It has been aptly said that no amount of instruction in physiology or materia medica at medical colleges will have any influence in the suppression of quackery. But the recognition and utilization, by the profession, of the wonderful forces of psycho-therapy _will_ have such an influence, because light will thereby be shed upon the methods of the charlatan, whose operations will then no longer be shrouded from the public view in mystery, wherein has lain for many centuries their most potent charm. The author of "Physic and Physicians" (London, 1839) remarks that a doctor should always have ready an answer to every question which a lady may put to him, for the chances are that she will be satisfied with it. Moreover he should invariably diagnose an affection with celerity; and rather than betray ignorance of the seat of a disorder, it were better, says this writer, to assign it at once to the pancreas or pineal gland. A lady once asked her apothecary, an ignorant fellow, regarding the composition of castor oil, and seemed quite content with his reply, that it was extracted from the beaver. Another patient asked her physician how long she was likely to be ill, and was told that it depended largely on the duration of the disease. A certain doctor, probably a quack, acquired some notoriety by always prescribing the _left_ leg of a boiled fowl. Reiteration of the superior nutritive qualities of that member, and positive assertions of the comparative worthlessness of the right leg, doubtless impressed the patients' minds in a salutary manner. A writer in "Putnam's Magazine," August, 1909, commends the so-called Emmanuel Movement as capable of benefiting many, in all stations of life. He says further that the wicked and the charlatan may enter upon the practice of psycho-therapy, but in a majority of cases, the sub-conscious mind, upon which the healer works, will reject the evil suggestion of the practitioner who strives to use his powers for malign purposes. That is the almost unanimous verdict of the psychological experts. If the old proverb be true, "_In vino veritas_," so in the hypnotic state the real bent of the normal mind and personality is more ready to follow the good and reject the bad suggestion, than in the normal, conscious state. Instinctive morality comes to the aid of the genuine psycho-therapist, and refuses its coöperation to the counterfeit. In the United States, the door yawns wider for the admission of charlatans than in any other country. The demand for panaceas and for the services of those who pretend to cure by unusual methods, is not limited to persons who are wanting in intelligence, or to those who are weakened and discouraged by exhausting diseases. So long as the love of the marvellous exists, there will be a certain demand for quackery, and the supply will not be wanting.[236:1]