QUACKS AND THE REASON OF THEM. 



823 



roots, was extraordinarily popular for a few years, and tlien lost 

 his constituents one by one. Every region has had some great 

 man of this sort. The Zouave Jacob was all the fashion in Paris 

 under the empire, and his office was never without patients from 

 morning till evening. A Moorish doctor of Frais Vallen, Algeria, 

 was consulted with almost incredible faith by his countrymen 

 and by Europeans, and gave, with his limited list of remedies a 

 few herbs, purgatives, and extract of cresses some really philo- 

 sophical advice, and manifested fine qualities of intelligence. Not 

 long ago a practitioner of these arts took rooms in the best hotel 

 in Havre and adver- 

 tised by every chan- 

 nel the wonderful 

 merits of the dynam- 

 otherapeutic insti- 

 tute. All diseases 

 were cured by the 

 application of plates. 

 The innocents fl ocked 

 to him, but when 

 they found that they 

 were hoaxed the jok- 

 er had gone. 



Besides these false 

 doctors and surgeons 

 without diplomas, 

 like the bone-setters, 

 there is a whole class 

 of amateur doctors, 

 such as met Gonelle, 

 ready to give advice, 

 some in pure philan- 

 thropy, others less 

 disinterested. The 

 members of the 

 French Academy of 

 Medicine have an 



hour or two of fun every year at the reading of the report on 

 secret remedies. An ingenious schemer fancies he has some po- 

 tent remedy and sends the receipt to the academy ; or, perhaps, it 

 gets there indirectly. I will not venture to assert that the for- 

 mula may not be indorsed sometimes recommendations are so 

 cheap. Among these authors of cures are illiterate persons, shep- 

 herds, furriers, country ministers, teachers, and nurses. Here, 

 for instance, is a previously unknown recipe taken from an old 

 notebook ; here is a remedy brought down from father to son, the 



Fig. 1. A Quack Surgeon of the Eighteenth Centuet. 

 (From an engraving of the time.) 



