Even if the discoverer be one of themselves, they are apt to regard his proposition with a certain amount of distrust, but if he happens to be a layman they instantly stand upon their dignity—denounce all irregular practice and raise the cry of quack.
In justice, however, it must be said that there are members of liberal, broad-minded men in the medical profession who recognize the fact that brains are not monopolized by physicians, and who are perfectly willing to accord credit where it is due, as the following opinions will show.
Dr. A. O’Leary, Jefferson Medical College, of Philadelphia, says:
“The best things in the healing art have been done by those who never had a diploma—the first Cæsarian section, lithotomy, the use of cinchona, of ether as an anæsthetic, the treatment of the air passages by inhalation, the water cure and medicated baths, electricity as a healing agent, and magnetism, faith cure, mind cure, etc.”
Prof. Waterhouse, writing to the learned Dr. Mitchell, of New York, says: “I am, indeed, so disgusted with learned quackery that I take some interest in honest, humane, and strong-minded empiricism; for it has done more for our art, in all ages and all countries, than all the universities since the time of Charlemagne.”
Professor Benj. Rush, of the greatest and oldest Allopathic College in America, says:
“Remember how many of our most useful remedies have been discovered by quacks. Do not therefore be afraid of conversing with them, and of profiting by their ignorance and temerity. Medicine has its pharisees as well as religion. But the spirit of this sect is as unfriendly to the advancement of medicine as it is to Christian charity. In the pursuit of medical knowledge let me advise you to converse with nurses and old women. They will often suggest facts in the history and cure of disease which have escaped the most sagacious observers of nature. By so doing, we may discover laws of the animal economy which have no place in our system of nosology, or in our theories of physic. The practice of physic hath been more improved by the casual experiments of illiterate nations, and the rash ones of vagabond quacks, than by all the once celebrated professors of it, and the theoretic teachers in the several schools of Europe, very few of whom have furnished us with one new medicine, or have taught us better to use our old ones, or have in any one instance at all, improved the art of curing disease.”
Dr. Adam Smith says: “After denouncing Paracelsus as a quack, the regular medical profession stole his ‘quack-silver’—mercury; after calling Jenner an imposter it adopted his discovery of vaccination; after dubbing Harvey a humbug it was forced to swallow his theory of the circulation of the blood.”
Professor J. Rodes Buchanan, Boston, says:
“Mozart, Hoffman, Ole Bull, and Blind Tom were born with a mastery of music, as Zerah Colburn with a mastery of mathematics, as others are born with a mastery of the mystery of life and disease, like Greatrakes, Newton, Hutton, Sweet and Stephens, born doctors, and a score of similar renown.”