The books which most please while instructing the reader, are those which
mingle the lively and gay with the sedate spirit in the narration of
important facts. The verdict of the reader of this work must be (it is
modestly suggested), that the author has luckily hit the happy vein in its
construction.
Of all facts which bear upon human happiness or sorrow, those which serve
to increase the former, and alleviate or banish the latter, are most
desirable for everybody to know; and of all professions which most
intimately concern the personal well-being of the public at large, that of
the physician is most important. The author of this book has spared no
pains of research to collect the facts of which he discourses, and has
endeavored to cover the whole ground embraced by his subject with
pertinent and important suggestions, statements, scientific discoveries,
incidents in the career of great physicians, etc., and to fix them in the
reader's mind by _apt anecdotes, which will be found in abundance
throughout the work_.
There is no better man in the world than the true physician, and no more
base wretch than the ordinary "Quack," or medical charlatan. If the author
has spared no pains of study to make his book acceptable, he may be said,
also, to have as unsparingly visited his indignation upon the quacks who
have all along the line of historic medicine disgraced the physician's and
the surgeon's profession.
The general public but little understand what a vast amount of ignorance
has at times been cunningly concealed by medical practitioners, and how
grossly the people of every city and village are even nowadays trifled
with by some who arrogate to themselves the honorable title of Doctor of
Medicine.
Herein not only the base and the good physician, but the honorable and the
trifling apothecary, receive their due reward, or well-merited punishment,
so far as the pen can give them. The reader will be utterly surprised when
he comes to learn how the quacks of the past and the present have brought
themselves into note by tricks and schemes very similar and equally
infamous. The wanton trifling with the health and life of their patients,
the greed of gain, and the perfect destitution of all moral nature, which
some of these men have exhibited in their career, are astounding.
The apothecaries, as well as physicians, are descanted on, and the
miserable tricks to which the large majority of them resort, exposed. The
public will be astonished to find what trash in the matter of drugs it
pays for; how filthy, vile, and often poisonous and hurtful materials
people buy for medicines at extortionate prices; how even the syrups which
they drink in soda drawn from costly and splendid fountains are often made
from the most filthy materials, and are not fit for the lower animals, not
to say human beings, to drink. And this fact is only illustrative of
hundreds of others set forth in this work.
This work not only exposes the multifold frauds of quacks, apothecaries,
travelling doctors, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, certain clairvoyants,
and "spiritual mediums," and the like, who "practise medicine" to a more
or less extent, or profess to discover and heal diseases,--but it points
out to the reader the most approved rules for protecting the health, and
recovering it when lost. In short, it is a work embodying the most sound
advice, founded upon the judgment of the best physicians of the past and
present, as tested in the Author's experience for a period of twenty
years' active practice. In other words, it is a compendium of sound
medical advice, as well as a racy, lively, and incisive dissection and
exposure of the villanies of quacks and other medical empirics, etc.
Persons of all ages will find the work not only interesting to read, but
most valuable in a practical sense. To the young who would shun the crafts
and villanies to which they must be exposed as they grow up,--for all are
liable to be more or less ill at times,--it will prove invaluable,
enabling them to detect the spurious from the reliable in medicine, and
how to judge between the pretentious charlatan (even enjoying a large
ride) and the true physician. And none are so old that they may not reap
great advantages from the work.