EMERGENCE OF MODERN MEDICINE— ALVAREZ 4^3 



STRIKING PERSONALITIES THAT HEAL 



Often the cure, when it does come from an irregular practitioner, 

 is worked not so much by the massage or the manipulation as by the 

 influence of an unusual and commanding personality. A few months 

 ago while lunching at a club I couldn't take my eyes off a big, tall, 

 strildng-looking man, with piercing black eyes, long black hair shot 

 with gray, and a strangely moving, deep and musical voice. I said 

 to the friends with me, "What a wonderful quack he would make", 

 and then they told me that actually he was a sort of faith healer. 

 He was a preacher who, having discovered one day that he had the 

 gift of heahng by the laying on of hands, had gone over into the practice 

 of medicine. 



Actually, all great physicians seem to possess some of this ability 

 to inspire sick persons with confidence and hope, and to Uft them up 

 out of a bog of worry and fatiguing thoughts and onto the road to 

 health. 



CURES DO NOT JUSTIFY A QUACK 



As I have already said, the fact that a healer is besieged by hordes of 

 patients, many of whom depart singing his praises, does not indicate 

 for a moment that his methods are rational or worth using by other 

 men. In the hands of the next man they may fail utterly, and for 

 that matter, they usually fail after a time even in the hands of the 

 original user. For this reason nearly all forms of quackery have their 

 day, and then they lose ground and disappear. 



Perkins^ tractors. — Thus, toward the close of the eighteenth centiiry, 

 Elisha Perkins, an American physician, was curing disease right and 

 left with two little, supposedly magnetic, pieces of metal called trac- 

 tors. He did so well that even George Washington got a pair. After 

 Elisha died, his son took the tractors to England, where he made a 

 great stir and enlisted the support of the nobility. Unfortunately for 

 him, the famous Dr. Haygarth was skeptical. First he held clinics at 

 which he demonstrated how patients lost their pains when the affected 

 parts were stroked with the tractors. Then, when everyone was much 

 impressed, he took out his penknife and cut the supposed magnets in 

 two; they were imitations made of wood. In the reaction that fol- 

 lowed, educated England laughed, and Perkins left for home. 



Asuero. — In Madrid, a few years ago, an unimportant physician 

 named Asuero announced that all diseases were due to trouble in a 

 little nerve in the nose, and easily curable by local treatments. The 

 idea caught on, and soon there was a line of people on the sidewalk 

 each morning waiting to get into his office. As commonly happens 

 with quacks, the wealthy and the aristocratic made much of him, and 

 in 2 or 3 years he accumulated a large fortune. 



