CHAPTER IV.

QUACKERY, 80

The grand source of quackery the false reference of effects to causes. The way in which a remedy, whether active or inert, acquires its reputation. Quack medicines principally of three kinds. 1. Evacuants. Great similarity in these—made up mostly of articles in common use. 2. Those which are supposed to act upon the system in a gradual way, as alternatives. Preparations of sarsaparilla. Impositions. 3. Those which are supposed to act especially upon the lungs. Harm done by their indiscriminate use. Quantities of inert and damaged articles used in preparing quack medicines. Importance of the name of a medicine in giving it currency. Ridiculousness of quack advertisements. Certificates. Chiefly of four kinds. 1. Forgeries. 2. Essentially, sometimes wholly, untrue. How obtained. 3. Those given by invalids imagining themselves to be relieved. 4. Those given by invalids who are relieved while taking the medicine—inferred to be done by the medicine. Certificates of clergymen. Rule of the medical profession in regard to nostrums. Proposed mode of guarding against imposition. Quackery as a monstrous business interest. Press and legislatures trammelled by it. Itinerant quack lecturers. Lectures especially to the ladies. Animal magnetism. Paracelsus the “prince of quacks.” St. John Long. Perkins’ tractors. Forms of Quackery many, but the materials from which they are formed always the same. No discoveries have ever been made by quackery.