Section VIII Medicines; Medical Empiricism, and Quacks and Quackery, Regular and Irregular, Legitimate and Illegitimate
Devoted to disease by baker, butcher, grocer, wine-merchant, spirit-dealer, cheesemonger, pastry-cook, and confectioner; the physician is called to our assistance; but here again the pernicious system of fraud, as it has given the blow, steps in to defeat the remedy;—the unprincipled dealers in drugs and medicines exert the most diabolical ingenuity in sophisticating the most potent and necessary drugs, (viz. peruvian bark, rhubarb, ipecacuanha, magnesia, calomel, castor-oil, spirits of hartshorn, and almost every other chemical preparation in general demand;) and chemical preparations used in pharmacy; and the fraud has increased to so alarming an extent, says Mr. Accum, and his assertion is borne out by the experience of every one familiar with chemistry, that nine-tenths of the drugs and medicines in use that are vended by dealers, even of respectability and reputation, according to the usual interpretation of those words, “and who would,” as that gentleman emphatically expresses himself, “be the last to be suspected,” are adulterated. And what tends to aggravate the evil is that manufactories and mills on “an amazingly large scale” are constantly at work in this metropolis for the manufacture of spurious drugs. From these licensed elaboratories of disease, the adulterated articles are vended to unprincipled druggists, at less than a third of the price of the genuine article. And as there are no certain tests or methods of detecting the fraud, the consequence is, that the physician’s prescription is rendered useless, and the most consummate skill often baffled in the subjection of disease. Some idea of the extent of the adulteration of drugs may be formed, when it is stated that a spurious peruvian bark is sometimes sold, compounded of mahogany saw-dust and oak-wood, ground into powder, with a proper proportion of genuine quinquina; and that magnesia, even the calcined sort, is adulterated with lime.
Chemical cunning has even contrived to extract the quinquina, in which consists the whole virtue of the bark, leaving it a completely inert mass. And even the quinine itself is sophisticated, being frequently contaminated with lime, tallow, sugar, and sulphate of cinchonas.
It is necessary also to make some little inquiry, and use some little exercise of one’s understanding, in ascertaining for what reasons certain physicians recommend particular druggists, and particular drugs which are manufactured by the “said particular” druggists. Dr. Reece, in his Monthly Gazette of Health for August 1829, has tended to open one’s eyes a little on the subject. He informs us that the late Ambrose Godfrey, the nostrum-monger, contrived to get his preparation of arrow-root into notice and sale at double the price for which it might have been obtained of any other druggist, by accompanying samples of his commodity with presents of haunches of venison to certain physicians, and that by judicious repetitions (“neither few nor far between”) of the said conciliating haunches of venison, he contrived to maintain the reputation and supposed superiority of the said arrow-root, and to keep the monopoly to himself, as all the said learned and grateful physicians always, as in due allegiance and duty they were bound, recommended the said Godfrey Ambrose’s arrow-root as superior to that of all other simple wights, who supposed that their composition of arrow-root could be good for any thing, if they forgot, or were not able, to give character to the commodities by means of the mute but irresistible influence or eloquence of the said judiciously disposed-of haunches of venison. From this account it appears that the “sons of Galen” and the artificers of “the pestle and mortar” are not behind their brethren of “the long robe,” and “of the quill and parchment tribe” in the “art of huggery.” How often has a “learned barrister” contrived to get into the good graces of an attorney and secured practice by invitations to dinner, and judiciously and well timed (for few persons are better versed in the art of throwing a sprat to catch a whale than a hungry and briefless, and it must be admitted, often highly gifted barrister;) presents of game, by a hearty and unseen shake of the hand in the street, which he dared not have given at Westminster Hall, and by all those ingenious means, to which men of great talent have before now condescended, and by which men of little talent have sometimes gained considerable fortunes.
Nor has the spirit of adulteration allowed even the accredited patent or quack medicines to escape its ingenuity. Dr. James’s Fever Powders, and Norris’s Fever Drops, besides a variety of other popular receipts, are to be obtained in all possible degrees of strength and flavours from the various venders and manufacturers of the articles.
Even the simple articles arrow-root, worm-seed, Spanish liquorice, lemon acid, soda water, lozenges, honey, spermaceti, and a long list of other commodities in general use, receive the benefit of the sophisticators’ ingenuity.
