_Lady Wortley Montagu's Remark upon Credulity.—Superstitions of the
English respecting the Cure of Diseases.—Sickness and Healing connected
with Superstition.—Wesley's Primitive Physic.—Quacks.—Dr Graham.—
Tractors.—Magnetic Girdles.—Quoz.—Quack Medicines._
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the best letter-writer of this or of any
other country, has accounted for the extraordinary facility with which
her countrymen are duped by the most ignorant quacks, very truly and
very ingeniously. "The English," she says, "are more easily infatuated
than any other people by the hope of a panacea, nor is there any other
country in the world where such great fortunes are made by physicians. I
attribute this to the foolish credulity of mankind. As we no longer
trust in miracles and relics, we run as eagerly after receipts and
doctors, and the money which was given three centuries ago for the
health of the soul, is now given for the health of the body, by the same
sort of people, women and half-witted men. Quacks are despised in
countries where they have shrines and images."
How much to be lamented is the perversion of a mind like hers, which,
had it not been heretical, would have been so truly excellent! She
perceives the truth; but having been nursed up in a false religion, and
afterwards associated with persons who had none, she does not perceive
the whole truth, and confounds light and darkness. The foolish credulity
of mankind!—To be without faith and hope is as unnatural a state for the
heart as to be without affections. Man is a credulous animal; perhaps he
has never yet been defined by a characteristic which more peculiarly and
exclusively designates him, certainly never by a nobler one; for faith
and hope are what the heretics mean by credulity. The fact is, as she
states it. Infidelity and heresy cannot destroy the nature of man, but
they pervert it; they deprive him of his trust in God, and he puts it in
man; they take away the staff of his support, and he leans upon a broken
reed.
In the worst sufferings and the most imminent peril a true catholic
never needs despair; such is the power of the saints, and the infinite
mercy of God and the most holy Mary: but the heretics in such cases have
only to despair and die. They have no saint to look to for every
particular disease, no faith in relics to make them whole. If a piece of
the true cross were brought to a dying Englishman, though its efficacy
had been proved by a thousand miracles, he would reject it even at the
last gasp; such is the pride and obstinacy of heresy, and so completely
does it harden the heart.
There are a thousand facts to verify the remark of Lady Wortley. The
boasted knowledge of England has not sunk deep; it is like the golden
surface of a lackered watch, which covers, and but barely covers, the
base metal. The great mass of the people are as ignorant, and as well
contented with their ignorance, as any the most illiterate nation in
Europe: and even among those who might be expected to know better, it is
astonishing how slowly information makes way to any practical utility.
In domestic medicine for instance;—a defluxion is here called a cold,
and therefore for its name's sake must be expelled by heat. Oil is
employed to soften a hard cough, and lemon juice to cut it; because in
English sourness is synonymous with sharpness, and what is sharp must
needs cut. But it is of superstition that I am to speak, and perverted
credulity.
The abracadabra of the old heretics was lately in use as a charm for the
ague, and probably still is where the ague is to be found, for that
disease has almost wholly disappeared within the last generation. For
warts there are manifold charms. The person who wishes to be rid of them
takes a stick, and cuts a notch in it for every wart, and buries it, and
as it rots the warts are to decay. Or he steals a piece of beef and rubs
over them, and buries it in like manner. Or stealing dry peas or beans,
and wrapping them up, one for each wart, he carries the parcel to a
place where four roads meet, and tosses it over his head, not looking
behind to see where it falls; he will lose the warts, and whoever picks
it up will have them. But there are gifted old women who have only to
slip a thread over these excrescencies, or touch them with their saliva,
and they dry away.
It is a truth, that we have but too many such superstitious follies;
with us, however, there is always some mixture of devotion in them, and
the error, though it be an error, and as such deservedly discouraged, is
at least pious. He who psalms a sick man, or fancies that the oil from
his saint's lamp will heal him of all his complaints, errs on the safe
side. Here none of these palliations are to be found; the practices have
not merely no reference to religion, but have even the characters of
witchcraft. The materials for the charm must be stolen to render them
efficacious, secrecy is enjoined, and it is supposed that the evil is
only to be got rid of by transferring it to another. In Catholic
countries the confessor commands the thief to make restitution,—here the
person who has been robbed repairs to a witch or wizard to recover the
loss, or learn who the criminal is, by means of a familiar spirit! A
Cunning-Man, or a Cunning-Woman, as they are termed, is to be found near
every town, and though the laws are occasionally put in force against
them, still it is a gainful trade. This it is to deprive credulity of
its proper food.
