45° POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of scientific explanation. It is scant wonder that the pompous logic 

 moves the incurable, whom neither ' knife ' nor ' drugs ' can save, vapid 

 ladies of fashion, and the smart shallowpate of ' a little learning/ 



But the quack does not depend solely on the agony of disease and 

 the inability of scientific medicine completely to cope with it. He 

 swells the total of victims by magnifying minor ailments and imposing 

 imaginary ones. By cooked mortality statistics he frightens the indi- 

 vidual into noticing and treating some indisposition, which the family 

 doctor, generally to no effect, laughingly pronounces not worth bother- 

 ing about ; and then, conversely, by the same process of ' autosugges- 

 tion/ a few months' trustful application of the vaunted nostrum brings 

 back the patient's assurance and draws his mind from the ailment. 

 Or, the quack will address himself to the social weakling, and by skilful 

 insistence ascribe failure to ' pelvic disease/ ' nerve exhaustion/ ' and 

 all that' as Pope says. The poor numskull and the unattractive girl 

 are quick to seize the hope ; yes, not deficient endowments, but dissipa- 

 tion or insidious disease has caused their defeat — good Doctor Slyfox, 

 A.B., M.D., member of six medical institutes and nineteen learned 

 societies, will raise them out of the slough. Again, along this same 

 line of ' autosuggestion/ the quack enlarges his levee by invitations to 

 self-diagnosis. With a subtle mastery of rhetoric he sets forth such an 

 array of ' symptoms ' that no diligent pupil need feel he is cast into 

 outer darkness. Follow the fraudulent guide — and yesterday you had 

 consumption; to-day varicocele fastens you in its fangs; to-morrow 

 your kidneys will be fatally weak — and so the falsehood runs. 



It may be supposed that caution so palpably absurd would rouse 

 more ridicule than credence. But the hypochondriac, the neuropath, 

 the person of weak judgment (ignorance is no indispensable factor) 

 do not reason in such matters. We are almost led to accept as genuine 

 the testimonial in which it is written, ' I had tried all the medicines/ 

 With such people, the high-sounding swagger, pretended altruism and 

 adroit description of past achievements drown out the voices of com- 

 mon sense. Even the normal reader can hardly turn to the quack's 

 advertisement day after day, in a non-critical mood, without experi- 

 encing at least a passing influence. The fulsome notices of books and 

 plays, in fact, the whole psychology of advertising, rest on this very 

 principle of ' autosuggestion.' So all the quack requires is a hearing. 

 Given a hook-and-line and a pond of fish, he understands baiting too 

 well, not to land a heavy catch. 



Of course, there are contributory factors. The quack has other 

 resources. Notable is his use of that universal weakness, the basis of 

 get-rich-quick schemes and the shopper's bargain, — I mean the fascina- 

 tion of getting something for nothing. The doctor will send you a 

 heavy bill on the first of January or July ; the quack offers : ' No Pay 