The greater part of the commodity sold under the name of arrow-root in the shops of the druggists and grocers is prepared from the fecula or starch of wheat and of dry mealy potatoes, with a portion of arrow-root. When good, the grains of arrow-root are very fine, with numbers of little clots which are formed by the aggregation of the minuter grains while the commodity is drying, and when examined by a magnifying glass appear pearly and very brilliant.
The seeds of the tansy are often offered for sale, for worm-seed; but the more conscientious dealer sometimes treats his customers with an equal portion of the genuine and the adulterated article.
The Spanish liquorice juice of the shops is generally composed of the worst kind of gum arabic, called Indian or Barbary gum, and imported chiefly for the purpose of making shoe-blacking, with a small portion of the genuine juice; and the factitious composition, when inspissated, is formed into rolls, resembling the genuine article imported from Catalonia, nicely sprinkled or stratified with particles of dry bay-leaves, and skilfully impressed with the word “Solaz,” in the true cast of Spanish engraving. Refined liquorice is frequently manufactured from Spanish juice, with an equal quantity of carpenters’ glue or starch. The specimens of genuine juice are generally small, perfectly black, brittle, and break with a smooth and glassy fracture. They are also soluble either in the mouth or in water, without leaving any residue.
The lemon acid of commerce is, as I have before said, a counterfeit; tartareous acid being employed as a cheap substitute for lemon or citric acid.
The soda-water on general sale is frequently contaminated with copper and lead, produced from the action of the carbonic acid contained in the water on the metallic substances of which the apparatus in which it is made is constructed.
The lozenges of all varieties, hues, flavours, and qualities, particularly those in the composition of which ginger, cream of tartar, magnesia, &c. are used, are sophisticated with a liberal portion of pipe-clay, as a cheap substitution for sugar; but this fraud is readily detected by laying one of the suspected lozenges on the pan of a fire shovel or sheet of iron made red-hot; when, if it be pure, it will readily take fire and be consumed, but if it be adulterated, it will burn feebly, and a hard strong substance will remain, resembling the lozenge in form.
It is well known that but little genuine honey can be obtained in London. The tests of good honey are its fragrance and sweetness. When it is suspected to be adulterated with starch or bean flour, the fraud may be discovered by dissolving the honey in cold water, when the flour will be readily seen, as it will not dissolve, but falls to the bottom of the vessel in powder. If honey thus adulterated be exposed to heat, it soon solidifies and becomes tenacious.
Honey is of three kinds; the first, called virgin honey, and which is of the finest flavour, is of a whitish cast, and in a fluid state, about the consistence of a syrup. The second is that known by the name of white honey, and its texture is almost solid. The third kind is the common yellow honey, obtained from the combs, by heating them over the fire, or by dipping them into hot water, and then pressing them.
Manna is sometimes counterfeited by a composition of sugar and honey, mixed with a small portion of scammony.
The adulteration of spermaceti is generally effected with wax; but the fraud may be detected by the smell of the adulterating ingredient, and by the dulness of the colour; whereas pure spermaceti is of a semitransparent crystalline appearance. It is also said that a preparation of the oil obtained from the tail of the whale is likewise vended for genuine spermaceti; but, as this factitious commodity assumes a yellow shade when exposed to the air, this imposition is also of easy detection.
The adulteration of the essential oils obtained from the more expensive spices is so common, that, as Mr. Accum says, “it is not easy to meet with any that are fit for use,” and so much subtle ingenuity is made use of in the sophistications, that no known tests or agents exist for the detection of the fraud. The only certain tests are the taste or flavour, and the smell.
It is worth while to attend to the plausible excuses of the respective “artists” of these sophistications. They allege that they are obliged to have recourse to the fraud, to meet the fancies “of those clever persons in their own conceit who are fond of haggling, and insist on buying better bargains than other people, shutting their eyes to the defects of an article, so that they can enjoy the delight of getting it cheap; and secondly, for those persons, who being but bad paymasters, yet as the manufacturer, for his own credit-sake, cannot charge more than the usual price of the articles, he thinks himself therefore authorized to adulterate it in value, to make up for the risk he runs, and the long credit he gives;”—they therefore are reduced to the necessity of keeping, as they term it, “reduced articles,” and genuine ones. This is excellent logic, and no doubt well understood by the whole sophisticating tribe. The public are indebted to Dr. T. Lloyd for this information, which he communicated to the Literary Gazette, No. 146.
