This same man once practised a similar trick in such a way that the wit almost atones for the roguery. Some young men of fashion thought it would be a good joke to get him to dinner and make him drunk, and one of them invited him for this purpose. The Doctor went, and left his friend the countryman to follow him, and find him out;—of course it was still better sport for them to hear the case. But the next morning it appeared in the newspapers with the names of the whole party to attest it.
Government gives an indirect sort of sanction to these worst of all impostors. They enter the receipt of their medicines as a discovery, and for the payment of about 100l. sterling, take out a privilege, which is here called a patent, prohibiting all other persons from compounding the same; then they announce their discoveries as by the king's authority, and thus the ignorant are deceived. The Scotch[17] Universities also sell them degrees in medicine without the slightest examination,—this trade in degrees being their main support,—and they are legally as true Doctors in medicine as the best of the profession. This infamous practice might soon be put a stop to. Their medicines may be classed under three heads; they are either such as can do no good, but produce immediate exhilaration, because they contain either laudanum or spirits; or they are well-known drugs given in stronger doses than usual, so as to be sure of producing immediate good at the probable chance of occasioning after mischief; or they are more rarely new medicines, introduced before the regular practitioners will venture to employ them. In this way arsenic was first employed. The famous fever powder of Dr James is of this description; he knew it would be adopted in general practice, and, to secure the profits to his representatives after the term of his privilege should have expired, had recourse to means which cannot be justified. Every person upon taking out a patent is obliged to specify upon oath the particular discovery on which he grounds his claim to it. He entered a false receipt: so that, though the ingredients have been since detected by analysis, still the exact proportions and the method of preparation are supposed to be known only to those who have succeeded to his rights, and who in consequence still derive an ample income from the success of this artifice.
There is yet another mystery of iniquity to be revealed. Some of the rascals who practise much in a particular branch of their art are connected with gamblers. They get intimate with their young moneyed patients, and as they keep splendid houses, invite them to grand entertainments, where part of the gang are ready to meet them, and when the wine is done with the dice are produced.
[15] 1 Kings, iv. 33.
[16] He who loses, loses, and he who wins is ruined.—Tr.
[17] Don Manuel should have said some of the Scotch Universities, and not have involved Edinburgh and Glasgow in the censure.—Tr.
LETTER LI.
Account of Animal Magnetism.
I shall I shall devote this letter to a full account of the theory of Animal Magnetism, which was put a stop to in France by the joint authority of the Church and State, but had its fair career in England. The Lectures of Mainauduc, who was the teacher in this country, were published, and from them I have drawn this detail: