QUACKS.
"So then the subject being so variable, hath made the art by
consequence more conjectural; an art being conjectural hath
made so much the more place to be left for imposture. For
almost all other arts and sciences are judged by acts or
masterpieces, as I may term them, and not by the successes
and events. The lawyer is judged by the virtue of his
pleading, and not by the issue of the cause. The master of
the ship is judged by the directing his course aright, and
not by the fortune of the voyage. But the physician, and
perhaps the politician, hath no particular acts
demonstrative of his ability, but is judged most by the
event; which is ever but as it is taken: for who can tell,
if a patient die or recover, or if a state be preserved or
ruined, whether it be art or accident? and therefore many
times the impostor is prized, and the man of virtue taxed.
_Nay, we see the weakness and credulity of men is such, as
they will often prefer a mountebank or witch before a
learned physician._"--Lord Bacon's "_Advancement of
Learning_."
The history of quackery, if it were written on a scale that should
include the entire number of those frauds which may be generally
classed under the head of humbug, would be the history of the human
race in all ages and climes. Neither the benefactors nor the enemies
of mankind would escape mention; and a searching scrutiny would show
that dishonesty has played as important, though not as manifest, a
part in the operations of benevolence, as in the achievements of the
devil. But a more confined use of the word must satisfy us on the
present occasion. We are not about to enter on a philosophic inquiry
into the causes that contributed to the success of Mahomet and
Cromwell, but only to chronicle a few of the most humorous facts
connected with the predecessors of Dr. Townsend and Mr. Morrison.
In the success that has in every century attended the rascally
enterprises of pretenders to the art of medicine, is found a touching
evidence of the sorrow, credulity, and ignorance of the generations
that have passed, or are passing, to the silent home where the pain
and joy, the simplicity and cunning, of this world are alike of
insignificance. The hope that to the last lurks in the breast of the
veriest wretch under heaven's canopy, whether his trials come from
broken health, or an empty pocket, or wronged affection, speaks aloud
in saddest tones, as one thinks of the multitudes who, worn with
bodily malady and spiritual dejection, ignorant of the source of their
sufferings, but thirsting for relief from them, have gone from
charlatan to charlatan, giving hoarded money in exchange for charms,
cramp-rings, warming-stones, elixirs, and trochees, warranted to cure
every ill that flesh is heir to. The scene, from another point of
view, is more droll, but scarcely less mournful. Look away for a few
seconds from the throng of miserable objects who press round the
empiric's stage; wipe out for a brief while the memory of their woes,
and regard the style and arts of the practitioner who, with a trunk
full of nostrums, bids disease to vanish, and death to retire from the
scenes of his triumph. There he stands--a lean, fantastic man,
voluble of tongue, empty-headed, full of loud words and menaces,
prating about kings and princes who have taken him by the hand and
kissed him in gratitude for his benefits showered upon them--dauntless,
greedy, and so steeped in falsehood that his crazy-tainted brain half
believes the lies that flow from his glib tongue. Are there no such
men amongst us now--not standing on carts at the street-corners, and
selling their wares to a dingy rabble, but having their seats of
exchange in honoured places, and vending their prescriptions to crowds
of wealthy clients?
In the feudal ages medicine and quackery were the same, as far as any
principles of science are concerned. The only difference between the
physician and the charlatan was, that the former was a fool and the
latter a rogue. Men did not meddle much with the healing art. A few
clerks devoted themselves to it, and in the exercise of their
spiritual and medical functions discovered how to get two fleeces from
a sheep at one shearing; but the care of the sick was for the most
part left to the women, who then, as in every other period of the
world's history, prided themselves on their medical cunning, and, with
the exception of intrigue, preferred attending on the sick to any
other occupation. From the time of the Reformation, however, the
number of lady doctors rapidly diminished. The fair sex gradually
relinquished the ground they had so long occupied, to men, who, had
the monastic institutions continued to exist, would have assumed the
priestly garb and passed their days in sloth. Quackery was at length
fairly taken out of the hands of women and the shelter of domestic
life, and was practised, not for love, and in a superstitious belief
in its efficacy, but for money, and frequently with a perfect
knowledge of its worthlessness as a remedial system.
As soon as the printing-press had become an institution of the
country, and there existed a considerable proportion of the community
capable of reading, the empirics seized hold of Caxton's invention,
and made it subservient to their honourable ends. The advertising
system was had recourse to in London, during the Stuart era, scarcely
less than it is now. Handbills were distributed in all directions by
half-starved wretches, whose withered forms and pallid cheeks were of
themselves a sufficient disproof of the assertions of their employers.
The costume, language, style, and artifices of the pretenders to
physic in the seventeenth century were doubtless copied from models of
long standing, and differed little in essentials from those of their
predecessors. Professions retain their characteristics with singular
obstinacy. The doctor of Charles the Second's London transmitted all
his most salient features to the quack of the Regency.
Cotgrave, in his "Treasury of "Wit and Language," published 1655, thus
paints the poor physician of his time:--
"My name is Pulsefeel, a poor Doctor of Physick,
That does wear three pile velvet in his hat,
Has paid a quarter's rent of his house before-hand,
And (simple as he stands here) was made doctor beyond sea.