None suffer so severely from this as they who are labouring under
diseases; if money is to be gotten, such is the spirit of trade, neither
the dying nor the dead are spared, and quackery is carried to greater
perfection of villainy here than in any other part of the world.
Sickness humbles the pride of man; it forces upon him a sense of his own
weakness, and teaches him to feel his dependence upon unseen Powers:
that therefore which makes wise men devout, makes the ignorant
superstitious. Among savages the physician and the conjurer are always
the same. The operations of sickness and of healing are alike
mysterious, and hence arises the predilection of many enthusiasts for
quackery, and the ostentation which all quacks make of religion, or of
some extraordinary power in themselves. The favourite assertion formerly
in all countries was, that of an innate gift as a seventh son, I know
not on what superstition founded, and of course augmented seven fold in
due proportion, if the father had been a seventh son also, or even the
mother a seventh daughter, for in this case there is no Salic law.
Another has claimed the same privilege because he was born deaf and
dumb, as if nature had thus indemnified him for the faculties of which
he was deprived. The kings of England long since the schism, though the
practice is now disused, have touched for the evil, and used to appoint
a day in the Gazette for publicly doing it. Where this divine property
has not been ascribed to the physician it has been imputed to the
medicine. The most notorious of these worthies who flourishes at present
calls his composition the Cordial Balm of Gilead, and prefaces every
advertisement with a text from Jeremiah, "Is there no Balm in Gilead? is
there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of
my people recovered?"—Thus the Arabs attribute the virtue of their balm
to the blood of those who were slain at Beder. We see among ourselves
but too many scandalous proofs of this weakness. A Cistercian historian
assures us that he was cured of an obstinate illness by taking a pill of
the earth of the pit in which God made Adam: and at this day the
rinsings of the cup are eagerly sought after by the sick,
notwithstanding the prohibition of the church.
Perhaps we are indebted to the Jews for the vulgar feeling of the divine
origin of the healing art. They will have it that Adam had an intuitive
knowledge of medicine, and that Solomon's Book of Trees[15] and Herbs
was written by inspiration. The founder of the Quakers was in danger of
taking to the practice of physic from a similar notion. He fancied that
he was in the same state as Adam before the fall, and that the nature
and virtues of all things were opened to him, and he was at a stand, as
he says, whether he should practise physic for the good of mankind.
Wesley went beyond him, and published what he called Primitive Physic,
fancying himself chosen to restore medicine as well as religion, and to
prescribe both for body and soul, like St Luke. The greater number of
his remedies are old women's receipts, neither good nor ill; but others
are of a more desperate nature. For a cold in the head he directs you to
pare an orange very thin, roll it up inside out, and put a plug in each
nostril; for the wind colic, to eat parched peas; for the gout, to apply
a raw beef-steak to the part affected; for raving madness, to set the
patient with his head under a great waterfall as long as his strength
will bear it; and for asthma and hypochondriasis, to take an ounce of
quicksilver every morning! If all his prescriptions had been like this
last, his book might have been entitled, after the favourite form of the
English, Every Man his own Poisoner. In general they are sufficiently
innocent; which is fortunate, for I have selected these instances from
the twenty-first edition of his work, and no doubt the purchasers place
in it implicit confidence.
Any scientific discovery is immediately seized by some of the numerous
adventurers in this country, who prey upon the follies and the miseries
of their fellow-creatures. The most eminent quack of the last generation
was a Doctor Graham, who tampered with electricity in a manner too
infamous to be reported, and for which he ought to have received the
most exemplary public punishment. This man was half mad, and his madness
at last, contrary to the usual process, got the better of his knavery.