The ready methods or tests for ascertaining the good qualities of the most common drugs are:
Castor-oil, when good, is of a light amber or straw colour, inclining to a greenish cast. That which has the least smell, taste, and colour, is considered the mildest. The necessity of some attention to these signs may appear, when I state that I once took seven ounces of this oil in successive doses, and do verily believe that I might have continued to this present hour taking, daily, the usual dose furnished from the same quarter, with as little effect, had not my good genius directed me to send for an ounce from Apothecaries’ Hall. I recommend my readers to purchase their drugs, &c. in the same place.
Ipecacuanha.—As this drug is sold to the public in a pulverized state, there is no short or off-hand test for discovering its purity. It is adulterated with emetic tartar.
Opium.—Good opium in a concrete state should be of a blackish brown colour, of a strong fetid smell, a hard viscous texture, and heavy; and when rubbed between the finger and thumb, it is perfectly free from roughness or grittiness. This drug is liable to great adulteration, being frequently vitiated with cow-dung, or a powder composed of the dry leaves and stalks of the poppy, the gum of the mimosa, meal and other substances. The flavour alone indicates the goodness of opium in a liquid state.
Rhubarb.—The marks of the goodness of rhubarb are the liveliness of its colour when cut; its being firm, dry, and solid, but not flinty or hard; its being easily pulverizable, and appearing, when powdered, of a fine bright yellow colour; and its imparting to the spittle, when chewed, a deep saffron-colour, and not proving slimy or mucilaginous to the taste. When rhubarb has become worm-eaten, druggist-ingenuity is called into play, by filling up the holes with a paste made of rhubarb-powder and mucilage; and then the physic-artists roll the mended pieces in the finest rhubarb powder to give their handy works a good colour and an appearance of freshness.
Senna leaves are frequently mixed and sophisticated with leaves of argol, box leaves, &c.
But among the frauds and impositions practised on the public, none are more odious and unprincipled, and, at the same time, more loudly call for the prompt and active interference of the Legislature, than the tricks and effrontery of impostors, quacks, and empirics in medicine, both regular and irregular. It cannot but have been the frequent subject of regret to every honest and reflecting person that this vile trade should receive a legal sanction and protection, which it most assuredly does by virtue of the stamp duty imposed on the villainous trash; and it cannot be sufficiently deplored that any government should find itself reduced to straits so deplorable, or be so short-sighted in its views of enlightened policy, as to be under the necessity of extracting a paltry and disgraceful profit to the revenue of the state, from the tolerance and encouragement of ignorance, imposture, and mischief.
The assertion is true, that those pests of society the charlatans and nostrum-mongers “quarter” themselves only on the ignorance and credulity of mankind, and that their patrons and supporters are wealthy but ignorant men, and superstitious old women, or profligate and thoughtless rakes; but this is a miserable excuse, and but lame kind of reasoning: if it means any thing, it proves the necessity of public protection from the abominable and anti-christian nuisance. Can there be greater libel on the utility and operation of English law, than that vermin of the description of the “Balsam of Rackasiri” empiricsM should be tolerated and allowed to spread their mischief and destruction among the population of a country professing Christianity and civilization, and forsooth, to boast of “the thousands they pay yearly to the government and the public press,” in the form of duty to the one for its sanction and licence, and to the other in the form of remuneration for giving a disgraceful and destructive publicity to their nefarious designs.N
Nor is the absence of a proper discrimination between right and wrong of a certain prating brazen-faced
“barrister” less reprehensible. I love and venerate “the Bar;” but I must be free to say that when a man can be found so devoid of just and proper feeling as to appear, for the paltry remuneration of a few pounds, or for any remuneration however large, in the defence and propagation of naked and disgusting fraud and peculation—aye, and the secret and wide-spreading destruction of health and life too!—it evidently proves that there are some members of that distinguished profession who are not possessed of the high and honourable feelings which belong to those who are gentlemen by birth and breeding, scholars by education, and Christians and honourable men from moral and religious feeling. But it is to be hoped that there will never occur again a similar exhibition to that which took place at Marlborough-street on the infamous Rackasiri-balsam fraud, practised on Miss May, by “the learned graduates of Petticoat-lane,” and “regularly bred physicians,” the Jew pedlars and old clothesmen “of wonderful abilities,” the “Doctors” C. and J. Jordan; who “feel awkwardness in recommending to public notice their uncommon discoveries and talents.” The more I consider that transaction, the more I am satisfied that the magistrates are to blame for having allowed the piece of impudent effrontery and imposture to have had the semblance of their sanction, by their singular taciturnity which happened on that occasion. Of the newspapers which gave currency and circulation to the artful and fiend-like exculpation, language will not afford terms strong enough to express one’s abhorrence and indignation. O shame! where is thy blush? How much human misery and destruction has the insertion of those disgraceful and wicked puffs occasioned, by inducing the weak and credulous to give credit to that as a piece of intelligence coming from editors of accredited and impartial journals, which