[N] These “Hebrew” Jewish knaves having at length been driven from their strong-hold of delusion, and finding their trade of imposture in the “balsam” rapidly declining through the patriotic exertions of “the heroic Miss May” and the Editors of the Monthly Gazette of Health, have had recourse to a new source of fraud and villainy, “the celebrated Salutary Detersive Drops”—and as the vermin have the unblushing audacity to designate their filth—a “most important discovery, which, by long study, deep research, and at great expence, they have, fortunately for the human race, brought to a degree of perfection which astonishes themselves!!!” and which “is a certain and speedy cure for all the most distressing diseases to which human nature is heir,” when administered “by their superior skill and judgment” and sanctioned “by their high character and situation in life!!” And the impious and blasphemous wretches invoke the Great God of Nature “that he who has the power of doing all things” may further their villainous and murderous designs! But it is some consolation, though the government of the country may be silent and indifferent lookers-on to “doings” so nefarious and diabolical, that there are hearts that feel indignant at the wickedness and imposture of adventurers and monsters in iniquity, whom the ignorance of mankind in the principles of life and the science of medicine has, as Dr. Morrison justly says in Medicine No Mystery, “enabled to possess palaces bought and constructed with the treasures and blood of their victims.”
[O] That the ignorant, the thoughtless, and the “fashionable,” should become the dopes of mountebank-imposture is not much to be wondered at; but that persons of respectability and character, the heads of the Church and of the State, (I have not yet ascertained that that sly old beldam “The Law” has stupified herself so much as to lend her countenance to the imposture,) should give their sanction and support, and endanger their health and lives, by either patronizing or using the deleterious compounds of mountebanks, and thus becoming the dupes of the most groveling imposture and the vilest quackery, cannot really be reasonably accounted for. The old worm-mountebank in Long Acre boasts that he has a list of fifteen hundred “Clergymen” who can give testimony of the virtues of his nostrums. The miraculous powers of Barclay’s Antibilious Pills, Ching’s Worm Lozenges, and some other articles in the list of quack medicines, are attested by some “Right Reverend Fathers in God!” Nor was that notorious and impudent mountebank “le Docteur” James Graham, who cured patients by only breathing the air of his “Apollo” hall or chamber in the Adelphi, which was always impregnated (as he said) with celestial æther and influences, without noble and reverend patrons. But the consummation of dupery was most powerfully displayed in the case of the old New England quack, Cherokee Whitlaw. In the case of this Yankee quondam gardener, “Royals” (as well of native as of foreign breed), “right honourables,” “reverends,” “SENATORS,” and even some gentle “ladyships,” were his patrons, and those of his mountebank-asylum at Bayswater, and the recommenders of his “American Herb Extracts,” which were a compound of cabbage water, treacle, turpentine, and Epsom salts, and for a pint of which the canting old varlet was barefaced enough to demand eight shillings in lawful British specie, though the cost price of the mixture did not exceed three half-pence-farthing. But it is a lamentable fact, as Dr. Morrison observes in his well-intentioned little work, entitled “Medicine No Mystery,” that in nineteen cases out of twenty (and this, he emphatically remarks, is the proportion that ignorance bears to knowledge,) the charlatan, with his mysterious phrases and gestures, is more sought after and more prized than the accomplished and experienced physician; “so much of the leaven of the old idea of the connexion between physic and occult and mysterious sciences still subsists,—of those days when physicians pretended to judge of their patients’ diseases by seeing their urine; when the stars were consulted before a dose of physic was taken; when the king’s evil was supposed to be cured by royal touch; when women flocked to surround the body of the executed criminal, and rubbed his hands to their breasts as a cure for cancer or epilepsy, &c.”
The mock philanthropy of the contemptible quack Whitlaw, and the blasphemous, the monstrously blasphemous and diabolical effrontery of the conventicle and meeting pulpit-charlatans, (the vile tools of harpyism and religious knavery,) who puffed off this “threadbare juggler’s” disgusting impostures by an odious comparison of his selfish and detestable tricks with the enlarged and godlike benevolence and charity of the Saviour of mankind, deserve the severest reprobation and chastisement, though sanctioned by the weak and culpable patronage of royals, nobles, statesmen, M.P.’s, and divines, and swallowed by the gaping mouths of the ignorant,—of foolish women, and half witted men. But of the two species of imposture, the pulpit charlatanry of ignorant and selfish empirics is the most disgusting. The diabolical farces of those wolves in sheep’s clothing—their ignorant and designing perversion of the plain practical morality laid down by the Saviour of mankind in the gospel,—the brain-turning and mind-deranging fanaticism they inculcate, and which they profanely and audaciously call soul-searching and sinner-awakening doctrines, and other like unmeaning and abominable stuff which they inculcate under the evident chieftainship of the devil, loudly demands some legislative interference. It has been well observed, that though the benign spirit of toleration has permitted religious empiricism—though folly and ignorance have countenanced medical quackery and imposture—and though there are persons weak enough to entrust their lives and health, as well as their moral and religious instruction, to enthusiastic cobblers and tailors; yet considering the strange infatuation of mankind, and the proneness of human nature to delusion and imposture, it is the duty of every wise and paternal government to protect the weak and uninformed from the designs of the devil’s agents, who, in order to practise their selfish villanies on their unsuspecting victims, become, to use the words of Dr. Robertson the historian, “outrageously Christian” in their professions.
