Advice to the people in general, with regard to their health

by S. A. D. Tissot

§ 564. It is acknowledged the Conjurers, the residing Conjurers, do not carry out the current Money of the Country, like the itinerant Quacks; but the Havock they make among their Fellow Subjects is without Intermission, whence it must be very great, as every Day in the Year is marked with many of their Victims. Without the least Knowledge or Experience, and offensively armed with three or four Medicines, whose Nature they are as thoroughly ignorant of, as of their unhappy Patients Diseases; and which Medicines, being almost all violent ones, are very certainly so many Swords in the Hands of raging Madmen. Thus armed and qualified, I say, they aggravate the slightest Disorders, and make those that are a little more considerable, mortal; but from which the Patients would have recovered, if left solely to the Conduct of Nature; and, for a still stronger Reason, if they had confided to the Guidance of her experienced Observers and Assistants.

§ 565. The Robber who assassinates on the High-way, leaves the Traveller the Resource of defending himself, and the Chance of being aided by the Arrival of other Travellers: But the Poisoner, who forces himself into the Confidence of a sick Person, is a hundred times more dangerous, and as just an Object of Punishment.

The Bands of Highwaymen, and their Individuals, that enter into any Country or District, are described as particularly as possible to the Publick. It were equally to be wished, we had also a List of these physical Impostors and Ignorants male and female; and that a most exact Description of them, with the Number, and a brief Summary of their murderous Exploits, were faithfully published. By this Means the Populace might probably be inspired with such a wholesome Dread of them, that they would no longer expose their Lives to the Mercy of such Executioners.

§ 566. But their Blindness, with Respect to these two Sorts of maleficent Beings, is inconceivable. That indeed in Favour of the Mountebank is somewhat less gross, because as they are not personally acquainted with him, they may the more easily credit him with some Part of the Talents and the Knowledge he arrogates. I shall therefore inform them, and it cannot be repeated too often, that whatever ostentatious Dress and Figure some of these Impostors make, they are constantly vile Wretches, who, incapable of earning a Livelyhood in any honest Way, have laid the Foundation of their Subsistence on their own amazing Stock of Impudence, and that of the weak Credulity of the People; that they have no scientific Knowledge; that their Titles and Patents are so many Impositions, and inauthentic; since by a shameful Abuse, such Patents and Titles are become Articles of Commerce, which are to be obtained at very low Prices; just like the second-hand laced Cloaks which they purchase at the Brokers. That their Certificates of Cures are so many Chimeras or Forgeries; and that in short, if among the prodigious Multitudes of People who take their Medicines, some of them should recover, which it is almost physically impossible must not sometimes be the Case, yet it would not be the less certain, that they are a pernicious destructive Set of Men. A Thrust of a Rapier into the Breast has saved a Man's Life by seasonably opening an Imposthume in it, which might otherwise have killed him: and yet internal penetrating Wounds, with a small Sword, are not the less mortal for one such extraordinary Consequence. Nor is it even surprizing that these Mountebanks, which is equally applicable to Conjurers, who kill thousands of People, whom Nature alone, or assisted by a Physician, would have saved, should now and then cure a Patient, who had been treated before by the ablest Physicians. Frequently Patients of that Class, who apply to these Mountebanks and Conjurers (whether it has been, that they would not submit to the Treatment proper for their Distempers; or whether the real Physician tired of the intractable Creatures has discontinued his Advice and Attendance) look out for such Doctors, as assure them of a speedy Cure, and venture to give them such Medicines as kill many, and cure one (who has had Constitution enough to overcome them) a little sooner than a justly reputable Physician would have done. It is but too easy to procure, in every Parish, such Lists of their Patients, and of their Feats, as would clearly evince the Truth of whatever has been said here relating to them.