I vow, as I am right worshipful, the taking
Of my degree cost me twelve French crowns, and
Thirty-five pounds of butter in Upper Germany.
I can make your beauty, and preserve it,
Rectifie your body and maintaine it,
Clarifie your blood, surfle your cheeks, perfume
Your skin, tinct your hair, enliven your eye,
Heighten your appetite; and as for Jellies,
Dentifrizes, Dyets, Minerals, Fricasses,
Pomatums, Fumes, Italia masks to sleep in,
Either to moisten or dry the superficies, Faugh! Galen
Was a goose, and Paracelsus a Patch,
To Doctor Pulsefeel."
This picture would serve for the portrait of Dr. Pulsefeel in the
eighteenth and nineteenth, as well as the seventeenth century. How it
calls to mind the image of Oliver Goldsmith, when, with a smattering
of medical knowledge, a cane, and a dubious diploma, he tried to pick
out of the miseries and ignorance of his fellow-creatures the means of
keeping body and soul together! He too, poet and scholar though he
was, would have sold a pot of rouge to a faded beauty, or a bottle of
hair-dye, or a nostrum warranted to cure the bite of a mad dog.
A more accurate picture, however, of the charlatan, is to be found in
"The Quack's Academy; or, The Dunce's Directory," published in 1678,
of which the following is a portion:--
"However, in the second place, to support this title, there are
several things very convenient: of which some are external
accoutrements, others internal qualifications.
"Your outward requisites are a decent black suit, and (if your credit
will stretch so far in Long Lane) a plush jacket; not a pin the worse
though threadbare as a tailor's cloak--it shows the more reverend
antiquity.
"Secondly, like Mercury, you must always carry a caduceus or conjuring
japan in your hand, capt with a civet-box; with which you must walk
with Spanish gravity, as in deep contemplation upon an arbitrament
between life and death.
"Thirdly, a convenient lodging, not forgetting a hatch at the door; a
chamber hung with Dutch pictures, or looking-glasses, belittered with
empty bottles, gallipots, and vials filled with tapdroppings, or fair
water, coloured with saunders. Any sexton will furnish your window
with a skull, in hope of your custom; over which hang up the skeleton
of a monkey, to proclaim your skill in anatomy.
"Fourthly, let your table be never without some old musty Greek or
Arabick author, and the 4th book of Cornelius Agrippa's 'Occult
Philosophy,' wide open to amuse spectators; with half-a-dozen of gilt
shillings, as so many guineas received that morning for fees.
"Fifthly, fail not to oblige neighbouring ale-houses, to recommend you
to inquirers; and hold correspondence with all the nurses and midwives
near you, to applaud your skill at gossippings."
The directions go on to advise loquacity and impudence, qualities
which quacks of all times and kinds have found most useful. But in
cases where the practitioner has an impediment in his speech, or
cannot by training render himself glib of utterance, he is advised to
persevere in a habit of mysterious silence, rendered impressive by
grave nods of the head.
When Dr. Pulsefeel was tired of London, or felt a want of country air,
he concentrated his powers on the pleasant occupation of fleecing
rustic simplicity. For his journeys into the provinces he provided
himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack--stout, that it might bear
without fatigue weighty parcels of medicinal composition; and fleet of
foot, so that if an ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of
stoning their benefactor as an impostor (a mishap that would
occasionally occur), escape might be effected from the infatuated and
excited populace. In his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs,
markets, wakes, and public festivals; not, however, disdaining to stop
an entire week, or even month, at an assize town, where he found the
sick anxious to benefit by his wisdom.
His plan of making acquaintance with a new place was to ride boldly
into the thickest crowd of a fair or market, with as much speed as he
could make without imperilling the lives of by-standers; and then,
when he had checked his steed, inform all who listened that he had
come straight from the Duke of Bohemia, or the most Serene Emperor of
Wallachia, out of a desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was
born in that very town,--yes, that very town in which he then was
speaking, and had left it when an orphan child of eight years of age,
to seek his fortune in the world. He had found his way to London, and
been crimped on board a vessel bound for Morocco, and so had been
carried off to foreign parts. His adventures had been wonderful. He
had visited the Sultan and the Great Mogul. There was not a part of
the Indies with which he was not familiar. If any one doubted him, let
his face be regarded, and his bronze complexion bear witness of the
scorching suns he had endured. He had cured hundreds--ay,
thousands--of emperors, kings, queens, princes, margravines, grand
duchesses, and generalissimos, of their diseases. He had a powder
which would stay the palsy, jaundice, hot fever, and cramps. It was
expensive; but that he couldn't help, for it was made of pearls, and
the dried leaves of violets brought from the very middle of Tartary;
still he could sell a packet of the medicine for a crown--a sum which
would just pay him back his outlaid money, and leave him no profit.