[P] The impolitic and monstrously inconsistent patent medicine act, which legalizes and sanctions and promotes the sale of quack poisons, has no doubt annually been the unweeting cause of more murders, than the joint influence of typhus, small-pox, and consumption. The tax or stamp-duty on this odious and destructive trash was, no doubt, at the time of its imposition, intended as a prevention of the evil which it contemplated to suppress. But this is one of the consequences of short-sighted and vicious legislation, and of the entrusting of the concoction of the laws to incompetent persons—in the emphatic phrase of the most eloquent of human tongues, mere ita lex scripta est lawyers—men who make a boast of never having read, or who have had but little or no opportunity of reading any other kind of books than their musty, ill-written, badly digested law-books; such as certain “learned gentlemen,” of prodigiously scholar-like and scientific attainments—men, whom the Times Newspaper has justly characterised by the style and title of “The Mindless;” and who contrive by the arts of “huggery” and favouritism to deprive the public of the benefits to be derived from the talents of men of “high classical and literary, and even legal attainments,” and of the most enlarged and enlightened philosophy, but who scorn to court the favour of those in power and “high places” by mean and dirty practices.
[Q] This kind of doctrine will, no doubt, be unpalatable in a certain quarter, and the productiveness to the exchequer of the disgraceful revenue arising from the pest, will be adduced as an argument for its continuance. But it is to be hoped, as Mr. J. D. Williams said in his meritorious petition to the Commons House of Parliament on that subject, that the health of the public will be held superior to any such consideration. The lottery, no doubt, brought into the state-coffers a considerable revenue; but as it was found to undermine and ruin the morals of the community, it was abolished. And the persons at the head of the government at the time have the thanks and gratitude of every true friend of his country for the act. Surely the health of the public is entitled to the same provision.
[R] The whole farrago of quack or patent medicines is destructive of health and life, whether cordial or vegetable balsams, tinctures, syrups, or elixirs,—pectoral or antiscorbutic drops, bile or antibilious pills, tonic or digestive wines, balms of gilead, guestonian embrocations, Leake’s pillula salutaria, and a thousand other poisonous and life-destroying trash. Thousands upon thousands of children under three years of age are consigned yearly to the tomb in London alone, by means of the soothing or vegetable syrups, the infants’ balms, the worm-cakes, the anodyne necklaces, Godfrey’s cordial, Daffy’s elixir, Dalby’s carminative, apothecaries’ draughts and powders, and other infernal recipes; which, if they do not cause immediate death, occasion fits, convulsions, fevers, excruciating gripes, palsy, and often confirmed idiotcy. Gowland’s lotion, the kalydors, the macassar oils, the cosmetiques royales, the red and white olympian dews, the blooms, the various hair dyes, &c. have not only robbed many a female of her charms and loveliness, but have even produced severe pains of the bowels and of the brain, have occasioned convulsions, and laid the foundation of those diseases which have deprived the victims of life itself. The folly of depending for cure or relief upon the “gout extractors,” “the metallic tractors,” “animal magnetism,” and “signatures,” has been at length exploded; it is therefore unnecessary to say a word on the subject.
