You laugh at the use which this man made of the ‘post hoc propter hoc’ mode of reasoning; but, after all, his inference is no farther from the truth than many of the inferences of wise dabblers in physic, promulgated in the newspapers, or even of learned doctors, gravely recorded in the annals of medicine. The only real difference is, that among the many preceding circumstances, to which results might be attributed, he chose one, and they chose some other, a little more plausible, perhaps, than his, but no nearer the truth.
[8] The whole course of the medical profession, in regard to discoveries in medicine, has been open and generous, and not secret and mercenary. Dr. Stevens, in his eloquent address before the New York State Medical Society, thus speaks on this point: “Was the introduction of inoculation for the small-pox a speculation? Was the discovery of the preventive power of vaccination, (the labor of close, unremitting, and careful research during a period of several years,)—was that made or conducted with a view to personal emolument? As a matter of course, Dr. Jenner, as soon as he had completed his discovery, published it—made it free to all mankind. When quinine was first discovered, the mode of preparing it was immediately made known. Recently, when some feeble attempts were made to obtain a patent for the use of ether, and to conceal the process of etherization, the indignation of the profession was aroused from one end of our country to the other. The money changers were driven from the temple of humanity.”
[9] For example, the famous Balm of Gilead, which, in its time, was said to cure all manner of disease, is nothing but brandy spiced with cardamoms and other like seeds, and made a little more stimulating with Spanish flies. The use of this medicine, therefore, was really only one of the modes of dram drinking.
Louis XV. purchased, for a considerable sum, of Madame Nouffleur, a nostrum for the cure of tape-worm. The medicine proved to be the powder of the male fern, which was used for the same complaint by Galen in the second century, but which, in spite of the recommendations of this illustrious physician, and the princely reward paid to Madame Nouffleur for her discovery of it—in, shall I say, some musty book—it has somehow lost its reputation.
Examples of the same kind might be given almost indefinitely.
[10] A few facts will show the present enormous growth of this interest. Ten years ago, the revenue of the English government, from the sale of patent medicines, was only a little short of fifty thousand pounds sterling. The cost of advertising quack medicines in the United States, was estimated at that time at 200,000 dollars. But it is vastly more now. Dr. Stevens, in his recent address states, that the advertising outlay of some of the most notorious patent medicine proprietors, is reckoned by its fifty and hundred thousand dollars per annum. Quack advertisements occupy a large space in our newspapers. In the twenty columns of a country political paper published tri-weekly, I once counted eleven filled with such advertisements, while only nine were devoted to other advertisements, news, miscellaneous matters, editorials, &c.
[11] After he left his professional chair, he wandered about the country, generally intoxicated, seldom changing his clothes, or even going to bed. And though like other quacks who have succeeded him, he boasted that he had discovered a panacea, which would cure all disease at once, and even prolong life almost indefinitely, this prince of empirics died after a few hours’ illness, in the forty-eighth year of his age, at Salzburg in Bavaria, with a bottle of his panacea in his pocket.
[12] At one time live toads were a popular remedy for hemorrhage, tied behind the ears, or under the arm pits, or to the soles of the feet. It was supposed by some that the effect was altogether mental. But, as in the case of the Tractors, it was contended that this could not be so, because the same effect was produced upon animals. Michael Mercatus asserts that “if you hang the toad round a cock’s neck for a day or so, you may then cut off his head, and the neck will not bleed a single drop.” One cannot help being reminded by this of the experiments with the Brocchieri water a year or two since upon animals, which, though reported as perfectly successful, have not saved this remedy from going to the tomb of the Capulets, to which all its predecessors have gone before it.
CHAPTER V.
THOMPSONISM.
Thompsonism, or Thomsonianism, as it is more often called, or written, is a system of quackery, which, though it is evidently declining in public favor, is still so prominent, that it seems to merit a separate notice.