is merely the contrivance and fabrication of wicked impostors to delude and ensnare the thoughtless and unsuspecting; and for the giving of its mischievous publicity, the proprietors and editors of certain newspapers received large sums of money. But let those thoughtless men reflect, that it is the very consummation of cruelty and unprincipled conduct to sanction the infamous tampering with the lives and happiness of one’s fellow creatures for the mere sake of lucre. Nor is the conduct of the magistrates of certain police offices (particularly those to whom the jurisdiction of the city of London is entrusted) less reprehensible, and less fraught with mischievous consequences. What! ought the frauds and murderous designs of the basest miscreants alive to receive the solemn and imposing sanction and authority of an oath made before a judicial tribunal? Surely a grosser violation of duty and a more stupid and reckless indifference to the destruction of human health and life, were never, in the most barbarous country, and the most uncivilized age, exhibited, than the want of sense and foresight displayed by some city-magistrates in allowing affidavits to be made before them of the “wonderful cures” performed on the deluded and perjured agents and “stalking horses” of the empirics and impostors; but, fortunately for mankind, the culpable act will ever remain on record as a stigma and reproach of city-legislation and moral economy. The trade of legalized poisoning and destruction of public health has received greater and more effectual help and recommendation from that source than from all the arts and devices of the impostors, though aided by the sanction of a government duty, and the disgusting and unprincipled puffs and paragraphs of a certain portion of the public press. To put an end to these culpable and mischievous proceedings, either on the part of magistrates or of editors of newspapers, in future, I wish those gentlemen to bear in mind that their “misdoings” shall entitle them to a “niche and an escutcheon of immortality” in the pages of “Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning Unmasked;”
“If there’s a hole in a’ your coats,
E’en from Land’s End to John o’Groats,
I’d rede ye tent it;
A chiel’s amang you taking notes,
And faith he’ll prent it:”
and that no threats or intimidations of “actions” and “reparations due to the wounded feelings of gentlemen,” shall deter me from my duty. If I should offend, of course the courts of justice are open to every injured man, and he will most assuredly receive his due measure of justice there; but should I give that offence for which the “law of the land” affords no redress, the man of honourable feelings and conduct shall never have to complain of my backwardness to give a most prompt and satisfactory reparation; but, at the same time, I wish that those who have been privy, whether by overt or covert acts—whether from their love of “filthy lucre,” or their natural propensity to fraud—to the destruction of the lives or health of their fellow-creatures, to recollect that I shall be prepared to treat them with the scorn and contempt which their conduct and their misdeeds may merit.
It has been well said that it is not easy to determine whether the fraud and impudence of the empiric or nostrum-monger, or the folly and credulity of the sufferer, are the greater. But the fact is that quacks and impostors of all kinds, whether medical or political, pædagoguecal or corporational, live and thrive on the infernal popish maxim, that ignorance is the mother of devotion, that is, in plainer phrase—of gullibility. But to the case of the quacks.—It surely indicates no ordinary share of dupery, to believe that one and the same nostrum can cure all and every disorder contained in the long catalogue of human woes and miseries; such a belief must incline the victim of its hallucination to suppose an exact similarity of symptoms and a perfect identity of nature in all the disorders to which the frailty of our common nature has rendered us subject. On this momentous subject few persons have written more forcibly than the admirable author of the “Manual for Invalids.” May the following quotation from that valuable work awaken the attention of those who foolishly confide their health and lives to the care of quacks, nostrum-mongers, jugglers, and impostors!O
“Where dwells the boasted march of intellect when the understanding is continually insulted with the most impudent and daring pretensions of impostors, who, while they pretend to restore your health, are making a direct attack upon your credulity and your purse. What encouragement exists for the well educated men, regular graduates of Universities, of high classical and literary attainments, who have chosen the profession of medicine or surgery as a business of life, and in order to practice with credit and character, have directed their attention, their time, and their property to its studies,—who have made the nature of diseases and the efficacy of remedies a study of life—when they find themselves completely superseded by some inspired pretender—some ignorant quack. Lord Bacon has long since said, in his work on the advancement of learning, ‘If the same honours and rewards are given to fools, which ought to be awarded to the wise, who will labour to be wise?’ That the ignorant pretender should be encouraged by the public, is a reproach to the understanding of any people; but that the revenue of any country should be supplied by a stamp dutyP on empirical nostrums, instead of the government taking measures either of prevention or punishment, can only be explained by exhibiting similar acts of atrocity on the sentiments of nature; but the truth is, the auri sacra fames has the power of making that appear relatively right, which is absolutely wrong.”Q
“Beware of hypocrisy of every description,” adds the same excellent writer; “you may as well believe that the Pope can send you to perdition, as that an advertising charlatan can, by any empirical nostrum, restore you to health.”