His latest method of practice was something violent; it was to bury his
patients up to the chin in fresh mould. J. saw half a score of them
exhibited in this manner for a shilling:—a part of the exhibition was to
see them perform afterwards upon shoulders of mutton, to prove that when
they rose from the grave they were as devouring as the grave itself. The
operation lasted four hours: they suffered, as might be seen in their
countenances, intensely from cold for the first two, during the third
they grew warmer, and in the last perspired profusely, so that when they
were taken out the mould reeked like a new dunghill. Sailors are said to
have practised this mode of cure successfully for the scurvy. The doctor
used sometimes to be buried himself for the sake of keeping his patients
company: one day, when he was in this condition, a farmer emptied a
watering-pot upon his head to make him grow. When J. saw him he was
sitting up to the neck in a bath of warm mud, with his hair powdered and
in full dress. As he was haranguing upon the excellent state of health
which he enjoyed from the practice of earth-bathing, as he called it, J.
asked him, Why then, if there was nothing the matter with him, he sate
in the mud? The question puzzled him.—Why, he said,—why—it was—it was—it
was to show people that it did no harm,—that it was quite innocent,—that
it was very agreeable: and then brightening his countenance with a smile
at the happiness of the thought, he added, "It gives me, sir, a skin as
soft as the feathers of Venus' dove." This man lived upon vegetables,
and delighted in declaiming against the sin of being carnivorous, and
the dreadful effects of making the stomach a grave and charnel-house for
slaughtered bodies. Latterly he became wholly an enthusiast, would
madden himself with ether, run out into the streets, and strip himself
to clothe the first beggar whom he met.
Galvanism, like electricity, was no sooner discovered than it was
applied to purposes of quackery. The credit of this is due to America;
and it must be admitted that the inventor has the honour of having
levied a heavier tax upon credulity than any of his predecessors ever
dared attempt: in this respect he is the Mr Pitt of his profession. For
two pieces of base metal, not longer than the little finger, and not
larger than a nail, he is modest enough to charge five guineas. These
Tractors, as they are called, are to cure all sores, swellings, burns,
tooth-ache, &c. &c.: and that the purchasers may beware of counterfeits,
which is the advice always given by this worshipful fraternity, a
portrait of the tractor is engraved upon his hand-bills, both a front
view and a back one, accompanied with a striking likeness of the
leathern case in which they are contained. Many cures have certainly
been performed by them, and how those cures are performed has been as
certainly exemplified by some very ingenious experiments which were made
at Bath and Bristol. Pieces of wood, and others of common iron, shaped
and coloured like the tractors, were tried there upon some paralytic
patients in the Infirmary. The mode of operating consists in nothing
more than in gently stroking the part affected with the point of the
instrument, and so, according to the theory, conducting off into the
atmosphere the galvanic matter of pain! It is impossible that where
there is no sore, this can give any pain whatever,—yet the patients were
in agonies. One of them declared that he had suffered less when pieces
of the bone of his leg had been cut out,—and they were actually enabled
to move limbs which before were dead with palsy.—False relics have
wrought true miracles.
Another gentleman quacks with oxygen, and recommends what he calls vital
wine as a cure for all diseases. Vital wine must be admitted to be
something extraordinary; but what is that to a people for whom solar and
lunar tinctures have been prepared! Another has risen from a travelling
cart to the luxuries of a chariot by selling magnetic girdles; his
theory is, that the magnetic virtue attracts the iron in the blood, and
makes the little red globules revolve faster, each upon its own axis, in
the rapidity and regularity of which revolutions health consists,—and
this he proves to the people by showing them how a needle is set in
motion by his girdles. But magnetism has been made the basis of a far
more portentous quackery, which is in all its parts so extraordinary
that it merits a full account, not merely in a Picture of England, but
also in the history of the century which has just expired. My next shall
develop this at length.
The reason why these scoundrels succeed to so much greater an extent in
England than in any other country, is because they are enabled to make
themselves so generally known by means of the newspapers, and, in
consequence of the great internal commerce, to have their agents every
where, and thus do as much mischief every where, as if the Devil had
endowed them with a portion of his own ubiquity. Not only do the London
papers find their way over the whole kingdom, but every considerable
town in the provinces has one or more of its own, and in these they
insert their long advertisements with an endless perseverance which must
attract notice, and make them and their medicines talked of. How
effectually this may be done, I can illustrate by an odd anecdote. Some
twelve or fifteen years ago a wager was laid between two persons in
London, that the one would, in the course of a few weeks, make any
nonsensical word, which the other should choose to invent, a general
subject of conversation. Accordingly he employed people to write in
chalk upon all the walls in London the word _Quoz_. Every body saw this
word wherever they went staring them in the face, and nobody could
divine its meaning. The newspapers noticed it,—What can it be? was the
general cry, and the man won his wager.
