TAPEWORMS AND GALLSTONES.
Plug-hatted Faker--Frequency of Tapeworms--Some Tricks Exposed--How
the Defunct Worm was Passed--Rubber Near-Worm--New Gallstone
Cure--Relation to Osteopathy--Perfect, Self-Oiling, "Autotherapeutic"
Machine--Touch the Button--The Truth About the Consumption and
Insanity Cures.
There is another trump card the traveling medical grafter plays, which
wins about as well as the guaranteed rheumatism cure, namely, the tapeworm
fraud. Last summer I heard a plug-hatted faker delivering a lecture to a
street crowd, in which he said that every mother's son or daughter of them
who didn't have the rosy cheek, the sparkling eye and buoyancy of youth
might be sure that a tapeworm of monstrous size was, "like a worm in the
bud," feeding on their "damask cheeks." To prove his assertion and lend
terror to his tale, he held aloft a glass jar containing one of the
monsters that had been driven from its feast on the vitals of its victim
by his never-failing remedy. The person, "saved from a living death,"
stood at the "doctor's" side to corroborate the story, while his
voluptuous wife was kept busy handing out the magical remedy and "pursing
the ducats" given in return.
How about the worm exhibited? How this one was secured I do not know; but
intelligent people ought to know that cases of tapeworm are not so common
that eight people out of every ten have one, as this grafter positively
asserted.
An acquaintance once traveled with one of these tapeworm specialists to
furnish the song and dance performances that are so attractive to the
class of people who furnish the ready victims for grafters. This is how
the game was worked. The "specialist" would pick out an emaciated,
credulous individual from his crowd, and tell him that he bore the
unmistakable marks of being the prey of a terrible tapeworm. If he
couldn't sell him a bottle of his worm eradicator, he would give him a
bottle, telling him to take it according to directions and report to him
at his hotel or tent the next day. The man would report that no dead or
dying worm had been sighted. This was when Dr. Grafter got in his expert
work. The man was told that if he had taken the medicine as directed the
worm was dead beyond a doubt, but sometimes the "fangs" were fastened so
firmly to the walls of the intestines, in their death agony, that they
would not come away until he had injected a certain preparation that
_always_ "produced the goods."
The man was taken into a darkened room for privacy (?), the injection
given, and the defunct worm always came away. At least a worm was always
found in the evacuated material, and how was the deluded one to know that
it was in the vessel or matter injected? Of course, the patient felt
wondrous relief, and was glad to stand up that night and testify that Dr.
Grafter was an angel of mercy sent to deliver him from the awful fate of
living where "the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched."
I was told recently of a new tapeworm graft that makes the old one look
crude and unscientific. This one actually brings a tapeworm from the
intestines in _every_ case, whether the person had one before the magic
remedy was given or not. The graft is to have a near-worm manufactured of
delicate rubber and compressed into a capsule. The patient swallows the
capsule supposed to contain the worm destroyer. The rubber worm is not
digested, and a strong physic soon produces it, to the great relief of the
"patient" and the greater glory and profit of the shyster. What a
wonderful age of invention and scientific discoveries!
Another journal tells of a new gallstone cure that never fails to cause
the stones to be passed even if they are big as walnuts. The graft in this
is that the medicine consists of paraffine dissolved in colored oil. The
paraffine does not digest, but collects in colored balls, which are passed
by handfuls and are excellent imitations of the real things.
How about tapeworms, gallstones and Osteopathy, do you ask?
We heard about tapeworms and gallstones when we were in Osteopathic
college.
The one thing that was ground into us early and thoroughly was that
Osteopathy was a complete system. No matter what any other system had
done, we were to remember that Osteopathy could do that thing more surely
and more scientifically.
Students soon learned that they were never to ask, "_Can_ we treat this?"
That indicated skepticism, which was intolerable in the atmosphere of
optimistic faith that surrounded the freshman and sophomore classes
especially. The question was to be put, "_How_ do we treat this?" In the
treatment of worms the question was, "How do we treat worms?" That was
easy. Had not nature made a machine, perfect in all its parts,
self-oiling, "autotherapeutic," and all that? And would nature allow it to
choke up or slip a cog just because a little thing like a worm got tangled
in its gearing? Not much. Nature knew that worms would intrude, and had
provided her own vermifuge. The cause of worms is insufficient bile, and
behold, all the Osteopath had to do when he wished to serve notice on the
aforesaid worms to vacate the premises was to touch the button controlling
the stop-cock to the bile-duct, and they left. It was so simple and easy
we wondered how the world could have been so long finding it out.
