Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery

by Robert Means Lawrence

Ignorance is guided by terror, rather than by love. To the undisciplined mind, whatever is supernatural or unexpected, makes a stronger appeal than the familiar phenomena of daily life. We cannot understand the motives and acts of our forefathers, wrote Henry C. Lea, in a "History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages," unless we take into consideration the mental condition engendered by the consciousness of a daily and hourly personal contact with Satan.

Charlatans were not unknown in the fifth century b. c. For the great Hippocrates inveighed against those who relied on amulets and charms as curative agents. In his view, the physician should possess a mind of such serenity and dignity as to be superior to superstition, for the latter is incompatible with a knowledge of the truth.[211:1]

The Romans of old, who drove nails into the walls of the Temple of Jupiter, in the hope of warding off the Plague, employed thereby a quack remedy.

Indeed, for more than six hundred years, they had no physicians, but employed theurgic methods of treatment by means of prayers, charms, and prescriptions from the ancient Sibylline Books, which were reputed to date from the reign of Tarquin the Proud, in the sixth century b. c. These volumes were kept in a stone chest, under ground, in the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at Rome. The ancient Romans possessed only the rude surgery and domestic medicine of the barbarians, until the importation of scientific methods from Greece. Cato the Censor (b. c. 234-149) disliked physicians, partly because they were mostly Greeks, and partly because he himself, although venerated as a model of Roman virtue, was an outrageous quack, who thought himself equal to a whole college of physicians.[212:1]

From a very early time, and for many centuries, medical pretenders and empirics were known as "magicians." Practitioners of this class throve exceedingly during the reigns of several Roman emperors. They strove to work upon the imaginations of the people by sensational curative methods. Inasmuch, wrote Dr. Hugo Magnus, as whatever is curious and unusual, has always possessed a special fascination for humanity, the incredible remedies of the magicians found everywhere hosts of believers. And as the most nonsensical theories, if well tinged with the miraculous, find eager credence, there developed a rude form of psycho-therapy. For by the employment of extraordinary and even loathsome substances, many of which had no value as material remedies, they sought to impress curative ideas upon the minds of their patients, and doubtless very often with success. Inventive genius must have been sorely taxed among the magicians, in their endeavors to originate sensational prescriptions. The voluminous works of Alexander of Tralles, Quintus Serenus Samonicus, Marcellus Empiricus, and of many others, show how close was the union between medicine and magic. An enumeration of uncouth remedies formerly in vogue would fill huge pharmacopœias, and belongs to the domain of Folk-Medicine. Let one or two examples suffice here.

For the removal of those hardened portions of the epidermis, usually occurring upon the feet, and vulgarly known as corns, Pliny the Elder, in his "Natural History," recommends the sufferer, after observing the flight of a meteor, to pour a little vinegar upon the hinge of a door.

And Sextus Placitus Papyriensis, a nonsensical medical writer of the fourth century, advises, for the cure of glaucoma, that the affected eye be rubbed with the corresponding organ of a wolf.

Dr. Theodor Puschmann, in his "History of Medical Education," quotes an old writer[213:1] who inveighed against those practitioners who were wont to fill the ears of their patients with stories of their own professional skill, while depreciating the services of others of the fraternity. Such unscrupulous quacks sought also to win over the patient's friends by little attentions, flatteries and innuendoes. Many, said this philosopher, recoil from a man of skill even, if he is a braggart. "When the doctor," he continues, "attended by a man known to the patient, and having a right of entry into the house, advances into the dwelling of the sick man, he should make his appearance in good clothes, with an inclination of the head; he should be thoughtful and of good bearing, and observe all possible respect. So soon as he is within, word, thought and attention should be given to nothing else but the examination of the patient, and whatever else appertains to the case."

In England, during the earliest times, the administration of medicines was always attended with religious ceremonial, such as the repetition of a psalm. These observances however were often tinctured with a good deal of heathenism, the traditional folk-lore of the country, in the form of charms, magic and starcraft. It is evident, wrote the author of "Social England,"[214:1] from the cases preserved by monkish chronicles, that the element of hysteria was prominent in the maladies of the Middle Ages, and that these affections were therefore peculiarly susceptible to psychic treatment. The Angles and Saxons brought with them to England a belief in medicinal runes and healing spells, and the cures wrought by their medical men were attributed to the magic potency of the charms employed. Some interesting information on contemporary manners is contained in a "Book of Counsels to Young Practitioners" (a. d. 1300). The use of polysyllabic and unintelligible words is therein recommended, probably as a goad to the patient's imagination.