It is amusing to watch the movements of the community in relation to quack medicines. Of these there are a multitude constantly appealing to the credulity of the public. Some of them in some way, acquire a currency above their fellows, and from the extent to which they are used, and from the tales of their wonder-working from all quarters of the land, and from all conditions of life, one would suppose that these remedies would never go out of use until mankind cease to be sick. But look again, only a few years after, and these vaunted medicines have gone out of use, and the flaming advertisements proclaiming their virtues have disappeared, and other remedies have taken their places in the public mind, and on the public tongue, and of course in the public stomach. This process of change in the prominent remedies before the public, has ever been going on. Take a single example. A few years ago, almost every invalid was swallowing the Hygeian pills, from the pauper that purchased them with his begged pittance, up to lords and ladies, and senators, and generals, and clergymen. But in a short time, Brandreth’s effulgent glory burst upon the earth, and the Hygeian orb faded, and glimmered, and sunk to rise no more. And now Brandreth is rapidly on the decline, giving way to others who are rising to take his place.
These successive changes in popular remedies show, that the public have always been egregiously mistaken, whenever they have attributed to them such wonderful efficacy. Else the very high and extensive reputation gained by each could not have been so utterly lost in so short a time. If, for instance, a tithe of the fame of the Hygeian pills was well founded, the thousands of mouths that swallowed them would not have been, as they were almost in a twelvemonth, just as wide open to receive the magic pills of Brandreth. Either a large portion of the community have committed a great error, in ascribing such marvellous efficacy to these remedies; or they have committed a greater one in so soon discarding them. Either the one or the other of these errors has been committed, in regard to each one of the most popular remedies, that have succeeded each other in the favor of the public, from time immemorial—not one that has not had its decline, as well as its rise, and its acme. And what is remarkable is, that when once a remedy has thoroughly passed from the popular favor, no matter how great its fame has been, it never can be revived again, unless it be under an entirely new name, and with new pretensions. Why? Because it has been tried, and its reputation was found to be a splendid bubble that has burst and fallen. And the public, like the child, when a bubble has burst, has done with that one forever, and busies itself at once in raising another, which, in its turn, is succeeded by another, and so on to the end, if end there be, which seems to be hardly a possibility with the bubbles of quackery.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Many varieties of weapon-ointment were used. Some of the articles in them which were considered most essential were powder of mummy, human blood, and moss from the skull of a thief hung in chains.
It is a humiliating fact in the history of human wisdom, that Lord Bacon, the wisest man of his time, could only say of the pretended efficacy of this ointment, that he, himself, “as yet, is not fully inclined to believe it.”
[5] The popular disposition to look to some one remedy for a disease, is seen in the conversations in every circle at the present time, in regard to the cholera. The inquiry is for some one specific remedy,—and physicians are constantly asked if something has not yet been discovered of this character. Though the newspapers are filled with new and certain cures, no new remedy has been discovered for this disease since its former visitation in this country. Physicians do however know better how to treat it, than they did then; but it is only because experience has taught them better how to use the appropriate remedies, and not because any very important new medicines are added to the list of those which are applicable to this disease.
[6] Ether and chloroform, which are now exciting so much discussion among medical men, furnish a good illustration. The value of the discovery which has recently been made in regard to them, great as it undoubtedly is, cannot as yet be exactly ascertained. But the profession will be learning more and more in relation to them, and multiplied and extended observations will at length determine their precise value, and the circumstances which should govern us in their use.
CHAPTER IV.
QUACKERY.
The reader is now prepared, by the facts and considerations presented in the previous chapters, to see in what way quackery, in its various forms, has obtained such a hold upon the community. If results in medical treatment could always be traced to their real cause, there would be no room for the arts of the empiric. But the reader has seen that, in the progress of every case of disease, there are many causes acting together in the development of results, and that many of these act secretly; and that there is, therefore, special need of caution in our conclusions, in regard to the operation of remedies. And yet, notwithstanding the manifest necessity for caution, there is no subject to which the ‘post hoc propter hoc’ mode of reasoning is so frequently, and so incautiously applied. It is the erroneous reference of effects to causes, consequent upon this mode of reasoning, which is the great source of quackery.[7]
Let us see how this result is produced.