But, unhappily, it appears that poor John Bull and “his hopeful family” are not gifted with the power of being “beware of hypocrisy,” “advertising charlatans” and “empirical nostrums;” but that through their proneness to gullibility and the love of the marvellous, the trade of quackery is daily increasing, and that hundreds of quacks swarm in every quarter of the metropolis, and fatten on the murders which they are constantly perpetrating with their poisons; and to add to the monstrous combination against the lives and health of the community, that the aid of even the pulpit is invoked to further the propagation of the imposture! Instances are on record where mercenary preachers have been wicked enough to sermonize and expatiate on the miraculous virtues and benefits of the poisonous nostrumsR and remedies of the mountebank jugglers and impostors.
But humbug and imposture, as it has been truly said, is a many-headed monster, and is of very catching influence; it has worshippers at the corner of every street; hordes of the most ignorant vagabonds and jugglers are engaged in its propagation, and announce their impostures as “prepared and sanctioned by His Majesty’s august authority;” but to waste my pages with the mention of the “ladies’ fever” doctors Lamert, Peede, Davis, Eady, Caton, Courtenay, (alias Messrs. Currie and Co.) Fiedeberg (alias Sloane and Co. alias Jones and Co.);—the surreptitious knights, His Carpentership, Sir Gully Daniels, and his Plastership, White Arsenic Sir Cancer Aldis;—the firm of Goss and Company, the consulting Surgeons of Ægis and Hygeiene notoriety;—the miniature painter, “the learned and celebrated” artful artist and curer of consumption, Long St. Long,—the crazy chap who entitles himself the “hygeist”S—Taylor and Son, the Leake’s pill-men,—Samuel, the syphilis-pill-man,—the old canting staymaker and life-guardsman, Gardner, who can manufacture tape-worms wholesale and of a league in length from the intestines of cats and chickens,—the piddle-taster, or morning water-doctor, Cameron (alias Crumples,) as also all other quacks, whether of the masculine or feminine gender, who cure by proxy, or by simply pronouncing that the disease shall be cured, (for there have been impostors impudent enough to make such pretensions;) or by any art or delusion, and who by chalk, chuckling, and chicanery are battening on the vitals of society, would be an insult to the understanding of my readers, further than to say that each of those worthies, as well as their honourable compeers the balsam of Rackasiri vagabonds and impostors, can, no doubt, recognize the reality of their deeds in the following quotation from the pages of Hudibras:
“Nor doctor epidemic.
Stored with deletery med’cines,
(Which whosoever took, is dead since,)
E’er sent so vast a colony
To both the under worlds as he.”
Perhaps a few words said on the subject of the former occupations of some of the mountebank impostors, who are practising, and have practised their frauds and villanies on the community, may tend to open the eyes of this very gullable nation as to the extent and quality of their medical knowledge, unless it should be supposed that they acquired it by miraculous inspiration or divine influence, to which high pretensions, indeed, many of the vermin have had the audacity to lay claim, well knowing that the bolder their assertions were, the more gullable they would find their ninny patients.
