Any scientific discovery is immediately seized by some of the numerous adventurers in this country, who prey upon the follies and the miseries of their fellow-creatures. The most eminent quack of the last generation was a Doctor Graham, who tampered with electricity in a manner too infamous to be reported, and for which he ought to have received the most exemplary public punishment. This man was half mad, and his madness at last, contrary to the usual process, got the better of his knavery. His latest method of practice was something violent; it was to bury his patients up to the chin in fresh mould. J. saw half a score of them exhibited in this manner for a shilling:—a part of the exhibition was to see them perform afterwards upon shoulders of mutton, to prove that when they rose from the grave they were as devouring as the grave itself. The operation lasted four hours: they suffered, as might be seen in their countenances, intensely from cold for the first two, during the third they grew warmer, and in the last perspired profusely, so that when they were taken out the mould reeked like a new dunghill. Sailors are said to have practised this mode of cure successfully for the scurvy. The doctor used sometimes to be buried himself for the sake of keeping his patients company: one day, when he was in this condition, a farmer emptied a watering-pot upon his head to make him grow. When J. saw him he was sitting up to the neck in a bath of warm mud, with his hair powdered and in full dress. As he was haranguing upon the excellent state of health which he enjoyed from the practice of earth-bathing, as he called it, J. asked him, Why then, if there was nothing the matter with him, he sate in the mud? The question puzzled him.—Why, he said,—why—it was—it was—it was to show people that it did no harm,—that it was quite innocent,—that it was very agreeable: and then brightening his countenance with a smile at the happiness of the thought, he added, "It gives me, sir, a skin as soft as the feathers of Venus' dove." This man lived upon vegetables, and delighted in declaiming against the sin of being carnivorous, and the dreadful effects of making the stomach a grave and charnel-house for slaughtered bodies. Latterly he became wholly an enthusiast, would madden himself with ether, run out into the streets, and strip himself to clothe the first beggar whom he met.
Galvanism, like electricity, was no sooner discovered than it was applied to purposes of quackery. The credit of this is due to America; and it must be admitted that the inventor has the honour of having levied a heavier tax upon credulity than any of his predecessors ever dared attempt: in this respect he is the Mr Pitt of his profession. For two pieces of base metal, not longer than the little finger, and not larger than a nail, he is modest enough to charge five guineas. These Tractors, as they are called, are to cure all sores, swellings, burns, tooth-ache, &c. &c.: and that the purchasers may beware of counterfeits, which is the advice always given by this worshipful fraternity, a portrait of the tractor is engraved upon his hand-bills, both a front view and a back one, accompanied with a striking likeness of the leathern case in which they are contained. Many cures have certainly been performed by them, and how those cures are performed has been as certainly exemplified by some very ingenious experiments which were made at Bath and Bristol. Pieces of wood, and others of common iron, shaped and coloured like the tractors, were tried there upon some paralytic patients in the Infirmary. The mode of operating consists in nothing more than in gently stroking the part affected with the point of the instrument, and so, according to the theory, conducting off into the atmosphere the galvanic matter of pain! It is impossible that where there is no sore, this can give any pain whatever,—yet the patients were in agonies. One of them declared that he had suffered less when pieces of the bone of his leg had been cut out,—and they were actually enabled to move limbs which before were dead with palsy.—False relics have wrought true miracles.
Another gentleman quacks with oxygen, and recommends what he calls vital wine as a cure for all diseases. Vital wine must be admitted to be something extraordinary; but what is that to a people for whom solar and lunar tinctures have been prepared! Another has risen from a travelling cart to the luxuries of a chariot by selling magnetic girdles; his theory is, that the magnetic virtue attracts the iron in the blood, and makes the little red globules revolve faster, each upon its own axis, in the rapidity and regularity of which revolutions health consists,—and this he proves to the people by showing them how a needle is set in motion by his girdles. But magnetism has been made the basis of a far more portentous quackery, which is in all its parts so extraordinary that it merits a full account, not merely in a Picture of England, but also in the history of the century which has just expired. My next shall develop this at length.
