CHAPTER XXVI.
VAGRANT QUACKS.
We sometimes see a migrating or vagrant quack who travels from place to place, always hailing from some large city, and notifying the villagers where he stops that he is very eminent in the treatment of some one or more particular disease—perhaps it is rheumatism, scrofula, asthma, neuralgia, cancer, consumption, or all of them together. Sometimes these men give a free lecture by way of introduction, and sometimes a kind of aid-de-camp is a travelling attendant, whose business is to eulogize the great doctor, and help to drum up the patients. No charge for advice! is conspicuous in the advertisement. Their medicines are all specifics, and such as no one else employs or has a knowledge of, and they take care to inform all who are silly enough to consult them, that they are laboring under some occult or serious affections, which nobody else so well understands, or has the means of curing. Invalids are often induced to suppose that such a fortunate opportunity should by all means be improved, lest it might never return, or the cure be offered a day too late. By such means large fees are sometimes wrung from those who are illy able to pay them, and who in return receive some worthless or dangerous preparations.
Some of these quacks travel regular circuits, and make their appearance at stated times and places, and the country people often seem to suppose that because a man lives or pretends to live in some large place, he must of course be some extraordinary man. That is a great mistake. Such itinerant practitioners are generally ignorant men, and always destitute of moral principles. Their greatness consists in impudence, and duplicity—they are great at schemes, and tricks, and frauds—they are great impostors. The public ought to know that no man who has, or deserves to have, a good business at his own proper place of residence, ever goes abroad in this way to look up patients. It is because those who know these men best do not see fit to employ them, that they seek for patronage among strangers, who do not know them. Society should be protected by legislative enactments against this class of knaves. But the State governments generally appear to be very careful of the rights of impostors, and whilst a man is prohibited by law from peddling essence, or selling tin, the vilest charlatan may with perfect impunity stalk over the country to deceive, defraud, and poison whom he may. If any class of mountebanks ever deserve the halter, it is such as these.
There is another class of impostors who locate themselves in or about the large cities, and throw their advertisements broadcast over the country—some pretend to be Indian doctors, some to cure cancers, and others, almost all chronic or incurable diseases. The unsuspecting country people, thinking that everything that is printed must of course be true, often take the statements of these knaves for facts, and are led to suppose that the advertisers are some of the most eminent men of the cities. Under these impressions, scores rush to the cities with all the funds they can muster, to see some matchless savan, and be cured. Or if it is not convenient for the invalid to go in person, a description of the case in writing, accompanied with the money, and forwarded by mail or otherwise, will be sufficient to bring the cure. In this way these miscreants often succeed in picking the pockets of many honest individuals. The public ought to be on their guard against the machinations of such men; their practice is empirical and dangerous, and not unfrequently positively injurious. No skilful and worthy men ever issue such advertisements; and whenever such papers are found, they should be considered as evidence of fraud and chicanery. They are snares set to catch the silly, and prudent men should avoid them.