“The doctor usually remained incog. to the public. If they wished to see him, they must go to his ‘parlors’ at the best hotels. They did go. And now the most remarkable part of the affair remains to be recorded. An editor who interviewed him reports thus: ‘The doctor rocks in a rocking-chair,—in fact, never sits in anything else,—or arises and walks the floor, and instantly, at a glance, tells every patient each pain and ache better than the patient could describe them himself. ‘Are you a clairvoyant?’ the editor asked.
“‘Faugh! No, sir. Clairvoyancy is a humbug; merely power of mind over mind. A clairvoyant can go no farther than your own knowledge leads him, unless he guesses the rest,’ was his emphatic reply.
“The same patients, disguised, visited him twice, but he would tell the same story to them as before. His diagnosis was truly wonderful.
“‘What is your mode of treatment, or what school do you represent?’
“‘There hangs my “school,”’ he would reply, pointing to a New York college diploma. ‘That, however, cures nobody. What cures one patient kills another. My opathy is to cure my patient by any means, regardless of “schools.”’
“To some he gave ‘nothing but water,’ the patients affirmed; to others, pills, powders, syrups, or prescriptions. Well, he came the next month, to our surprise, and to the joy of most of his patients. He did the greatest amount of advertising on the first visit, doing less and less puffing each time. The rich, as well as the poor, visited him. He charged all one dollar. Then, if they declined treatment, he was satisfied; but if they doubted, or were sceptical, he refused all prescription. He advertised quite as much by telling one man he was past all help, and would die in eight weeks, which he did, as by curing the mayor of the city of a cough that jeoparded his life. If a poor woman had no money, he treated her just as cheerfully. Men he would not. His cures are said to have been remarkable. He made some eleven visits, and his patrons increased at each visit; but the novelty wore off before he disappeared. He was said to be an excellent musician, an author and composer, a man who was well read (a physician here who often conversed with him so informed the writer), could translate Latin and French, and converse with the mutes. When the day closed, he would see no more patients, but devoted his time to friends, to writing, or to music. Often the hotel parlor would be thronged at evening with the musical portion of the community. In personal appearance he was nothing remarkable,—medium size, wore full beard, had a sharp black eye, a quick, nervous movement, and his voice was not unpleasing to the ear.
“Why he—such a man—should travel, no one knew. He had an object, doubtless, to accomplish, realized it, and retired upon his true name, and from whence he came.”
“Youran, the Spanker.”
The writer has many times seen a fellow who travelled the country, nicknamed “the Spanker.” He was a tall, lean, lank-looking Yankee, with red hair and whiskers, a light gray eye, and claimed to cure all diseases by “spatting” the patient, or the diseased part thereof, with cold water on his bare palm, the use of a battery, and a pill. He had served as door-keeper to a famous doctor, who created a furore, a few years since, by the exercise of his magnetic powers, making cripples to throw down their crutches, and walk off; the deaf to hear, the blind to see; or, at least, many of them thought they did, for the time being, which answered the doctor’s immediate purpose. But one fine morning the magnetic doctor found his door-keeper was among the “missing.” He had learned the trade, and set up on his own account.
This fellow was as ignorant of physic as Jack Reynolds was of Scripture. Reynolds, who killed Townsend in 1870, when under sentence of death, listened attentively for the first time to the story of the Saviour’s crucifixion in atonement for our sins, when he rather startled the visitors, as well as the eminent divine, with the inquiry, “Did that affair happen lately?”