The reason why these scoundrels succeed to so much greater an extent in England than in any other country, is because they are enabled to make themselves so generally known by means of the newspapers, and, in consequence of the great internal commerce, to have their agents every where, and thus do as much mischief every where, as if the Devil had endowed them with a portion of his own ubiquity. Not only do the London papers find their way over the whole kingdom, but every considerable town in the provinces has one or more of its own, and in these they insert their long advertisements with an endless perseverance which must attract notice, and make them and their medicines talked of. How effectually this may be done, I can illustrate by an odd anecdote. Some twelve or fifteen years ago a wager was laid between two persons in London, that the one would, in the course of a few weeks, make any nonsensical word, which the other should choose to invent, a general subject of conversation. Accordingly he employed people to write in chalk upon all the walls in London the word Quoz. Every body saw this word wherever they went staring them in the face, and nobody could divine its meaning. The newspapers noticed it,—What can it be? was the general cry, and the man won his wager.
Upon this system the quacks persist in advertising at an enormous expense, for which, however, they receive ample interest,—and which indeed they do not always honestly pay. Part of their scheme is to advertise in newspapers which are newly set up, and which, therefore, insert their notices at an under price; and one fellow, when he was applied to for payment, refused, saying that his clerk had ordered the insertion without his knowledge. To go to law with him would have been a remedy worse than the disease.
El vencido vencido,
Y el vencedor perdido,[16]
is true here as well as in other countries.
These wretches know the sufferings and the hopes of mankind, and they mock the one and aggravate the other. They who suffer, listen gladly to any thing which promises relief; and these men insert such cases of miraculous cures, signed and sworn to and attested, that they who do not understand how often the recovery may be real and the cure imaginary,—the fact true and the application false,—yield to the weight of human testimony, and have faith to the destruction of their bodies, though they will have none to the salvation of their souls.
Attestations to these cases are procured in many ways. A quack of the first water for a long time sent his prescriptions to the shop of some druggists of great respectability. After some months he called there in his carriage, and introduced himself, saying that they must often have seen his name, and that he now came to complain of them, for unintentionally doing him very serious mischief. "Gentlemen," said he, "you charge your drugs too low. As medical men yourselves you must know how much depends upon faith, and people have no faith in what is cheap,—they will not believe that any thing can do them good unless they pay smartly for it. I must beg you to raise your prices, and raise them high too, double and treble what they now are at least,—or I really must send my patients elsewhere." This was strange, and what they were requested to do was not after the ordinary custom of fair trading;—but as it did not appear that there could be any other advantage resulting to him from it than what he had stated, they at last promised to do as he desired. This visit led to some further acquaintance; and after another long interval, they were persuaded one day to dine with their friend the Doctor. During dinner the servant announced that a person from the country wished to see the Doctor, and thank him for having cured him. "Oh," said he, "don't you know that I am engaged? These people wear me out of my very life! Give the good man something to eat and drink, tell him I am very glad he is got well, and send him away." The servant came in again,—"Sir, he will not go,—he says it is a most wonderful cure,—that you have raised him from the dead, and he cannot be happy till he has seen you and thanked you himself. He is come a long way from the country, sir." "Gentlemen," said the Doctor, "you see how it is. I do not know how to get rid of him, unless you will have the goodness to allow him just to come in, and then he will be satisfied and let us alone. This is the way I am plagued!" In came the countryman, and began to bless the Doctor, as the means under God, of snatching him from the grave; and offered him money tied up in a leathern bag, saying it was all the compensation he could make; but if it were ten times as much it would be too little,—the Doctor crying, "Well, well, my friend, I am glad to see you so well," and refusing to take his money. Still the man persisted, and would tell the company his case,—he could not in conscience be easy if he did not,—and he began a long story, which the Doctor first attempted to stop, and then affected not to listen to,—till at length, by little and little, he began to give ear to it, and seemed greatly interested before he had done, and interrupted him with questions. At last he called for pen and ink, saying—"This is so very extraordinary a case that I must not lose it;" and making the man repeat it as he wrote, frequently said to his visitors, "Gentlemen, I beg you will take notice of this,—it is a very remarkable case:" and when he had finished writing it, he said to them, "You have heard the good man's story, and I am sure can have no objection to subscribe your names as witnesses." The trick was apparent, and they begged leave to decline appearing upon the occasion. "Why, gentlemen," said he, "you and I had better continue friends. You must be sensible that I have been the means of putting very great and unusual profits into your hands, and you will not surely refuse me so trifling a return as that of attesting a case which you have heard from the man himself, and can have no doubt about!" There was no remedy: they were caught, felt themselves in his power, and were obliged to submit to the mortification of seeing themselves advertised as witnesses to a cure which they knew to be a juggle.