LETTER VIII.
Dear Charles,—Your rebuke is not merited. I am far
from attributing “all to deliberate imposture.” In regard,
for instance, to certain systems of medicine, as we must call
them, I believe that sometimes practitioners are deceived as
well as patients.
Cures are not unfrequently the result of accidents, the
doctor being as much surprised as any one else; and then it
is, that cunning and dishonest persons avail themselves of
such accidents, to laud what they term a system matured
after many years of hard study, and tested by innumerable
experiments! Soon they obtain disciples, who, duped themselves
by the surpassing effrontery of the originator, or rather
machinator, buy the books and set to work applying the
rules to the killing or curing of other simpletons.
A very large proportion of diseases are imaginary, arising
wholly from derangement of the nervous system. These
diseases are of course healed, or cease to be imagined, from
very different and even opposite causes; and, of course,
they seem to be cured often by seeming medicines, or a prescription
that administers—nothing.
Confidence towards a physician is highly important in
the cure of many real diseases; but in regard to imaginary
complaints, not only is confidence in the physician and his
remedy important, but it is very often the only thing that
cures. In such cases, then, the physician, regular or irregular,
true or false, must administer, not a dose of medicine,
but a dose of—confidence. And that dose, whether taken in
pill or potion, or reduced to a powder, effects the cure.
Now, Charles, scarce any form of quackery exists, that
will not, again and again a thousand times, light on patients
with seeming, that is, imaginary complaints: and, beyond
all doubt, when such patients have full confidence in the
proposed remedy, a quack nostrum (if otherwise harmless)
will cure as well as any other medicine; and any remedy is
just as efficacious as nothing. I speak not now of the permanent
injury often done, when men, by tampering with
quack potions, and pills, and the like, exchange a seeming
disorder for a real one; nor of the constant failure of such
remedies when they meet with real and especially violent
diseases: but my wish is to convince you that the quacks
and quackeries you allude to, owe, in great part, their popularity
to the cause just named.
It is a gross error, if one supposes that regular, and
learned, and honest physicians go always by inflexible rule,
and ever administer the same drugs. Such a man is intimately
acquainted with the history of imaginary diseases,
and even treats them as imaginary: that is, he seems to give
medicines, because that semblance is necessary, but he gives
nothing. He treats seeming diseases as seeming ones, and
real disorders as real; and in this consists one important distinction
between the true medical man and the panaceist
and every other quack.
Charles, I have on divers occasions quacked a little
myself—but alas! my disease was too real, and would not
stay cured—it was toothache! For you must know, your
reverence, that I once had “the worm taken out,” and that
by an old lady in the South, who had learned the art from
the Indians, or some other savages. But ah me! that hateful
maggot, by some contrivance, crawled back into the
grinder; and so tooth and worm had to be wrenched out together,
and that so effectually that neither one nor the other
has ever since reappeared! On the old lady's book, however,
among 'squires innumerable, with a smart chance of ladies,
and a clever sprinkle of generals and other magnates, is recorded
an humbler name, as one cured of the toothache by
the extraction of the worm!
In a similar way are obtained myriads of certificates.
And rarely does one ever erase or recall a name. Indeed,
I do happen to know, also, that certificates are given for the
cure of one disease, when the person had been healed of another:
for certain vile rascals threaten to expose licentious
men, if such give not, for instance, a certificate in favor of
“Doctor François' corn-plaster and shin-oil,” when neither
plaister nor oil had been “exhibited” or applied, but the
man of pleasure had used “a specific without mercury.”
Is it right, your reverence, for the cloth to lend their
name in approbation of any mere nostrums? Pray, what do
clergymen know about such matters more than we plebeians!
And is it not more than possible—is it not certain—that innumerable
plasters, and oils, and other greases, and pills,
potions, lozenges, and so forth, gain a very undeserved notoriety,
and a very injurious use, merely from clerical influence?
It is something like an impertinence, that learned
and regular parsons should not confine themselves ad “consilii
medicinam,” for the morals of the community—in other
words, mind their homilies, and allow learned and regular
doctors to take care of our bodies.
For my part, as age advances, the more my organ of
anti-quackitiveness enlarges; and hence I have settled down
to a fixed resolution to be killed or cured secundum artem.
If others choose to be
quacked off the stage, the laws of our
state do not forbid: but assuming that the regulars themselves
cure only by accident, our sages have let loose upon
us a horde of irregulars to aid in the butchery; believing
that when all the patients are killed, the medical art will
end, and, therefore, that such desirable consummation will
be more speedily brought on by throwing down all barriers.
But, Charles, it will be found that well-educated physicians,
like all well-educated persons that make a profession a
science, as well as an art, are necessarily and of choice,
open, and honorable, and philosophic in their course. Every
thing with such, is the result of study, and is tested by experiment;
and such have no arcana, or mysteries. They
do, indeed, often fail, and are mistaken; but have they
ever said failure and error are impossible? Now, the arrogant
pretension of quackery should certainly be, with educated
clergymen, the very reason for despising its pretension.
