In William Harrison's "Description of the Island of Britain," occurs the following curious passage: "Now we have many chimneys, and yet our tenderlings complain of reumes, catarres and poses; then had we none but reredores, and our heads did never ake. For, as the smoke in those days was supposed to be a sufficient hardening for the timber of the house, so it was reputed a far better medicine to keep the good man and his family from the _quacke_ or pose, wherewith as then very few were acquainted." A writer in "Notes and Queries,"[203:2] remarked that the word _quacke_, in the foregoing extract, probably signified a disease rather than a charlatan, and possibly the mysterious affection known as "the poofs," from which good Queen Bess suffered one cold winter. This _quacke_ appears to have been a novelty and therefore fashionable, affected by the tenderlings of that era, "as the proper thing to have." The quack-doctor, continues the writer above mentioned, must have been a fashionable style of man, not meddling much with the poor, and familiar with boudoirs, curing the new disease with new and wondrous remedies. May not the word _quacke_, asks Stylites, another enquirer, as above used, mean _quake_ or ague? For an ague-doctor must have had much employment, and if successful, great renown, in those days of fens, marshes and undrained ground. In an anniversary discourse delivered before the New York Academy of Medicine, November 7, 1855, Dr. John Watson remarked that the numbers and pretensions of the illegitimate sons of Esculapius were as great in ancient as in modern times. And they were quite as wont to receive the patronage of the upper classes. The Emperor Nero thus favored the shrewd Lydian practitioner, Thessalus, who maintained that all learning was without value. And if we may believe the statements of Pliny and Galen, the Roman quacks equalled, if they did not exceed, in ignorance and arrogance, the vast horde of handicraftsmen, bone-setters, herniotomists, lithotomists, abortionists, and poison-venders, who overran Southern Europe throughout the Middle Ages. The inhabitants of ancient Chaldea, in common with many primitive peoples of later times, cherished the belief that all diseases were caused by demons. Medicine was merely a branch of Magic, and the chief healing agents were exorcisms, incantations, and enchanted beverages. There were, properly speaking, no physicians. Sometimes, wrote François Lenormant, in "Chaldean Magic," disease was regarded as an effect of the wickedness of different demons, and sometimes it appears to have been considered as the work of a distinct malevolent being, who exercised his power upon man. According to the old Shamanic belief, which was the primeval religion of all mankind, every physical ailment is caused by a little devil which enters the body and can be expelled therefrom only by means of magic.