Upon this system the quacks persist in advertising at an enormous
expense, for which, however, they receive ample interest,—and which
indeed they do not always honestly pay. Part of their scheme is to
advertise in newspapers which are newly set up, and which, therefore,
insert their notices at an under price; and one fellow, when he was
applied to for payment, refused, saying that his clerk had ordered the
insertion without his knowledge. To go to law with him would have been a
remedy worse than the disease.
El vencido vencido,
Y el vencedor perdido,[16]
is true here as well as in other countries.
These wretches know the sufferings and the hopes of mankind, and they
mock the one and aggravate the other. They who suffer, listen gladly to
any thing which promises relief; and these men insert such cases of
miraculous cures, signed and sworn to and attested, that they who do not
understand how often the recovery may be real and the cure
imaginary,—the fact true and the application false,—yield to the weight
of human testimony, and have faith to the destruction of their bodies,
though they will have none to the salvation of their souls.
Attestations to these cases are procured in many ways. A quack of the
first water for a long time sent his prescriptions to the shop of some
druggists of great respectability. After some months he called there in
his carriage, and introduced himself, saying that they must often have
seen his name, and that he now came to complain of them, for
unintentionally doing him very serious mischief. "Gentlemen," said he,
"you charge your drugs too low. As medical men yourselves you _must_
know how much depends upon faith, and people have no faith in what is
cheap,—they will not believe that any thing can do them good unless they
pay smartly for it. I must beg you to raise your prices, and raise them
high too, double and treble what they now are at least,—or I really must
send my patients elsewhere." This was strange, and what they were
requested to do was not after the ordinary custom of fair trading;—but
as it did not appear that there could be any other advantage resulting
to him from it than what he had stated, they at last promised to do as
he desired. This visit led to some further acquaintance; and after
another long interval, they were persuaded one day to dine with their
friend the Doctor. During dinner the servant announced that a person
from the country wished to see the Doctor, and thank him for having
cured him. "Oh," said he, "don't you know that I am engaged? These
people wear me out of my very life! Give the good man something to eat
and drink, tell him I am very glad he is got well, and send him away."
The servant came in again,—"Sir, he will not go,—he says it is a most
wonderful cure,—that you have raised him from the dead, and he cannot be
happy till he has seen you and thanked you himself. He is come a long
way from the country, sir." "Gentlemen," said the Doctor, "you see how
it is. I do not know how to get rid of him, unless you will have the
goodness to allow him just to come in, and then he will be satisfied and
let us alone. This is the way I am plagued!" In came the countryman, and
began to bless the Doctor, as the means under God, of snatching him from
the grave; and offered him money tied up in a leathern bag, saying it
was all the compensation he could make; but if it were ten times as much
it would be too little,—the Doctor crying, "Well, well, my friend, I am
glad to see you so well," and refusing to take his money. Still the man
persisted, and would tell the company his case,—he could not in
conscience be easy if he did not,—and he began a long story, which the
Doctor first attempted to stop, and then affected not to listen to,—till
at length, by little and little, he began to give ear to it, and seemed
greatly interested before he had done, and interrupted him with
questions. At last he called for pen and ink, saying—"This is so very
extraordinary a case that I must not lose it;" and making the man repeat
it as he wrote, frequently said to his visitors, "Gentlemen, I beg you
will take notice of this,—it is a very remarkable case:" and when he had
finished writing it, he said to them, "You have heard the good man's
story, and I am sure can have no objection to subscribe your names as
witnesses." The trick was apparent, and they begged leave to decline
appearing upon the occasion. "Why, gentlemen," said he, "you and I had
better continue friends. You must be sensible that I have been the means
of putting very great and unusual profits into your hands, and you will
not surely refuse me so trifling a return as that of attesting a case
which you have heard from the man himself, and can have no doubt about!"
There was no remedy: they were caught, felt themselves in his power, and
were obliged to submit to the mortification of seeing themselves
advertised as witnesses to a cure which they knew to be a juggle.
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 100_l._ 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.