QUACKERY. 451 



till Cured/ ' Send for Sample Bottle. Free.' How the charlatan 

 manages never to lose out would make a realistic novel in itself. 

 Suffice it to indicate his crafty reliance on creating ' the habit ' ; one 

 bottle with its high content of alcohol will inevitably ' tone you up/ 

 or admixed opiates may be the ' irresistible pain-killer/ to which you 

 will want to turn again. Quacks are among the largest customers of 

 wineries and distilleries. Eecent analyses (by the Massachusetts State 

 Board of Inquiry) have developed the possibility that the druggist's 

 show-case may hold more alcohol than the cellar of the saloon opposite, 

 and many a temperance advocate, quite unknowingly, has drawn in- 

 spiration for his lecture from that after-dinner glass of nerve tonic 

 or stomach bitters. 



With such instruments at his disposal, restrained by no Hippo- 

 cratian oath or sacred reputation, left free to run riot, by criminally 

 lax laws, deliberately dead-lettered, the genus Quack swarms out over 

 the land. Its species are unnumbered, being marked by every device 

 deceitful ingenuity can conceive. Psycho-therapeutics and knowledge 

 of human nature constitute the quack's entire outfit; all he really 

 needs is moral atrophy and the instincts of a cheap drummer. Such 

 is the baleful etiology of medical quackery. 



If confirmation of this diagnosis is desired, it may be sought in the 

 recent spread of quackery and its especial vogue in America. Para- 

 doxical as it sounds, the growth of education, while compelling the 

 quack to improve his methods, has greatly extended his field. For- 

 merly, he seldom worked farther than his voice or circular might 

 carry; now, every literate is a potential victim. His wares are dis- 

 played in almost every piece of print that strikes your eye; for the 

 publisher and f the press' he has subsidized and suborned. So-called 

 family magazines (messes of popular fiction and indecent advertise- 

 ments) are distributed gratis at the instance and backing of the quack, 

 for whom they are so much purchased propaganda. To the same end 

 he sustains the whole modern plethora of magazines and newspapers. 

 Without his lucrative patronage periodicals, representing the real 

 excess of supply over demand, would end their artificial existence, and 

 so, wherever there is a struggling paper, manhood slumbers and the 

 editor accepts the proffered bribe. How else explain the significant 

 truth that the sectarian press ranks among the worst offenders ? The 

 'yellies/ too, depend as much upon the quack as upon scandal; and 

 the most prosperous of them all affords the grossest example. The 

 editorial columns of a certain evening journal will, no doubt, to-night, 

 blare its owner's championship of the people, while almost every page 

 invites the trust-ground toiler to hand up his savings to swindling 

 men specialists and venders of alcoholic cure-alls. In fact, with a 

 few notable exceptions, such as The Outlook, Life and The New York 



