why shouldn't the invalid take heart and believe? 

 Often the loud assurances act as anodyne; occasionally, they even effect 

 a cure. Or, how can the neuropath and the valetudinarian escape the 

 hypnotism of the quack's terrorizing? For the quack wields a deadly 

 weapon in what psychiatrists recognize as ' the power of the uncon- 

 scious mind over the body.' He forces credence by calculated emphasis 

 and careful insinuation. He works you into a mood where the mind 

 ' autosuggests/ at times the throwing off of a disease, more usually, 

 belief in a cure or the assumption of imaginary sickness. It is, of 

 course, a familiar fact that the typical medical student goes through 

 the whole calendar of diseases. ' Autosuggestion ' is the technical word 

 for this mysterious process ; it is what the hypnotist employs, but never 

 to stronger purpose than the superior quack. 



Given, on the one hand, this set of causes — the limitations of sci- 

 entific medicine, the pain and dread of disease, and the power of ' auto- 

 suggestion/ and, on the other hand, depraved humanity, hard-driven in 

 the struggle for existence, but cunning in the knowledge of men, and 

 you have the essential parts which, with a few minor pieces, make up 

 into the smooth engine of quackery. 



Every newspaper and magazine reader knows how well the quack 

 makes capital out of the limitations of scientific medicine. When the 

 regular practitioner is puzzled, he admits, or when the case transcends 

 cure, he gravely shakes his head. The quack now steps in and begins 

 where the other left off. He e especially solicits obstinate cases ' ; 

 ' welcomes the doubter and the skeptic' He realizes the persuasive 

 value of bold assertion and big promises; how the exclamation-point 

 and the period may appeal more strongly than the careful interroga- 

 tions of the honest physician. He talks much of the ' thousands who 

 testify to its success/ and thus swaggers himself into the confidence of 

 the poor invalid, whom the doctors, in good conscience, must acknowl- 

 edge beyond their aid. With so many broken-hearted witnesses of the 

 insufficiency of evolved therapeutics, almost any knave can steal a living 

 by brazenly opposing some dominant practise in medicine — as surgery 

 or the use of drugs. These ' methods ' nowadays have a pseudo- 

 physiological basis; with a speciousness it is often hard to confute, 

 tracing all disease back to l inside nerves/ e sluggish circulation/ and 

 the like, they impress by the sweep of their assertion and their tone 



VOL. LXVII. — 29. 