[S] The audacity of this fellow exceeds, if possible, the unblushing and incorrigible effrontery of the other impostors. He undertakes to cure all kinds of diseases without any kind of medicine; and he asserts that all difficult surgical operations can be superseded by merely taking a sup or two of his delectable compound of combustibles. According to the modest pretensions of this exotic esculapius, he obtained the knowledge of physic and the power of subduing disease, by intuition or inspiration: he had no need to learn: there was no period of infancy in his medical attainments; he at once attained the highest point and full maturity of medical and chirurgical knowledge! Was there ever a more audacious piece of imposture attempted to be palmed upon the credulity of the most credulous of mortals, Mr. Bull and his progeny? But perhaps the philippics of this gaunt-looking “hygeist” against surgery and anatomy may produce some good. It is true that to a certain degree, those arts should be esteemed and cherished; but after the allowance of suitable consideration, they should fall into their proper rank, with wholesome restrictions. Both the arts are overrated in point of real utility. Were a knowledge of the living laws of the human frame more inculcated by medical professors than is the case, it would be found of more essential service than all the coxcombry of the present day respecting surgical distinctions and anatomical dissections. In many complaints, indeed, in the principal part to which the human frame is subject, the inutility of dissection is well known to every well informed man. But the assumption of the title of “Surgeon,” and the false importance (not to mention the legal security which it affords against prosecution, and the facility of exemption from examination of competency,) it gives the claimant in the estimation of the ignorant part of mankind, have contributed largely to the propagation of the erroneous notions which are so anxiously disseminated on the subject. Though it would be fruitless to attempt to expose this popular folly of the day, (which like all other follies or fashions will “have its rage” until its own enormity cures itself,) yet “it is some consolation to reflect that in another age a more successful practice of medicine will diminish the false estimation in which surgical foppery is now held; when to save a limb will be deemed a superior exertion of skill to its amputation.”
Nor is the other branch (namely, that which was once designated by the now exploded and unfashionable title of apothecary) free from reprehension. Those “sons of the pestle and mortar,” whose money-interest induces them rather to encourage disease than to subdue it, as the longer they keep the patient in hand, the greater number of phials, pill-boxes, gallipots, draughts and powders they will be entitled to charge for, are so wedded to routine, that they can seldom bring themselves to lay aside the lumber and unmeaning farrago of materia medicas, pharmacopœias, &c. Their prejudices and pertinacity in favour of received opinions and established usage are so blind and inveterate, that they will never allow themselves to have recourse to the simple remedies which Nature points out: all must be mystery, complication, and conformity to etiquette with them: to lead nature by simple means would be unprofessional; to practise “secundum artem,” she must be driven by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation; and they must bring into play in the simplest ailment to which the human frame is subject that huge mass of disjointed practices and experiments, which is held together by no order, and is not capable of any satisfactory application, or even elucidation. On this subject, the remarks of the editor of the Monthly Gazette of Health are so deserving of observation, that I cannot deny myself the advantage of enriching my pages with them.
That learned gentleman (who has contributed more to the exposure of quackery and imposture than any writer of the age) having introduced to the notice of his readers Dr. Mackie’s communication of the medicinal virtues of the Guaco plant in cases of hydrophobia among the Indians of South America, closes his information with the following striking remarks:
“The mode of treating diseases which is generally adopted by the native practitioners of South America, and the East Indies, by decoctions, infusions, and the expressed juices of vegetable productions, has, at any rate, that great recommendation—simplicity; but, contemptible as it may appear to be to the practitioners of this country, who suppose that no disease can be successfully combated without blue pill or calomel, or some active mineral or vegetable poison, agreeable to some favourite theory, it often proves successful; and, indeed, from the information which we have received from the intelligent gentlemen who have spent some years among the natives of South America and the East Indies, (some of them members of the medical profession,) we are disposed to believe that in some diseases, particularly scorbutic and scrofulous affections, and those termed pseudo-syphilitic, the native surgeons are more successful than the practitioners of this country. To us, the great difference between the practice of the former and that of the latter appears to be, that the one lead nature by simple means, which enable her to correct the constitution, and to produce a healthy process of mutation in a diseased part, whilst the other drive nature by powerful remedies, as blue pill, or some active chemical preparation. Often have we witnessed the recovery of patients, who had been discharged from a hospital, under the simple treatment by decoction of an apparently simple vegetable, and by fomentations under the direction of an old woman; and whoever considers how simple the operations of nature are, will not be surprised that such treatment should succeed even in a formidable chronic disease. Every practitioner of experience and observation will, we think, admit that many thousand invalids are annually hurried to their graves in this metropolis, by persevering in the use of calomel and blue pill, or a drastic purgative, who might have been cured, or whose lives might have been prolonged many years, by a mild alterative treatment; and that many a limb might have been saved by a mild topical treatment of the local diseases, which has been consigned to the knife. In cases of internal acute disease, or active inflammation of a vital part, a decisive treatment is absolutely necessary to save life; but in chronic diseases, attempts by potent remedies to drive nature but too often distract her. To the new theory of chronic inflammation, or ulceration of the mucous membrane of some part of the alimentary canal, thousands have already been sacrificed.”