But he didn't want to make money of them. He was their fellow-townsman;
and in order to find them out and cure them he had refused offers of
wealth from the king of Mesopotamia, who wanted him to accept a
fortune of a thousand gold pieces a month, tarry with the
Mesopotamians, and keep them out of Death's clutches. Sometimes this
harangue was made from the back of a horse; sometimes from a rude
hustings, from which he was called _mountebank_. He sold all kinds of
medicaments: dyes for the hair, washes for the complexion, lotions to
keep young men youthful; rings which, when worn on the fore-finger of
the right hand, should make a chosen favourite desperately in love
with the wearer, and when worn on the same finger of the left hand,
should drive the said favourite to commit suicide. Nothing could
surpass the impudence of the fellow's lies, save the admiration with
which his credulous auditors swallowed his assertions. There they
stood,--stout yeomen, drunken squires, merry peasant girls, gawky
hinds, gabbling dames, deeming themselves in luck's way to have lived
to see such a miracle of learning. Possibly a young student home from
Oxford, with the rashness of inexperience, would smile scornfully, and
in a loud voice designate the pretender a quack--a quacksalvar
(kwabzalver), from the liniment he vended for the cure of wens. But
such an interruption, in ninety and nine cases out of every hundred,
was condemned by the orthodox friends of the young student, and he
was warned that he would come to no good if he went on as he had
begun--a contemptuous unbeliever, and a mocker of wise men.
The author of the "Discourse de l'Origine des Mœurs, Fraudes, et
Impostures des Ciarlatans, avec leur Découverte, Paris, 1662," says,
"Premièrement, par ce mot de Ciarlatans, j'entens ceux que les
Italiens appellent Saltambaci, basteleurs, bouffons, vendeurs de
bagatelles, et generalement toute autre personne, laquelle en place
publique montée en banc, à terre, ou à cheval, vend medecines, baumes,
huilles ou poudres, composées pour guerir quelque infirmité, louant et
exaltant sa drogue, avec artifice, et mille faux sermens, en racontant
mille et mille merveilles.
* * * * *
"Mais c'est chose plaisante de voir l'artifice dont se servent ces
medecins de banc pour vendre leur drogue, quand avec mille faux
sermens ils affirment d'avoir appris leur secret du roi de Dannemarc,
au d'un prince de Transilvanie."
The great quack of Charles the Second's London was Dr. Thomas Saffold.
This man (who was originally a weaver) professed to cure every disease
of the human body, and also to foretell the destinies of his patients.
Along Cheapside, Fleet-street, and the Strand, even down to the sacred
precincts of Whitehall and St. James's, he stationed bill-distributors,
who showered prose and poetry on the passers-by--just as the agents
(possibly the poets) of the Messrs. Moses cast their literature on the
town of Queen Victoria. When this great benefactor of his species
departed this life, on May the 12th, 1691, a satirical broadsheet
called on the world to mourn for the loss of one--
"So skilled in drugs and verse, 'twas hard to show it,
Whether was best, the doctor or the poet."
The ode continues:--
"Lament, ye damsels of our London city,
(Poor unprovided girls) tho' fair and witty,
Who, maskt, would to his house in couples come,
To understand your matrimonial doom;
To know what kind of men you were to marry,
And how long time, poor things, you were to tarry;
Your oracle is silent, none can tell
On whom his astrologick mantle fell:
For he when sick refused all doctors' aid,
And only to his pills devotion paid!
Yet it was surely a most sad disaster,
The saucy pills at last should kill their master."
EPITAPH.
"Here lies the corpse of Thomas Saffold,
By death, in spite of physick, baffled;
Who, leaving off his working loom,
Did learned doctor soon become.
To poetry he made pretence,
Too plain to any man's own sense;
But he when living thought it sin
To hide his talent in napkin;
Now death does doctor (poet) crowd
Within the limits of a shroud."
The vocation of fortune-teller was exercised not only by the quacks,
but also by the apothecaries, of that period. Garth had ample
foundation, in fact, for his satirical sketch of Horoscope's shop in
the second canto of "The Dispensary."
"Long has he been of that amphibious fry,
Bold to prescribe and busie to apply;
His shop the gazing vulgars' eyes employs,
With foreign trinkets and domestick toys.
Here mummies lay most reverendly stale,
And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail.
Not far from some huge shark's devouring head
The flying fish their finny pinions spread;
Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung,
And near a scaly alligator hung;
In this place, drugs in musty heaps decay'd,
In that, dry'd bladders and drawn teeth were laid.
"An inner room receives the num'rous shoals
Of such as pay to be reputed fools;
Globes stand by globes, volumes by volumes lye,
And planetary schemes amuse the eye.
The sage, in velvet chair, here lolls at ease,
To promise future health for present fees.
Then, as from Tripod, solemn shams reveals,
And what the stars know nothing of reveals.
"One asks how soon Panthea may be won,
And longs to feel the marriage fetters on;
Others, convinced by melancholy proof,
Enquire when courteous fates will strike them off;
Some by what means they may redress the wrong,
When fathers the possession keep too long;
And some would know the issue of their cause,
And whether gold can solder up its flaws.
. . . . .
"Whilst Iris his cosmetick wash would try,
To make her bloom revive, and lovers die;
Some ask for charms, and others philters choose,
To gain Corinna, and their quartans lose."
