QUACKS AND QUACKERY (CONTINUED)
An English physician, who practised during the early part of the reign of King James I, described the charlatan of that period as shameless, a mortal hater of all good men, an adept in cozening, legerdemain, conycatching,[223:1] and all other shifts and sleights; a cracking boaster, proud, insolent, a secret back-biter, a contentious wrangler, a common jester and liar, a runagate wanderer, a cogging[223:2] sychophant and covetous exactor, a wringer of his patients. In a word, a man, or rather monster, made of a mixture of all vices.[223:3]
Robert Burton, in "The Anatomy of Melancholy," published in 1621, said that "if we seek a physician as we ought, we may be eased of our infirmities; such a one, I mean, as is sufficient and worthily so called. For there be many mountebanks, quack-salvers and empiricks, in every street almost, and in every village, that take upon them this name, and make this noble and profitable art to be evil spoken of and contemned by reason of these base and illiterate artificers. . . . Many of them to get a fee, will give physick to every one that comes, without cause."
That original genius, Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), in his "Description of a Quack Doctor," wrote that sometimes he would employ the most vulgar phrases imaginable, and again he would soar out of sight and traverse the spacious realms of fustian and bombast. He was, indeed, very sparing of his Latin and Greek, as (God knows) his stock of those commodities was but slender. But then, for hard words and terms, which neither he, nor you, nor I, nor anybody else could understand, he poured them out in such abundance that you'd have sworn he had been rehearsing some of the occult philosophy of Agrippa, or reading extracts from the Cabala.
"If a man doth but write a book," observed an old author, "or at least transcribe a great part of it, word for word, out of another book, and give it a new title, he is naturally regarded by the ignobile vulgus as a famous doctor, especially if he write M.D. after his name. But let none of these poor shifts or sleights deceive you. You will quickly see that the drift of such publication was only to sell off some Packets of Quack Remedies, and hedge you into his clutches, where 'tis odds but he will pinch, if he does not gripe you to death."[225:1]
In the old Province of Languedoc, in Southern France, charlatans were liable to be summarily dealt with. For when any mountebank appeared in the city of Montpellier, the magistrates were empowered to set him astride of a meagre, miserable ass, with his face to the animal's tail.
Thus placed, the wretched mountebank was made to traverse the streets of the town, his progress meanwhile being enlivened by the hooting and shouts of the children, and the ironical jeers of the populace.[225:2]
The facility wherewith ignorant persons may acquire a reputation for skill in Medicine, is exemplified by the following anecdote. A Staffordshire cobbler had somehow gotten possession of a parcel of medical receipts, and made such diligent use thereof, that he not only was speedily invested with the title of Doctor, but likewise became famous in the neighborhood on account of some alleged remarkable cures. Thereupon he laid aside his awl to assume the dignity of a charlatan. It happened that a young lady of fortune fell ill about that time, and her mother was induced to send for the newly fledged Esculapian. The latter, after examining the patient, remarked that he would go home and consider the case, as he never prescribed rashly. Accordingly in looking over his recipes, he found one which tickled his fancy, although the directions, "to be taken in a proper vehicle," mystified him. Nothing daunted, he consulted a dictionary and found that a vehicle was either a coach, cart or wheel-barrow. Highly elated, he hastened to inform the young lady's mother that her coach must be gotten ready at once, and that her daughter must get into it and take the remedy which he had brought. But the lady would not consent, alleging the risk of exposure to the outside air. "Well," said the rascally quack, "you must then order a wheel-barrow to be sent to your daughter's room, for this medicine must be taken in a proper vehicle, and in my opinion a wheel-barrow will answer the purpose as well as a coach."[226:1] Can any one doubt that the wheel-barrow furnished a powerful therapeutic suggestion in this case?
In the early part of the eighteenth century, it appears that charlatans were very numerous in England. Indeed the "corps of medical savages" was almost as motley and manifold in form as in the Middle Ages. The dabblers in medicine included grocers, book-sellers, printers, confectioners, merchants and traders, midwives, medical students, preachers, chemists, distillers, gipsies, shepherds, conjurors, old women, sieve-makers and water-peddlers. Apothecaries were permitted to sell drugs to "alchemists, bath-servants and ignorant quacks, while dabsters, calf-doctors, rag-pickers, magicians, witches, crystallomancers, sooth-sayers and other mancipia [purchased slaves] of the Devil, were allowed to practice Medicine."[227:1]
At this same period, we are told, the mass of the English people were extraordinarily credulous. And this fact was true, not only of the densely ignorant class, but also of the more intelligent and better educated middle class, who were ready to believe everything that appeared in print.[227:2] Hence was afforded an ideal field for the exercise of the wily charlatan's activities. And the glowing advertisements of quack remedies appealed strongly to the popular fancy.