coggeshall's  valedictory  address. 
205 
gerated,  against  minerals  and  in  favor  of  vegetables.  According- 
ly we  find  this  string  especially  harped  upon,  a  large  proportion  of 
quack  medicines  being  named  and  strenuously  declared  to  be  ve- 
getable.   There  are  favorite  vegetables  also,  of  which  the  popular 
estimate  is  duly  encouraged,  and  of  all  these,  Sarsaparilla  may  be 
considered  the  "  best  abused  "  root  in  the  Pharmacopoeia.  Other 
popular  notions  are  treated  with  respect  in  proportion  to  the  de- 
mand they  create,  and  from  time  to  time  new  and  marvellous  theo- 
ries are  broached,  as  there  appears  to  be  vacancy  in  the  public 
mind  for  their  reception.    It  is  propounded  by  the  pill  or  purging 
school  of  quacks  that  there  is  but  one  disease,  all  that  are  called  by 
different  names  being  but  different  forms  of  it,  for  which  "  Univer- 
sal Pills"  are  obviously  the  very  remedy.    The  universal  school, 
however,  comprises  more  than  this  class,  whose  chief  mission 
appears  to  be  to  open  men's  purses  by  opening  their  bowels.  There 
are  some  who  do  not  regard  the  pill  machine  as  the  only  instru- 
ment of  human  relief,  there  being  various  lights  in  which  the  one 
disease  may  be  considered,  according  to  the  nostrum  that  is  made 
for  it  ;  with  one  it  is  heat,  with  another  cold,  with  a  third  both. 
Again  it  is  in  the  stomach,  the  skin,  the  nerves  or  the  blood.  Some 
"  Universal  Vegetable  Renovators  "  (their  very  name  is  nonsense) 
are  applied  internally,  others  upon  the  surface,  but  each  is  declared 
to  be  the  only  medicine  that  should  ever  be  bought,  that  no  family 
is  safe  without  it  or  with  any  other,  that  "  all  others  are  base  and 
dangerous  impositions,"  the  work  of  ignorant  rogues.    This  latter 
opinion  appears  to  be  cordially  reciprocated  by  most  of  the  frater- 
nity, and  is  perhaps  the  nearest  truth  of  any  they  express.  Other 
quacks  denounce  the  universal  system  as  unprincipled  quackery,  and 
are  quite  positive  that  none  but  a  simpleton  or  impostor  ever  de- 
nies the  existence  of  many  diseases  ;  they  therefore  condense  their 
wisdom  upon  certain  specialities  making  stories  however  as  entire, 
so  far  as  they  go,  as  any  of  universal  pretensions.    In  short,  the 
whole  system,  based  as  it  is  upon  the  ignorance,  the  fears  and  the 
credulity  of  mankind  in  reference  to  all  matters  affecting  health  and 
disease,  is  yet  so  monstrous,  so  impudent  in  falsehood,  that  it  would 
be  ludicrous  if  it  were  notso  mischievous.  If  its  continued  presence 
from  the  dark  ages  had  not  rendered  it  familiar,  if  habit  had  not 
blunted  our  sense  of  its  depravity,  if  it  could  now  be  presented  in 
all  its  deformity  before  a  civilized  community  for  the  first  time,  it 