Queen Anne's weak eyes caused her to pass from one empiric to another,
for the relief they all promised to give, and in some cases even
persuaded that they gave her. She had a passion for quack oculists;
and happy was the advertising scoundrel who gained her Majesty's
favour with a new collyrium. For, of course, if the greatest personage
in the land said that Professor Bungalo was a wonderful man, a master
of his art, and inspired by God to heal the sick, there was no appeal
from so eminent an authority. How should an elderly lady with a crown
on her head be mistaken? Do we not hear the same arguments every day
in our own enlightened generation, when the new Chiropodist, or
Rubber, or inventor of a specific for consumption, points to the
social distinctions of his dupes as conclusive evidence that he is
neither supported by vulgar ignorance, nor afraid to meet the most
searching scrutiny of the educated? Good Queen Anne was so charmed
with two of the many knaves who by turns enjoyed her countenance, that
she had them sworn in as her own oculists in ordinary; and one of them
she was even so silly as to knight. This lucky gentleman was William
Reade, originally a botching tailor, and to the last a very ignorant
man, as his "Short and Exact Account of all Diseases Incident to the
Eyes" attests; yet he rose to the honour of knighthood, and the most
lucrative and fashionable physician's practice of his period. Surely
every dog has his day. Lazarus never should despair; a turn of fortune
may one fine day pick him from the rags which cover his nakedness in
the kennel, and put him to feast amongst princes, arrayed in purple
and fine linen, and regarded as an oracle of wisdom. It was true that
Sir William Reade was unable to read the book which he had written (by
the hand of an amanuensis), but I have no doubt that many worthy
people who listened to his sonorous voice, beheld his lace ruffles and
gold-headed cane, and saw his coach drawn along to St. James's by
superb horses, thought him in every respect equal, or even superior,
to Pope and Swift.
When Sir William was knighted he hired a poet, who lived in Grub
Street, to announce the fact to posterity and "the town," in
decasyllabic verse. The production of this bard, "The Oculist, a
Poem," was published in the year 1705, and has already (thanks to the
British Museum, which like the nets of fishermen receiveth of "all
sorts") endowed with a century and a half of posthumous renown; and
no one can deny that so much fame is due, both to the man who bought,
and the scribbler who sold the following strain:--
"Whilst Britain's Sovereign scales such worth has weighed,
And Anne herself her smiling favours paid,
That sacred hand does your fair chaplet twist,
Great Reade her own entitled Oculist,
With this fair mark of honour, sir, assume
No common trophies from this shining plume;
Her favours by desert are only shared--
Her smiles are not her gift, but her reward.
Thus in your new fair plumes of Honour drest,
To hail the Royal Foundress of the feast;
When the great Anne's warm smiles this favourite raise,
'Tis not a royal grace she gives, but pays."
Queen Anne's other "sworn oculist," as he and Reade termed themselves,
was Roger Grant, a cobbler and Anabaptist preacher. He was a
prodigiously vain man, even for a quack, and had his likeness engraved
in copper. Impressions of the plate were distributed amongst his
friends, but were not in all cases treated with much respect; for one
of those who had been complimented with a present of the eminent
oculist's portrait, fixed it on a wall of his house, having first
adorned it with the following lines:--
"See here a picture of a brazen face,
The fittest lumber of this wretched place.
A tinker first his scene of life began;
That failing, he set up for cunning man;
But wanting luck, puts on a new disguise,
And now pretends that he can mend your eyes;
But this expect, that, like a tinker true,
Where he repairs one eye he puts out two."
The charge of his being a tinker was preferred against him also by
another lampoon writer. "In his stead up popped Roger Grant, the
tinker, of whom a friend of mine once sung.--
"'Her Majesty sure was in a surprise,
Or else was very short-sighted;
When a tinker was sworn to look after her eyes,
And the mountebank Reade was knighted.'"
This man, according to the custom of his class, was in the habit of
publishing circumstantial and minute accounts of his cures. Of course
his statements were a tissue of untruths, with just the faintest
possible admixture of what was not altogether false. His plan was to
get hold of some poor person of imperfect vision, and, after treating
him with medicines and half-crowns for six weeks, induce him to sign a
testimonial to the effect that he had been born stone-blind, and had
never enjoyed any visual power whatever, till Providence led him to
good Dr. Grant, who had cured him in little more than a month. This
certificate the clergyman and churchwardens of the parish, in which
the patient had been known to wander about the streets in mendicancy,
were asked to attest; and if they proved impregnable to the cunning
representations of the importunate suitors, and declined to give the
evidence of their handwriting, either on the ground that they had
reason to question the fact of the original blindness, or because they
were not thoroughly acquainted with the particulars of the case, Dr.
Grant did not scruple to sign their names himself, or by the hands of
his agents. The _modus operandi_ with which he carried out these
frauds may be learned by the curious in a pamphlet, published in the
year 1709, and entitled "A Full and True Account of a Miraculous Cure
of a Young Man in Newington that was Born Blind."
But the last century was rife with medical quacks. The Rev. John
Hancocke, D.D., Rector of St. Margaret's, Lothbury, London,
Prebendary of Canterbury, and chaplain to the Duke of Bedford,
preached up the water-cure, which Pliny the naturalist described as
being in his day the fashionable remedy in Rome. He published a work
in 1723 that immediately became popular, called "Febrifugum Magnum;
or, Common Water the best Cure for Fevers, and probably for the
Plague."
