Medical Quackery

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MEDICAL QUACKERY.

Not long ago, the British Medical Journal contained a curious and even remarkable article devoted to the exposure of that impudent quack, Dr. James, better known as the “Retired Physician whose sands of life have nearly run out.” The London James of whom our cotemporary speaks is the original man, who advertises most extensively in the English papers. The person who calls himself by the same name in this country and performs the same role, by means of a precisely similar advertisement, is either an imitator or an agent of his. Possibly the London quack, who, according to the Journal, is an American and therefore “all-fired smart,” may find time to manage both.

Hear what the Journal says of this precious charlatan’s receipts, wrung perhaps from the hard earnings of the destitute and the dying:

Watch the postman drop his bag at the door of the Retired Physician. Can there be more than one letter for the aged recluse? Is the man whose "sands of life are nearly run" troubled with a plentiful correspondence? There are hundreds of letters, and every letter comes laden with its due complement of postage stamps. The daily receipt of this aged individual from this source are known to average £10 per day; and this is not the whole of the contribution of the public to this deeply interesting individual. The receipt for the preparation of Indian Hemp is duly sent; but, as in the case of the "Retired Clergyman," the recipient, not being able to make anything of it, adopts the accompanying suggestion to send for its concoction to a certain quarter; here the second fleecing process beings; and where it ends we scarcely like to say.

Fifty dollars per diem is not bad pay for no more arduous duties than reading and answering letters—particularly in these hard times. We learn from our medical authority also, that this “hale and hearty American,” so far from having his “sands of life” nearly run out, proposes to open another health-giving fount in Paris, now that he finds himself firmly established with a princely income in the English metropolis.

But why confine ourselves to a single instance, in discussing such a subject as that of medical quackery? Our public prints are filled with advertisements of filthy and deleterious drugs, put up in the shape of pills, mixtures, ointments, and we know not what all. While scores of well-educated professional men, who have devoted the best years of their lives to the study of disease and its remedies, are at this present moment reduced almost to starvation point, these quacks, the greater part of whom it would scarcely be an injustice to denominate public poisoners, are wallowing in wealth. The credulity of the public seems to afford an inexhaustible fat pasture ground on which nostrum-makers and venders feed without let or hindrance. It is monstrous that the most deadly poisons should be prescribed wholesale through the medium of the press by persons without any right or title to do so. The amount of misery that is entailed upon the community directly traceable to these medical humbugs is beyond computation. It would not be a bad idea to give some of the these unscrupulous fellows a taste of retributive justice, by way of commencement putting an end to—the “Indian Hemp” man’s “sands of life,” by introducing to his jugular a good-sized rope made from the best of American hemp.