Some physicians of my acquaintance have met cases in
their practice, where a reputation for specifics, or for a specific
practice, could easily have been established, and hundreds
of dollars been extorted, where the ordinary fee has
been almost refused. For one other important distinction between
science and quackery is, that the latter has an eye
solely to money; the former does regard honor also, and, at
least, the esprit du corps.
A portly citizen here became nervous some years ago;
and one evening, being in company with the widow Snively,
he complained of his symptoms; on which, the matron, by
way of condolence, replied: “Aye, Mr. Biggins! that's
just the way poor Snively felt after he was taken with the
dropsy!” Instantly Mr. Biggins hurried home, and huddling
into bed, summoned the doctor; upon whose speedy arrival
he exclaimed, “Oh! doctor, I've got the dropsy—look here—
I'm swelled!” Our man of pills fortunately knew his patient's
nerves, and calmly replied, “Well, it does look something
like it, to be sure; but here, this powder will set all
right, and by to-morrow at this time the swelling will vanish,”
and then he administered a Dover powder: and next day Mr.
Biggins called in person, at the doctor's office, to let him know
that the dropsy had gone, and that he felt the swelling had
subsided.
What a chance this to have obtained an affidavit before
some justice of the peace, a solemn testimony in favor of
“The unparalleled North American Hydragogue, discovered
after five and twenty years' unwearied study of Doctor Jonathan
Eastman!” and now offered to the afflicted as the only
remedy for draining waters from the body and—money from
the pocket.
A case of hernia lately occurred, in which a warm application
was important: but no credit was given to the suggestion,
till a by-stander affirmed that the best cure was to
make a poultice by boiling together two pounds of pork, one
and a half of beef, four beets, and half a dozen small turnips,
and then applying said poultice as warm as could be endured.
This was done; but the good result was attributed to the
jumble and not to the heat! and in that settlement the natural
doctor is valued more than the regular. Here, too, a
patent could have been obtained for “The Wonderful
Emolient-Medicated-Cataplasm!” But the natural doctor,
in this case, had no wish to quack on a large scale—and so
his plaister may enrich another.
This is the steam-age, metaphysically as well as physically;
and folks will go by the steam, even if we burst ever
so many boilers per diem. We have a distaste, too, for
what we understand, and demand in medicine what we demand
in all other things—quackery.
I shall conclude this long letter by an account given me
lately, by a medical friend, corroborative of my remark, that
regular physicians, if dishonest, could often avail themselves
of accidents to obtain credit for a specific practice or a specific
medicine; and that where, strictly speaking, nothing had
been done or given.
My friend, one morning, was hastily summoned to attend
a gentleman several miles from Kaleidaville, with an earnest
request not to delay a moment. Of course he set out instanter;
but scarce had he got a quarter of a mile when he
was met by a second messenger, and before he could reach
the patient's house he encountered a third, who stated that
Mr. Wilton was in imminent danger.
On entering the gentleman's chamber, the doctor found
the patient in bed, and in great alarm, as if from visibly
impending death.
“Why, Mr. Wilton,” asked the physician, “what is the
matter?”
“Doctor,” was the reply, “I am just returned from
New-York, from the yellow fever—and I have taken it. I
know the symptoms well—(the gentleman had once himself
practised medicine)—and I wish you to arrest the progress
of the disease before it gets too strong a hold.”
My friend, after making his observations and feeling his
pulse, replied,
“Mr. Wilton, there is positively nothing the matter with
you: here is some mistake—”
“No, sir,” interrupted the patient, “I am not mistaken.
This morning I was apparently as well as usual; but, while
shaving, I perceived, all at once, my whole face and hands to
be as yellow as saffron—and that is the beginning of the fever.'
The doctor now stepped to the toilet near a window,
where the shaving apparatus lay, and instantly found his
own face and hands dyed a saffron color! “How so?” you
ask, “had he caught the fever from Mr. Wilton?”
Not exactly, Charles, but he had caught it from a beauteous
soft mellow light reflected from the changing leaves of
a delightful autumn morning—which was giving all things
in that quarter of the apartment a somewhat jaundiced hue!
Yes, that was the secret. And the knowledge of that
secret could have been turned, by a quack or a dishonest
man, in several ways, to his own advantage. The mistake
of the patient, however, was soon corrected; yet so powerfully
had his imagination been wrought upon, that it was
necessary for the physician to divert his attention by a long
ride together, and several hours of conversation.
Doubtless, Charles, the humbugaths would wrinkle up
the nasal appendage at all such stories and incidents, with
an “oh—ah!”—but I am not easily nozzled out of a deep-seated
conviction that all usually comprised under the head
of nostrum, mesmerism, and quackery in general, may be
traced to trickery; or to a selfish cunning taking advantage
of accident and the wonderful readiness men every where
show to aid imposture. You and I may lack skill or opportunity
to detect the trick or the accident—but that one or
the other, or both exist, is, to me at least, certain.