The good man deemed himself a genius of the highest order, because he
had discovered that a draught of cold water, under certain
circumstances, is a powerful diaphoretic. His pharmacopeia, however,
contained another remedy--namely, stewed prunes, which the Doctor
regarded as a specific in obstinate cases of blood-spitting. Then
there was Ward, with his famous pill, whose praises that learned man,
Lord Chief Baron Reynolds, sounded in every direction. There was also
a tar-water mania, which mastered the clear intellect of Henry
Fielding, and had as its principal advocate the supreme intellect of
the age, Bishop Berkeley. In volume eighteen of the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ is a list of the quack-doctors then practising; and the
number of those named in it is almost as numerous as the nostrums,
which mount up to 202. These accommodating fellows were ready to
fleece every rank of society. The fashionable impostor sold his
specific sometimes at the rate of 2_s._ 6_d._ a pill, while the
humbler knave vended his boluses at 6_d._ a box. To account for
society tolerating, and yet more, warmly encouraging such a state of
things, we must remember the force of the example set by eminent
physicians in vending medicines the composition of which they kept
secret. Sir Hans Sloane sold an eye-salve; and Dr. Mead had a
favourite nostrum--a powder for the bite of a mad dog.
The close of the seventeenth century was not in respect of its quacks
behind the few preceding generations. In 1789 Mr. and Mrs.
Loutherbourg became notorious for curing people without medicine. God,
they proclaimed, had endowed them with a miraculous power of healing
the impoverished sick, by looking upon them and touching them. Of
course every one who presumed to doubt the statement was regarded as
calling in question the miracles of holy writ, and was exclaimed
against as an infidel. The doctor's house was besieged with enormous
crowds. The good man and his lady refused to take any fee whatever,
and issued gratuitous tickets amongst the mob, which would admit the
bearers into the Loutherbourgian presence. Strange to say, however,
these tickets found their way into the hands of venal people, who sold
them to others in the crowd (who were tired of waiting) for sums
varying from two to five guineas each; and ere long it was discovered
that these barterers of the healing power were accomplices in the pay
of the poor man's friend. A certain Miss Mary Pratt, in all
probability a puppet acting in obedience to Loutherbourg's
instructions, wrote an account of the cures performed by the physician
and his wife. In a dedicatory letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Miss Pratt says:--"I therefore presume when these testimonies are
searched into (which will corroborate with mine) your Lordship will
compose a form of prayer, to be used in all churches and chapels, that
nothing may impede or prevent this inestimable gift from having its
free course; and publick thanks may be offered up in all churches and
chapels, for such an astonishing proof of God's love to this favoured
land." The publication frankly states that "Mr. De Loutherbourg, who
lives on Hammersmith Green, has received a most glorious power from
the Lord Jehovah--viz. the gift of healing all manner of diseases
incident to the human body, such as blindness, deafness, lameness,
cancers, loss of speech, palsies." But the statements of "cases" are
yet more droll. The reader will enjoy the perusal of a few of them.
"_Case of Thomas Robinson._--Thomas Robinson was sent home to his
parents at the sign of the Ram, a public-house in Cow Cross, so ill
with what is called the king's evil, that they applied for leave to
bring him into St Bartholomew's Hospital." (Of course he was
discharged as "incurable," and was eventually restored to health by
Mr. Loutherbourg.) "But how," continues Miss Pratt, "shall my pen
paint ingratitude? The mother had procured a ticket for him from the
Finsbury Dispensary, and with a shameful reluctance denied having seen
Mr De Loutherbourg, waited on the kind gentleman belonging to the
dispensary, and, _amazing_! thanked them for relief which they had no
hand in; for she told me and fifty more, she took the drugs and
medicines and threw them away, reserving the phials, &c. Such an
imposition on the public ought to be detected, as she deprived other
poor people of those medicines which might have been useful; not only
so--robbed the Lord of Life of the glory due to him only, by returning
thanks at the dispensary for a cure which they had never performed.
The lad is now under Mr De Loutherbourg's care, who administered to
him before me yesterday in the public healing-room, amongst a large
concourse of people, amongst whom was some of the first families in
the kingdom."
"_Case.--Mary Ann Hughes._--Her father is chairman to her Grace the
Duchess of Rutland, who lives at No. 37, in Ogle Street. She had a
most violent fever, _fell into her knee_, went to Middlesex Hospital,
where they made every experiment in order to cure her--but in vain;
she came home worse than she went in, her leg contracted and useless.
In this deplorable state she waited on Mrs De Loutherbourg, who, with
infinite condescension, saw her, administered to her, and the second
time of waiting on Mrs De Loutherbourg she was perfectly cured."
"_Case.--Mrs Hook._--Mrs Hook, Stableyard, St James's, has two
daughters born deaf and dumb. She waited on the lady above-mentioned,
_who looked on them with an eye of benignity, and healed them_. (I
heard them both speak.)"
Mary Pratt, after enumerating several cases like the foregoing,
concludes thus:
"Let me repeat, with horror and detestation, the wickedness of those
who have procured tickets of admission, and sold them for five and two
guineas apiece!--whereas this gift was chiefly intended for the poor.
