664 Quackery Practice, and St. John Long. DEC. 



of them eeem even to have doubted. Many of them affirmed peremp- 

 torily it was the same, and affirmed, we may say, what, in half the cases, 

 it was impossible they could know. 



The brand of ignorance and incompetence is ineffaceably fixed upon 

 the man. In his visits to the dying Miss Cashin in the miserable con- 

 dition to which he had reduced her he shewed himself to be wholly 

 without resource, or blundering at every step. He ordered port- wine 

 for a loathing stomach which for hours had not been able to retain 

 anything; and bade them expose the raging wound to the air ; he took 

 off his coat and called for lint, and made no use of it he was all abroad. 

 He inquired what the attendant had done, and acquiesced in all she 

 suggested, though repeatedly contradicting his own recommendations 

 she must know best, he said as she truly did. Though the wound 

 was plainly in a state of mortification, he affirmed there was no ground 

 for apprehension ; it was just what he washed to produce it was his 

 system he would give a hundred guineas to produce the same effects 

 on other patients ; he persisted till the last in his assurances that all 

 was right, and she would be well and better than ever she had been in 

 a few days. 



Now all this may have been ignorance, and nothing more ; but what 

 shall be said in the case of Mrs. Lloyd ? Though the condition of the 

 wounds was precisely the same though within a few weeks he had 

 seen the same sad effects, and knew they had proved fatal, he still kept 

 up the melancholy farce, and made the same confident declarations. 

 This cannot be called ignorance ; it was sheer brutality a resolute 

 perseverance in wrong and mischief a desperate clinging to his own 

 fame, at the risk and even certainty of another's destruction. Yet this 

 man has found persons willing to speak to his humanity. But what 

 persons ? Lords and ladies, whose rank secures to them attention and 

 deference, but who are the last persons surely to speak to general con- 

 duct and general feeling. 



Whatever may be thought of the possible efficiency of this man's 

 remedy in particular cases the blind pertinacity with which he applies 

 it the utter contempt of all discrimination the total ignorance of fatal 

 symptoms the lack of expedient on unexpected occasions which he 

 shews the more than savage spirit with which he perseveres, must 

 surely, now that all has got wind, deter the most credulous and con- 

 fiding of his patients and admirers they must be ready to bless them- 

 selves for their escape, and eschew for ever the perils of committing 

 themselves to similar pretenders. 



Exposure, in the widest sense of the term, is the effectual remedy 

 against quackery, but only against particular quackeries. The true and 

 permanent remedy is to be found in a better acquaintance with medical 

 matters, in principle especially, on the part of the public generally. 

 Some knowledge of the human frame of its organs and their functions 

 of the qualities and the workings of medicine of their relations and 

 bearings upon disease: these must come to be subjects of education 

 generally the concluding, finishing branches. Chemistry is already 

 a favourite pursuit. It is surely of more importance to know something 

 of the Art of Healing the management of our own personal micro- 

 cosm, than can be one half of the ologies and ographies, about which so 

 much parade is made, so much time wasted, and so much breath spent in 

 vain. It is surely a matter of higher interest and concernment to know on 