Know then that the “groundly learned physicians” —“of superior skill and judgement”—high character and situation,” the Doctors Mordecai J. and C. Jordan, were Jew pedlars; (and here, reader, recollect that more than one half of the mountebanks and impostors who have gulled and laughed at our gullable nation, are or were circumcised Jews, either of native or of foreign breed;)—the renowned Doctor Eady, of cyprianic memory, and who owed his reputation to the joint exertions and recommendation of the saints of Providence Chapel, and the coal-heaving-preaching-and-praying-sinner-saved Huntingdon, was a bumpkin haberdasher and retailer of small wares in an obscure country village;—Monsieur John St. John Long, the celebrated curer of consumption, was a dauber in the miniature-line;—the once celebrated, and now warmly nestled and scoffing Doctors Brodum and Solomon were, by turns, porters either in a drug warehouse or Jew pedlars; the canting worm manufacturer in Long Acre was a staymaker and life-guardsman;—Yankee noodle do Whitlaw and Don celestial Graham filled the honourable posts of a day labourer and tom-fool to a strolling company of players;—and many of the by-gone mountebank vagabonds were cobblers, tailors, weavers, footmen, blacking-makers, cat’s-meat men, &c. &c. &c.: but they all, during their tremulous career of iniquity and canting,
“———— Making sanctity the cloak of sin,
Laugh’d at the fools on whose credulity
They fattened.”——
The sanction and encouragement given to quacks and quackery in this country have long and loudly been stigmatized by foreign writers as a national opprobrium to Britain; and it must be allowed very justly. The increase of these vermin and pests of society has long been a disgrace to the legislature and government of the country. “They manage these things,” as Sterne says, “better in France.” How careful our neighbours are of the health of their community may be gleaned from the following paper lately read before the Royal Academy of Medicine, at Paris:—
“1st. That for several centuries, by the vigilance of the administration, in concert with the most distinguished medical men, the strongest efforts have been made to rid society of the pestilence constantly springing up from secret remedies. 2dly. That the most favourable circumstances are at present combined to free them from the tribute of money and life, which, on no consideration, ought longer to be tolerated.”
It is to be hoped that our government will be influenced by like motives and follow the glorious example of our neighbours. If they want precedent,—the great bugbear of improvement either in morals, politics, law, religion, or even common sense, in our error-ridden nation, history furnishes us with sufficient examples. But, while those methods and laws are being planned and prepared, let us, in the mean time, resort to the good old practices of correcting and punishing the jugglers of the present day.
In the reign of Edward VI. one Gregg, a poulterer, in Surrey, was set in the pillory at Croydon, and again in the Borough of Southwark, during the time of the fair, for cheating people out of their money, for pretending to cure them with charms, by only looking at the patient, and examining his water. In the reign of James I., an order of council, founded on the statute of Henry, granted to the College of Physicians, was issued to the magistrates of the city of London, for the apprehension of all reputed empirics, to bring them before the censors of the College, in order to their being examined as to their qualifications to be trusted either with the lives or limbs of the subject. On that occasion several mountebanks, (among others, Lamb, Read, and Woodhouse,) water casters, ague charmers, and nostrum venders, were fined, imprisoned, and banished. This wholesome severity, it may be supposed, checked the evil for a time; but in the reign of William III. it became again necessary to put the laws in force against those vermin; in consequence of which many of them were examined, and confessed their utter ignorance even of reading and writing. Some of the miscreants were set in the pillory, and some were put on horse-back with their faces towards the horses’ tails, whipped, branded, and banished.
In Stowe’s Annals is to be found an account of a water caster being set on horse-back, his face towards the horse’s tail, which he held in his hand, with his neck decked with a collar of urinals, and being led by the hangman through the city, was whipped, branded, and afterwards banished. One Fairfax, in king William’s time was fined and imprisoned for doing great damage to several people, by his aqua celestis. Antony, for his aurum potabile; Arthur Dee, for advertising remedies which he gave out would cure all diseases; Foster, for selling a powder for the green-sickness; Tenant, a water doctor, who sold his pills for 6l. each; Ayres, for selling purging sugar plumbs; Hunt, for putting up bills in the streetsT for the cure of diseases; and many others, were all punished, and compelled to relinquish their malpractices.
But it is not only the interloping quack—the irregular and illegitimate charlatan and self-dubbed doctor that does mischief and destroys the health of the public, but the “regular” and legitimate pretender to medical knowledge, or as they have been significantly and appropriately termed by Dr. Morrison, the “roturiers,” or dabblers in physic, often do not much less mischief. The following extract from the Manual for Invalids is so much to the purpose, that the wider its circulation can be promoted, the greater good will be produced to society at large.