Therefore Mr De Loutherbourg has retired from the practice into the
country (for the present), having suffered all the indignities and
contumely that man could suffer, joined to ungrateful behaviour, and
tumultuous proceedings. I have heard people curse him and threaten his
life, instead of returning him thanks; and it is my humble wish that
prayers may be put up in all churches for his great gifts to
multiply."
"FINIS.
"Report says three thousand persons have waited for tickets at a
time."
Forming a portion of this interesting work by Miss Pratt is a
description of a case which throws the Loutherbourgian miracles into
the shade, and is apparently cited only for the insight it affords
into the state of public feeling in Queen Anne's time, as contrasted
with the sceptical enlightenment of George III.'s reign:--
"I hope the public will allow me to adduce a case which history will
evince the truth of. A girl, whose father and mother were French
refugees, had her hip dislocated from her birth. She was apprentice to
a milliner, and obliged to go out about the mistress's business; the
boys used to insult her for her lameness continually, as she limped
very much.... Providence directed her to read one of the miracles
performed by our blessed Saviour concerning the withered arm. The girl
exclaimed, 'Oh, madam, was Jesus here on earth he would cure me.' Her
mistress answered, 'If you have faith, his power is the same now.' She
immediately cried, 'I have faith!' and the bone flew into its place
with a report like the noise of a pistol. The girl's joy was ecstatic.
She jumped about the room in raptures. The servant was called, sent
for her parents, and the minister under whom she sat. They spent the
night praising God. Hundreds came to see her, amongst whom was the
Bishop of London, by the command of her Majesty Queen Anne (for in
those days people were astonished at this great miracle.)"
Dr. Loutherbourg was not the first quack to fleece the good people of
Hammersmith. In the 572nd paper of the _Spectator_, dated July 26,
1714, there is a good story of a consummate artist, who surrounded
himself with an enormous crowd, and assured them that Hammersmith was
the place of his nativity; and that, out of strong natural affection
for his birth-place, he was willing to give each of its inhabitants a
present of five shillings. After this exordium, the benevolent fellow
produced from his cases an immense number of packets of a powder
warranted to cure everything and kill nothing. The price of each
packet was properly five shillings and sixpence; but out of love for
the people of Hammersmith the good doctor offered to let any of his
audience buy them at the rate of sixpence apiece. The multitude
availed themselves of this proposition to such an extent that it is to
be feared the friend of Hammersmith's humanity suffered greatly from
his liberality.
Steele has transmitted to us some capital anecdotes of the empirics of
his day. One doctor of Sir Richard's acquaintance resided in Moore
Alley, near Wapping, and proclaimed his ability to cure cataracts,
_because he had lost an eye in the emperor's service_. To his patients
he was in the habit of displaying, as a conclusive proof of his
surgical prowess, a muster-roll showing that either he, or a man of
his name, had been in one of his imperial Majesty's regiments. At the
sight of this document of course mistrust fled. Another man professed
to treat ruptured children, because his father and grandfather were
born bursten. But more humorous even than either of these gentlemen
was another friend of Sir Richard's, who announced to the public that
"from eight to twelve and from two till six, he attended for the good
of the public to bleed for threepence."
The fortunes which pretenders to the healing art have amassed would
justify a belief that empiricism, under favourable circumstances, is
the best trade to be found in the entire list of industrial
occupations. Quacks have in all ages found staunch supporters amongst
the powerful and affluent. Dr. Myersbach, whom Lettsom endeavoured to
drive back into obscurity, continued, long after the publication of
the "Observations," to make a large income out of the credulity of the
fashionable classes of English society. Without learning of any kind,
this man raised himself to opulence. His degree was bought at Erfurth
for a few shillings, just before that university raised the prices of
its academical distinctions, in consequence of the pleasant raillery
of a young Englishman, who paid the fees for a Doctor's diploma, and
had it duly recorded in the Collegiate archives as having been
presented to Anglicus Ponto; Ponto being no other than his mastiff
dog. With such a degree Myersbach set up for a philosopher. Patients
crowded to his consulting-room, and those who were unable to come sent
their servants with descriptions of their cases. But his success was
less than that of the inventor of Ailhaud's powders, which ran their
devastating course through every country in Europe, sending to the
silence of the grave almost as many thousands as were destroyed in all
Napoleon's campaigns. Tissot, in his "Avis au Peuple," published in
1803, attacked Ailhaud with characteristic vehemence, and put an end
to his destructive power; but ere this took place the charlatan had
mounted on his slaughtered myriads to the possession of three
baronies, and was figuring in European courts as the Baron de
Castelet.
The tricks which these practitioners have had recourse to for the
attainment of their ends are various. Dr. Katterfelto, who rose into
eminence upon the evil wind that brought the influenza to England in
the year 1782, always travelled about the country in a large caravan,
containing a number of black cats. This gentleman's triumphant
campaign was brought to a disastrous termination by the mayor of
Shrewsbury, who gave him a taste of the sharp discipline provided at
that time by the law for rogues and vagabonds.--"The Wise Man of
Liverpool," whose destiny it was to gull the canny inhabitants of the
North of England, used to traverse the country in a chariot drawn by
six horses, attended by a perfect army of outriders in brilliant
liveries, and affecting all the pomp of a prince of the royal blood.
