London is a wondrous city for the success with which the most flagrant quackery is accomplished. Things not only improbable, but absolutely impossible, are puffed off with matchless impudence; and, what is more extraordinary still, they obtain an infinite number of believers. Thus we have snuffs which will cure blindness when the most skilful oculists are at fault,—oils and pomatums that will make the hair grow in spite of nature's denial,—cosmetics that will render every skin, though tawny as a gipsey's, white as a Circassian's,—pills so happily compounded as to be an universal panacea, annihilating diseases of even the most opposite characters, and effecting for thirteen-pence halfpenny what all the College of Physicians could not accomplish for millions,—lozenges by which a voice cracked like a tin-trumpet, may become melodious as a silver bell,—ointments that will cure in a week ulcers and sores which have baffled all the experience of famous hospital-surgeons for a quarter of a century,—decoctions prepared on purpose to prolong life, although the elixir vitæ of the alchemists has long been regarded as an absurd fable,—boluses competent to restore to all their pristine vigour constitutions shattered by years and years of dissipation and dissolute habits,—pulmonic wafers efficient to wrestle against the very last stage of consumption, and restore lungs entirely eaten away,—tonics so wonderful that they will even give new coats to the stomach, though the old ones have been destroyed by ardent spirits,—and heaven only knows how many more blessings of the same kind!
Seriously speaking, it is deplorable to perceive how tremendously the millions are gulled by all these details of an impudent and most dishonest quackery. The coiner who passes off a base shilling, representing it to be a good one, is punished as a felon and stigmatised as a villain. But the quack who sells articles which he announces to be capable of performing physical impossibilities, is not tangible by the law, nor does he become branded in the opinion of the world. Such are the conventional differences existing in civilised society!
Of all the demoralising species of quackery practised now-a-days, certain medical works are decidedly the worst. We allude to those beastly things which are constantly announced in the advertisement-department of newspapers, but which, with a scintillation of good taste on the side of the printers, are invariably huddled together in the most obscure nook. It is evident that newspaper-proprietors are ashamed of the filthy advertisements, although they cannot very well refuse to insert them. But we warn all our readers against suffering themselves to put the least confidence in the representations set forth in the announcements alluded to. The works thus puffed off are contemptible as regards medical information, demoralising in their very nature, and delusive in all their promises.
An amusing species of quackery exists with repect to many public-houses. Passing along a thoroughfare, or visiting some fresh neighbourhood springing up in the outskirts of the metropolis, you will probably see a new building, destined for the "public" line, and with the words—"Noted Stout House"—painted on a board, or cut in the masonry. The cool impudence of proclaiming an establishment to be famous for a particular article, before it is even finished, is too ludicrous to provoke serious vituperation. The merit of the place is agreed upon beforehand between the architect and the proprietor. Never mind how worthless the beer to be retailed there may eventually prove, it is a Noted Stout House all the same! But so accustomed are the inhabitants of London to behold such things, that the springing up of such a structure causes no sensation in its neighbourhood: good, easy people that we are now-a-days—we take every thing for granted and as a matter of course!
The Noted Stout House in Helmet Row, St. Luke's—called by its patrons, for abbreviation's sake, the Stout House—was one of those flash boozing-kens which are to be found in low neighbourhoods. And noted it indeed was—not on account of its beer, unless the fame thereof consisted in its execrable nature—but by reason of the characters frequenting it. The parlour was large, low, and dark; and in the evening it was invariably filled with a miscellaneous company of both sexes. Prostitutes and thieves—old procuresses and housebreakers—dissolute married women, and notorious coiners,—these were the principal supporters of the Stout House.
Had Machiavelli once passed an evening there, he would not have declared as a rule that "language was given to man for the purpose of disguising his thoughts;" inasmuch as no attempt at any such disguise at all was made in that place. Every one spoke his mind in the most free and open manner possible,—calling things by their right names—and expressing the filthiest ideas in the plainest phraseology. If foul words were capable of impregnating the air, the atmosphere of the Stout House parlour would have engendered a pestilence.
At about half-past nine in the evening, John Jeffreys sauntered into the establishment, took a seat at the table, and gave his orders to the waiter for the beverage which he fancied at the moment.
Whenever a new-comer appears in a public room of this kind, the company invariably leave off talking for a minute or so, to enjoy a good stare at him; and they measure him from head to foot—turn him inside out, as it were—and form their rapid and silent conjectures regarding him, just as a broker "takes stock" in his mind, with a hasty survey around, on putting an execution for taxes or rates into a defaulter's house.
We cannot exactly say what opinion the company present on this occasion at the Stout House formed of John Jeffreys; but we are able to assure our readers that, much as he had seen of London, and well as he was acquainted with its vile dens and low places of resort, he thought to himself, as he glanced about him, that he had never before set eyes on such a dissipated-looking set of women or such a repulsive assemblage of men.
"Well, and so Mother Oliver's place is broke up at last," observed one of the females, addressing herself to another woman, and evidently taking up the thread of a conversation which the entrance of Jeffreys had for a few moments interrupted.