Osteopathy was complete. That was the proposition on which we were to
stand. If anything had to be removed, or brought back, or put in place,
all that was necessary was to open the floodgates, release the pent-up
forces of nature, and the thing was done!
What a happy condition, to have _perfect_ faith! I remember a report came
to our school of an Osteopathic physician who read a paper before a
convention of his brethren, in which he recorded marvelous cures performed
in cases of tuberculosis. The paper was startling, even revolutionary, yet
it was not too much for our faith. We were almost indignant at some who
ventured to suggest that curing consumption by manipulation might be
claiming too much. These wonderful cures were performed in a town which I
afterward visited. I could find no one who knew of a single case that had
been cured. There were those who knew of cases of tuberculosis he had
treated, that had gone as most other bad cases of that disease go.
There was another world-startling case. It is one of the main cases, from
all that I can learn, upon which all the bold claims of Osteopathy as an
insanity cure are based. I remember an article under scare headlines big
enough for a bloody murder, flared out in the local paper. It was yet more
wonderfully heralded in the papers at the county seat. The metropolitan
dailies caught up the echo, which reverberated through Canada and was
finally heard across the seas! Osteopathic journals took it up and made
much of it. Those in school read it with eager satisfaction, and plunged
into their studies with fiercer enthusiasm. Many who had been "almost
persuaded" were induced by it to "cross the Rubicon," and take up the
study of this wonderful new science that could take a raving maniac,
condemned to a mad house by medical men, and with a few scientific twists
of the neck cause raging insanity to give place to gentle sleep that
should wake in sanity and health.
Was it any wonder that students flocked to schools that professed to teach
how common plodding mortals could work such miracles? Was it strange that
anxious friends brought dear ones, over whom the black cloud of insanity
cast its shadows, hundreds of miles to be treated by this man? Or to the
Osteopathic colleges, from which, in all cases of which I ever knew, they
returned sadly disappointed?
The report of that wonderful cure caused many intelligent laymen (and even
Dr. Pratt) to indulge a hope that insanity might be only a disturbance of
the blood supply to the brain caused by pressure from distorted "neck
bones," or other lesions, and that Osteopaths were to empty our
overcrowded madhouses. Where is that hope now? What was its foundation? I
was told by an intimate friend of this great Osteopath that all these
startling reports we had supposed were published as news the papers were
glad to get because of their important truths, were but shrewd
advertising. I afterward talked with the man, and his friends who were at
the bedside when the miracle was performed, and while they believed that
there had been good done by the treatment, it was all so tame and
commonplace at home compared with its fame abroad that I have wondered
ever since if anything much was really done after all.
THE MORAL TO THE TALE.
Honesty--Plain Dealing--Education.
But I must close. I could multiply incidents, but it would grow
monotonous. I believe I have told enough that is disgusting to the
intelligent laity and medical men, and enough that is humiliating to the
capable, honest Osteopath, who practices his "new science" as standing for
all that is good in physio-therapy.
I hope I have told, or recalled, something that will help physicians to
see that the way to clear up the turbidity existing in therapeutics to-day
is by open, honest dealing with the laity, and by a campaign of education
that shall impart to them enough of the scientific principles of medicine
so that they may know when they are being imposed upon by quacks and
grafters. I am encouraged to believe I am on the right track. After I had
written this booklet I read, in a report of the convention of the American
Medical Association held in Chicago, that one of the leaders of the
Association told his brethren that the most important work before them as
physicians was to conduct a campaign of education for the masses. It must
be done not only to protect the people, but as well to protect the honest
physician.
There is another fact that faces the medical profession, and I believe I
have called attention to conditions that prove it. That is, that the hope
of the profession of "doctoring" being placed on an honest rational basis
lies in a broader and more thorough education of the physician. A broad,
liberal general education to begin with, then all that can be known about
medicine and surgery. Is that enough? No. Then all that there is in
physio-therapy, under whatsoever name, that promises to aid in curing or
preventing disease.
If this humble production aids but a little in any of this great work,
then my object in writing will have been achieved.