The quacks who merit severe punishment the least of all their order
are those who, while they profess to exercise a powerful influence
over the bodies of their patients, leave nature to pursue her
operations pretty much in her own way. Of this comparatively harmless
class was Atwell, the parson of St. Tue, who, according to the account
given of him by Fuller, in his English Worthies, "although he now and
then used blood-letting, mostly for all diseases prescribed milk, and
often milk and apples, which (although contrary to the judgments of
the best-esteemed practitioners) either by virtue of the medicine, or
fortune of the physician, or fancy of the patient, recovered many out
of desperate extremities." Atwell won his reputation by acting on the
same principle that has brought a certain degree of popularity to the
homœopathists--that, namely, of letting things run their own
course. The higher order of empirics have always availed themselves of
the wonderful faculty possessed by nature of taking good care of
herself. Simple people who enlarge on the series of miraculous cures
performed by their pet charlatan, and find in them proofs of his
honesty and professional worth, do not reflect that in ninety-and-nine
cases out of every hundred where a sick person is restored to health,
the result is achieved by nature rather than art, and would have been
arrived at as speedily without as with medicine. Again, the fame of an
ordinary medical practitioner is never backed up by simple and
compound addition. His cures and half cures are never summed up to
magnificent total by his employers, and then flaunted about on a
bright banner before the eyes of the electors. 'Tis a mere matter of
course that _he_ (although he _is_ quite wrong, and knows not half as
much about his art as any great lady who has tested the efficacy of
the new system on her sick poodle) should cure people. 'Tis only the
cause of globules which is to be supported by documentary evidence,
containing the case of every young lady who has lost a severe headache
under the benign influence of an infinitesimal dose of flour and
water.
Dumoulin, the physician, observed at his death that "he left behind
him two great physicians, Regimen and River Water." A due appreciation
of the truth embodied in this remark, coupled with that masterly
assurance, without which the human family is not to be fleeced,
enabled the French quack, Villars, to do good to others and to himself
at the same time. This man, in 1723, confided to his friends that his
uncle, who had recently been killed by an accident at the advanced age
of one hundred years, had bequeathed to him the recipe for a nostrum
which would prolong the life of any one who used it to a hundred and
fifty, provided only that the rules of sobriety were never
transgressed. Whenever a funeral passed him in the street he said
aloud, "Ah! if that unfortunate creature had taken my nostrum, he
might be carrying that coffin, instead of being carried in it." This
nostrum was composed of nitre and Seine water, and was sold at the
ridiculously cheap rate of five francs a bottle. Those who bought it
were directed to drink it at certain stated periods, and also to lead
regular lives, to eat moderately, drink temperately, take plenty of
bodily exercise, go to and rise from bed early, and to avoid mental
anxiety. In an enormous majority of cases the patient was either cured
or benefitted. Some possibly died, who, by the ministrations of
science, might have been preserved from the grave. But in these cases,
and doubtless they were few, the blunder was set down to Nature, who,
somewhat unjustly, was never credited with any of the recoveries. The
world was charitable, and the doctor could say--
"The grave my faults does hide,
The world my cures does see;
What youth and time provide,
Are oft ascribed to me."
Anyhow Villars succeeded, and won the approbation not only of his
dupes, but of those also who were sagacious enough to see the nature
of his trick. The Abbe Pons declared him to be the superior of the
marshal of the same name. "The latter," said he, "kills men--the
former prolongs their existence." At length Villars' secret leaked
out; and his patients, unwise in coming to him, unwisely deserted him.
His occupation was gone.
The displeasure of Villars' dupes, on the discovery of the benevolent
hoax played upon them, reminds us of a good story. Some years since,
at a fashionable watering-place, on the south-east coast of England,
resided a young surgeon--handsome, well-bred, and of most pleasant
address. He was fast rising into public favour and a good practice,
when an eccentric and wealthy maiden lady, far advanced in years, sent
for him. The summons of course was promptly obeyed, and the young
practitioner was soon listening to a most terrible story of suffering.
