CHAPTER III.
POPULAR ERRORS,
False estimate of the importance of positive medication. This error appears in various ways. Healing of wounds—anointed axe. Attributing effects to agencies just preceding them—post hoc propter hoc mode of reasoning. Referring the cure of a case to some one remedy or measure, when commonly the result of many. Disposition to have something done all the time. Disease considered often as a palpable thing—a humor—a poison—medicines supposed to neutralize it. Specifics. Supposed to be many—really few, if any. Definition. Inadequate ideas of the community of the necessity for discrimination in medical practice. Propensity to look for some universal catholicon. Disease supposed by some to be an unit. A sort of universality of operation attributed to favorite remedies, even sometimes among physicians. Dr. Beddoes’ gases. Physicians correct their errors by experience—the public only exchange one error for another in medicine. Changes in popular opinion in regard to quack remedies.
CHAPTER IV.
QUACKERY,
The grand source of quackery the false reference of effects to causes. The way in which a remedy, whether active or inert, acquires its reputation. Quack medicines principally of three kinds. 1. Evacuants. Great similarity in these—made up mostly of articles in common use. 2. Those which are supposed to act upon the system in a gradual way, as alternatives. Preparations of sarsaparilla. Impositions. 3. Those which are supposed to act especially upon the lungs. Harm done by their indiscriminate use. Quantities of inert and damaged articles used in preparing quack medicines. Importance of the name of a medicine in giving it currency. Ridiculousness of quack advertisements. Certificates. Chiefly of four kinds. 1. Forgeries. 2. Essentially, sometimes wholly, untrue. How obtained. 3. Those given by invalids imagining themselves to be relieved. 4. Those given by invalids who are relieved while taking the medicine—inferred to be done by the medicine. Certificates of clergymen. Rule of the medical profession in regard to nostrums. Proposed mode of guarding against imposition. Quackery as a monstrous business interest. Press and legislatures trammelled by it. Itinerant quack lecturers. Lectures especially to the ladies. Animal magnetism. Paracelsus the “prince of quacks.” St. John Long. Perkins’ tractors. Forms of Quackery many, but the materials from which they are formed always the same. No discoveries have ever been made by quackery.
CHAPTER V.
THOMPSONISM,