“In the restoration of health, the poor often try the efficacy of the wine vaults and the medical wisdom of the druggist, who flourishes greatly in low neighbourhoods, in the metropolis, and even in some large provincial towns. These men, whose solitary qualification for this honest mode of existence has been commonly an apprenticeship behind the counter, have often placed in imminent peril many a valuable life. Sometimes it has occurred that a shrewd boy, employed to clean bottles and sweep out the shop, has received an intuitive call, and has felt himself fully qualified for the important office of recovering and regulating the health of many invalids. The writer has a knowledge of a general practitioner of this description who was received behind a druggist’s counter in the manner before related, and perhaps, learning audacity from his late employer, has obtained, through the medium of puffing friends, a surreptitious reputation, and is cried up by those worthies as a very skilful, even a “delightful” and “fine” man, particularly for nervous invalids, and more especially for the disorders of women and children.”
Thousands and thousands of the population of this blessedly gifted country in medical science, are killed by this disgraceful quackery of the drug-shop, and the iniquitous drug-jobbing of apothecaries. What murders, what numerous murders have those men to answer for by their careless and injudicious use of powerful medicines—calomel and opium! But perhaps they console their unfeeling and selfish hearts with the miserable subterfuge that they are merely removing that portion of the increasing population which is the great bugbear, that is hourly threatening to eat up Mr. Parson Malthus and his believing disciples by wholesale.
But the prescribing druggist, the drugging apothecary, and the soi-disant surgeon are not the only regular and legitimate quacks; we have quack physicians, who by the remittance of the enormous sum of £15 to a Scotch university are entitled, legally and professionally, to tack the wonder-working cabalistical initials M.D. to their names, and are then entitled to kill the king’s liege and loving subjects, “secundum artem,” with licensed and legitimate potion, pill, and draught; who to return obligations to their “pals” the apothecary and surgeon, prescribe draughts by the quart and the gallon—bleeding, blistering, and purging, ad infinitum. By these mystified and jabbering doctors, whose little-or-no wisdom consists in foolish words of little or no meaning, and dog Latin, or disputes about precedence and the receipt of fees, the laws of vital existence and the astonishing functions of the animal economy, are understood by hearsay and inspiration!
This statement of the general ignorance of the medical profession is not exaggerated. “Five sixths of the medical profession,” says Dr. Morrison, in Medicine No Mystery, “know little or nothing of the science of life.” The cause of this lamentable ignorance arises from the abominable and disgraceful system of medical education in vogue, according to which the bought and sale prices of the current drugs, and the art and mystery of dispensing medicines often constitute the whole and sole knowledge of those who are entrusted with the health and lives of their fellow-creatures; in whose bungling and self-interested practice hearsay and precedent supply the place of experience, and by whom signs and symptoms are mistaken for causes. Another cause is the deplorable deficiency of the public in the knowledge of medicine. Were the principles of medical science to form a part of general education, the public would be enabled to select well educated and honest medical men, and escape the fangs and delusions and murderous acts of quacks and impostors, whether interlopers, or those who are enrolled in one or other of the medical institutions of London. It really seems an anomaly in the pursuit and attainment of knowledge that a man should conceive it necessary to be able to judge whether his shoe or his cravat is made in a good and workman-like manner, but of that science which treats of himself, and with which his health, his life, and all his comforts are so intimately and seriously connected, he should be in the most abject state of ignorance, and, unhappily, not hesitate to avow that ignorance! But while it is an incontrovertible truth that the community in general should have some knowledge of medicine, in order to enable them to judge of the qualifications of their medical attendants, (to the attainment of which knowledge popular medical writings, such as Dr. Kitchener’s Art of Invigorating Life; Sir John Sinclair’s Code of Health and Longevity, Dr. Reece’s Medical Guide, and the Oracle of Health and Long Life, or Plain Rules for the Preservation and Attainment of Sound Health and Vigorous Old Age, and a few others, are calculated to afford the most effectual help;) it must be deeply regretted by every well disposed member of society, to observe books got up by rash and inexperienced persons, professing to give directions for the management of health, which are filled with the crudest and the falsest instructions, the nature and consequence of which are decidedly destructive of health, if not of life itself. And what must add to that regret, is that the title-page and covers should be blazoned with the professed sanction and recommendation of a late eminent medical practitioner. But surely that gentleman could never have read, among many other dangerous fooleries and extravagancies, the silly