Consumption Incurable
image 1
image 2
image 3
image 4
image 5
image 6
cropped image 1
CONSUMPTION INCURABLE.
Life Illustrated, Messrs Fowler & Wells's excellent paper,1 runs full tilt last week against the class called quack advertisers, who profess to supply a sovereign remedy for all the ills of life on receipt of a dollar in postage stamps, &c., and strongly denounces those papers which, for the sake of the advertisement price, suffer themselves to become media for the exercise of the men's dishonest vocation.
Among the various advertisers who are selected by Life Illustrated as types of their class, are the "retired physician whose sands of life have nearly run out" (it will be well for this dupes when the said "sands" quite "run out") and the Scheidam Schnapps man, who asserts that he has "fortunately succeeded in making a discovery in manufacture, by which it is deprived [cut away] and inflammatory properties, and [cut away] perfectly pure." The only comment vouchsafed on this is, that gin "deprived of its acrid and inflammatory properties" will have ceased to be gin. In regard to the specifics for the alleged cure of consumption and drops, Life Illustrated remarks, and it is to this that we wished to call attention:
All physicians know, as do all quacks who fabricate medicines to cure all cases of consumption, that the disease is essentially incurable. They know very well that the disease consists essentially in a disorganization of the lungs, and is never cured, except in the incipient stages. They know very well that the question is not whether the patient can be cured, but how long he can live? And on this prolongation of the vital struggle, this ever-hoping against hope, on the part of the dying one, is based all the chicanery and diabolical shrewdness of their trade. Drowning persons will catch at straws. They know full well that so long as the life-principle lingers in the decaying organism, so long will the patient pay out his money for whatever is proffered him, with assurances of benefit; and thus the ninety-nine quacks of New York city, who positively cure all stages of consumption," know perfectly well that the nostrum-monger who advertises the strongest, and swears to the infallibility of his cure-all the most unconscionably will attract the most attention and sell the most stuff.
[cut away] remarks we have made in relation to [cut away] will apply also to dropsy. This [cut away] what are called "the worst cases," [cut away] incurable. The dropsical condition [cut away] cases, but the evidence of the last [cut away] the vital powers, and the final [cut away] of the constitution. Those who [cut away] themselves to be so very anxious to [cut away] merely anxious to get a little of the [cut away] money before he departs hence.
Notes:
1. Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811–1896) and his brother-in-law Samuel R. Wells (1809–1887) were practitioners of phrenology, a pseudoscience popular in the nineteenth century. They owned and operated the Phrenological Depot on Broadway, which contained phrenological materials and books and offered phrenological readings. They also operated a printing business and were responsible for printing the expanded second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856). In addition, they published Life Illustrated, The American Phrenological Journal, and The Water Cure Journal. Whitman contributed to both Life Illustrated and The Phrenological Journal. [back]