§ 567. The Credit of this Market, this Fair-hunting Doctor, surrounded by five or six hundred Peasants, staring and gaping at him, and counting themselves happy in his condescending to cheat them of their very scarce and necessary Cash, by selling them, for twenty times more than its real Worth, a Medicine whose best Quality were to be only a useless one; the Credit, I say, of this vile yet tolerated Cheat, would quickly vanish, could each of his Auditors be persuaded, of what is strictly true, that except a little more Tenderness and Agility of Hand, he knows full as much as his Doctor; and that if he could assume as much Impudence, he would immediately have as much Ability, would equally deserve the same Reputation, and to have the same Confidence reposed in him.

§ 568. Were the Populace capable of reasoning, it were easy to disabuse them in these Respects; but as it is, their Guardians and Conductors should reason for them. I have already proved the Absurdity of reposing any Confidence in Mountebanks, properly so called; and that Reliance some have on the Conjurers is still more stupid and ridiculous.

The very meanest Trade requires some Instruction: A Man does not commence even a Cobler, a Botcher of old Leather, without serving an Apprenticeship to it; and yet no Time has been served, no Instruction has been attended to, by these Pretenders to the most necessary, useful and elegant Profession. We do not confide the mending, the cleaning of a Watch to any, who have not spent several Years in considering how a Watch is made; what are the Requisites and Causes of its going right; and the Defects or Impediments that make it go wrong: and yet the preserving and rectifying the Movements of the most complex, the most delicate and exquisite, and the most estimable Machine upon Earth, is entrusted to People who have not the least Notion of its Structure; of the Causes of its Motions; nor of the Instruments proper to rectify their Deviations.

Let a Soldier discarded from his Regiment for his roguish Tricks, or who is a Deserter from it, a Bankrupt, a disreputable Ecclesiastic, a drunken Barber, or a Multitude of such other worthless People, advertize that they mount, set and fit up all Kinds of Jewels and Trinkets in Perfection; if any of these are not known; if no Person in the Place has ever seen any of their Work; or if they cannot produce authentic Testimonials of their Honesty, and their Ability in their Business, not a single Individual will trust them with two Pennyworth of false Stones to work upon; in short they must be famished. But if instead of professing themselves Jewellers, they post themselves up as Physicians, the Croud purchase, at a high Rate, the Pleasure of trusting them with the Care of their Lives, the remaining Part of which they rarely fail to empoison.

§ 569. The most genuine and excellent Physicians, these extraordinary Men, who, born with the happiest Talents, have began to inform their Understandings from their earliest Youth; who have afterwards carefully qualified themselves by cultivating every Branch of Physic; who have sacrificed the best and most pleasurable Days of their Lives, to a regular and assiduous Investigation of the human Body; of its various Functions; of the Causes that may impair or embarrass them, and informed themselves of the Qualities and Virtues of every simple and compound Medicine; who have surmounted the Difficulty and Loathsomness of living in Hospitals among thousands of Patients; and who have added the medical Observations of all Ages and Places to their own; these few and extraordinary Men, I say, still consider themselves as short of that perfect Ability and consummate Knowledge, which they contemplate and wish for, as necessary to guarding the precious Depositum of human Life and Health, confided to their Charge. Nevertheless we see the same inestimable Treasures, intrusted to gross and stupid Men, born without Talents; brought up without Education or Culture; who frequently can scarcely read; who are as profoundly ignorant of every Subject that has any Relation to Physic, as the Savages of Asia; who awake only to drink away; who often exercise their horrid Trade merely to find themselves in strong Liquor, and execute it chiefly when they are drunk: who, in short, became Physicians, only from their Incapacity to arrive at any Trade or Attainment! Certainly such a Conduct in Creatures of the human Species must appear very astonishing, and even melancholy, to every sensible thinking Man; and constitute the highest Degree of Absurdity and Extravagance.

Should any Person duly qualified enter into an Examination of the Medicines they use, and compare them with the Situation and Symptoms of the Patients to whom they give them, he must be struck with Horror; and heartily deplore the Fate of that unfortunate Part of the human Race, whose Lives, so important to the Community, are committed to the Charge of the most murderous Set of Beings.