136 MEDICAL QUACKERY IN THE STATES. 



are considered a fair salary for a clergyman. In tlie 

 cities, from eight to twelve hundred are given, and, in 

 rare cases, or to especial favourites, fifteen hundred.* 



Of professional men, the lawyers succeed best, as the 

 same theoretical equality which makes a man think his 

 own opinion as good as his neighbour's naturally pro- 

 motes litigation, and makes the lawyer necessary, and 

 the clever lawyer sought after and honoured. 



Medical men are perhaps the worst off, as, in most of 

 the States, the educated physician has no defence against 

 the quack. In only six out of the thirty-three States are 

 there any laws making licenses necessary to the practice 

 of medicine, or which place the educated physician in 

 any respect in a better position than the pretender : these 

 are New Jersey, Delaw^are, the district of Columbia, 

 Georgia, Louisiana, and Michigan. In the other States, 

 any man may call himself a doctor, may practise, and 

 may sue for his fees ; and, in many cases, a discerning 

 public prefers the self-taught genius to the man of edu- 

 cation. 



In the United States there are at present thirty-five 

 medical schools, with 4566 students, w^hich send out on 

 an average about 1300 graduates annually ; but it is cal- 

 culated that, to supply fully the demand of the growing 

 country, 2500 graduates should leave these schools every 

 year. Under such circumstances, quackery must abound, 

 unless the schools of Europe aid largely in adding to the 

 stock of home-made surgeons and physicians. 



The salaries paid to the clergy may be taken as a fair 

 measure of their status among a Protestant people. 

 Hence, if £100 to £160 a-year be the usual stipends paid 

 to the clergy as a body, in a country where the labouring 

 man and the mechanic obtains a considerably higher 

 w^age than with us, the estimation in which he is held 



* A hundred dollars are about £21 sterling. 



