It is not overstating facts when I say that three-fifths of the people buy some of these patent nostrums, which the real medical men denounce, showing that the masses of the people are densely ignorant, the victims of any faker who may shout his wares loud enough. In China such a thing would be impossible; the block would stop the practise; but, my dear ----, the Americans assure me China is a thousand years behind the times, for which let us be devoutly thankful! I have not enumerated a tenth of the kinds of doctors who prey upon these unfortunate people. There are companies of them, who guarantee to cure anything, and skilfully mulct the sick of their last penny. There are retreats for the unfortunate, farms for deserted infants, and homes for unfortunate women carried on by villains of both sexes. There are traveling doctors who go from town to town, who cure "while you wait," and give a circus while talking and selling their cure; and in nine cases out of ten the nostrum is an alcoholic drink disguised. In no land under the sun are there so many ignorant blatant fakers preying on a people, and in no land do you find so credulous a throng as in America, yet claiming to represent the cream of the intelligence of the world; they are so easily led that the most impossible person, if he be a good talker, can go abroad and by the use of money and audacity secure a following to drink his salt water, paying a dollar a bottle for it and sing his praises. Such a doctor can secure the names and pictures of judges, governors of States, senators, congressmen, prominent men and women, officers of the volunteer army, artists, actors, singers--in fact, prominent people of all kinds will provide their pictures and give testimonials, which are blazonly published. These same people go to Chinese drug shops and laugh at the "heathen" drugs, and wonder why the Chinaman is alive. America has a body of physicians and surgeons who are a credit to the world, modest, conscientious, and with a high sense of honor, but they are as a dragon's tooth in a multitude to the so-called "quacks," who take the money of the masses and prey upon them, protected in many cases by the law. No one profession so demonstrates the abject credulity of the great mass of Americans as that of medicine.