and monstrous instructions to sleep with open windows, to swallow as much salt as possible, &c. &c. &c. or if he did read them, it is but an act of courteous feeling towards him to suppose that he did not comprehend their purport. Another circumstance deserving reprobation respecting the means which have been taken to get that ill-judged little book into circulation has been the profuse and repeated attempts of a portion of the public press to give it notoriety and circulation. It certainly savours a little of presumption, that those who have not made the science of medicine a study or a profession, should venture to give opinions of the merits or demerits of a work professing to treat of the momentous subjects of health and life. These remarks are not made in any petulant feeling. I believe the author to be a well-intentioned though a misguided man, and as he hints that he published his work with the hope of adding to his income from the profits, I sincerely wish that he had chosen a subject for which he may be more competent, as then I should have been relieved from the necessity of making these remarks, in the expression of which a sense of public duty has alone actuated me. It gives me, however, great satisfaction to draw the public attention to the masterly abstract of Cornaro’s Treatise appended to the book, and which, from its disparity of style, is evidently written by another person. It is no extravagant praise to say that the public is under infinite obligations to the able and experienced writer who made that valuable addition to the book. Comaro’s works may now be read with advantage by every one, as it is freed from the disagreeable prosings, tautologies, and incongruities which pervade that work. It is to be hoped that the proprietor of the book will favour the community with its publication in a separate form.
Considering the severity of the remarks I have made in the preceding pages on the medical profession, it may be supposed I have set myself up in opposition to medical men of all descriptions. I have no such intention. The intelligent and skilful physician and surgeon I reverence, and only wish that the following observations were not a true portrait of their often unsuccessful progress.
It is certain no body of men can produce more noble instances of integrity, liberality of mind, and strength of intellect, than the Professors of Physic; but, as with other bodies of men, this high character will not apply diffusedly. To find, therefore, a fit person with whom to intrust our health, is not an easy matter. Fortunately, however, for the profession, people are not very fastidious on this point; and if they or their friends are but sent to the grave in a regular way, they bear the load of ills which their own follies and the ignorance of the practitioner may have heaped upon them, with great philosophy, imputing the whole to the natural order of things. Indeed, to judge of the merits of a medical man is extremely difficult; and, when we see one man ordering away, with contempt, the medicine which another has thought a specific, and pursuing a totally different course, we are forced to conclude that education alone will not make a physician. Reputation is not unfrequently got without merit, for who is to judge? Accident, solely, both with the drug and the doctor, has often been the maker of their fame. This may be exemplified by an anecdote of a deservedly eminent physician, which, though perhaps it has been often related, is not less to the point. The doctor happened to be sent for one evening, after having indulged at a convivial meeting, so that by the time he had been whirled to his patient’s door, he was very ill qualified to decide in a case of difficulty. Having made shift to reach the drawing room, and seeing a lady extended on a sofa, assisted by a female attendant, he, by a sort of mechanical impulse, seized her hand; but finding himself utterly unable to form an opinion on the case, he exclaimed, “D—— d drunk, by G—d!” (meaning that he was in that unfit state) and immediately made the best retreat he was able. Feeling rather awkwardly at this adventure, he was not impatient to renew his visit; but being sent for on some other occasion, he took courage, and was preparing an apology, when the lady presently removed his apprehensions, by whispering these words in his ear—“My dear doctor, how could you find out my case so immediately the other evening?—It was certainly a proof of your skill, but for God’s sake not a word more on that subject.” Thus, the doctor added to his repute by a circumstance which might have endangered that of a less fortunate man. This, though a ludicrous event, may serve, as well as a graver one, to elucidate the fact that many owe their celebrity, not so much to any judgement of their own, as to a want of it in others. As it is with other professions, so it is with physic. Many of its professors possessing great skill are doomed to pass their lives in obscurity, whilst they see others, of inferior knowledge and judgement, rise to importance. It has been truly said by one who was not unacquainted with the causes of medical success or failure, that, “Even among the regularly bred physicians accident will often accomplish what merit strives for in vain; and those coincidences of circumstances which frequently elevate one man and depress another in the medical art, are more the production of what is called chance, than from any extension of mind, or any peculiar tact or skill in the art of intellectual combinations.”