The afflicted lady, according to her own account, had a year before,
during the performance of her toilet, accidentally taken into her
throat one of the bristles of her tooth-brush. This bristle had stuck
in the top of the gullet, and set up an irritation which, she was
convinced, was killing her. She had been from one surgeon of eminence
to another, and everywhere in London and in the country the Faculty
had assured her that she was only the victim of a nervous
delusion--that her throat was in a perfectly healthy condition--that
the disturbance existed only in her own imagination. "And so they go
on, the stupid, obstinate, perverse, unfeeling creatures," concluded
the poor lady, "saying there is nothing the matter with me, while I
am--dying--dying--dying!" "Allow me, my dear lady," said the adroit
surgeon in reply, "to inspect for myself--carefully--the state of
your throat." The inspection was made gravely, and at much length. "My
dear Miss ----," resumed the surgeon, when he had concluded his
examination, "you are quite right, and Sir Benjamin Brodie and Sir
James Clark are wrong. I can see the head of the bristle low down,
almost out of sight; and if you'll let me run home for my instruments,
I'll forthwith extract it for you." The adroit man retired, and in a
few minutes re-entered the room, armed with a very delicate pair of
forceps, into the teeth of which he had inserted a bristle taken from
an ordinary tooth-brush. The rest can be imagined. The lady threw back
her head; the forceps were introduced into her mouth; a prick--a
scream! and 'twas all over; and the surgeon, with a smiling face, was
holding up to the light, and inspecting with lively curiosity, the
extracted bristle. The patient was in raptures at a result that proved
that she was right, and Sir Benjamin Brodie wrong. She immediately
recovered her health and spirits, and went about everywhere sounding
the praises of "her saviour," as she persisted in calling the
dexterous operator. So enthusiastic was her gratitude, she offered him
her hand in marriage and her noble fortune. The fact that the young
surgeon was already married was an insuperable obstacle to this
arrangement. But other proofs of gratitude the lady lavishly showered
on him. She compelled him to accept a carriage and horses, a service
of plate, and a new house. Unfortunately the lucky fellow could not
keep his own counsel. Like foolish Samson with Delilah, he imparted
the secret of his cunning to the wife of his bosom; she confided it to
Louise Clarissa, her especial friend, who had been her bridesmaid;
Louise Clarissa told it under vows of inviolable secrecy to six other
particular friends; and the six other particular friends--base and
unworthy girls!--told it to all the world. Ere long the story came
round to the lady herself. Then what a storm arose! She was in a
transport of fury! It was of no avail for the surgeon to remind her
that he had unquestionably raised her from a pitiable condition to
health and happiness. That mattered not. He had tricked, fooled,
bamboozled her! She would not forgive him, she would pursue him with
undying vengeance, she would ruin him! The writer of these pages is
happy to know that the surgeon here spoken of, whose prosperous career
has been adorned by much genuine benevolence, though unforgiven, was
not ruined.
The ignorant are remarkable alike for suspicion and credulity; and the
quack makes them his prey by lulling to sleep the former quality, and
artfully arousing and playing upon the latter. Whatever the field of
quackery may be, the dupe must ever be the same. Some years since a
canny drover, from the north of the Tweed, gained a high reputation
throughout the Eastern Counties for selling at high prices the beasts
intrusted to him as a salesman. At Norwich and Earl Soham, at Bury and
Ipswich, the story was the same--Peter M'Dougal invariably got more
per head for "a lot" than even his warmest admirers had calculated he
would obtain. He managed his business so well, that his brethren,
unable to compete with him, came to a conclusion not altogether
supported by the facts of the case, but flattering to their own
self-love. Clearly Peter could only surpass them by such a long
distance, through the agency of some charm or witch's secret. They
hinted as much; and Peter wisely accepted the suggestion, with a
half-assenting nod of cunning, and encouraged his mates to believe in
it. A year or so passed on, and it was generally allowed that Peter
M'Dougal was in league on honourable terms with the unseen world. To
contend with him was useless. The only line open to his would-be
imitators was to buy from him participations in his mysterious powers.
"Peter," at length said a simple southern, at the close of Halesworth
cattle-fair, acting as spokesman for himself and four other
conspirators, "lets us into yer secret, man. Yer ha' made here twelve
pun a yead by a lot that aren't woth sex. How ded yer doo it? We are
all owld friens. Lets us goo to 'Th' Alter'd Case,' an I an my mets
ull stan yar supper an a dead drunk o' whiskey or rom poonch, so be
yar jine hans to giv us the wink." Peter's eyes twinkled. He liked a
good supper and plenty of hot grog at a friend's expense. Indeed, of
such fare, like Sheridan with wine, he was ready to take any given
quantity. The bargain was made, and an immediate adjournment effected
to the public-house rejoicing in the title of "The Case is Altered."
The supper was of hot steak-pudding, made savoury with pepper and
onions. Peter M'Dougal ate plentifully and deliberately. Slowly also
he drank two stiff tumblers of whiskey punch, smoking his pipe
meanwhile without uttering a word. The second tumbler was followed by
a third, and as he sipped the latter half of it, his entertainers
closed round him, and intimated that their part of the contract being
accomplished, he, as a man of honour, ought to fulfill his. Peter was
a man of few words, and without any unnecessary prelude or comment, he
stated in one laconic speech the secret of his professional success.
Laying down his pipe by his empty glass, and emitting from his gray
eyes a light of strange humour, he said drily, "Ye'd knoo hoo it was I
cam to mak sae guid a sale o' my beasties? Weel, I ken it was joost
this--_I fund a fule!_"
The drover who rises to be a capitalist, and the lawyer who mounts to
the woolsack, ascend by the same process. They know how to find out
fools, and how to turn their discoveries to advantage.
It is told of a Barbadoes physician and slaveholder, that having been
robbed to a serious extent in his sugar-works, he discovered the thief
by the following ingenious artifice. Having called his slaves
together, he addressed them thus:--"My friends, the great serpent
appeared to me during the night, and told me that the person who stole
my money should, at this instant--_this very instant_--have a parrot's
feather at the point of his nose." On this announcement, the dishonest
thief, anxious to find out if his guilt had declared itself, put his
finger to his nose. "Man," cried the master instantly, "'tis thou who
hast robbed me. The great serpent has just told me so."
Clearly this piece of quackery succeeded, because the quack had "fund
a fule."