We can only come to this conclusion: The college education of to-day does
not necessarily make one proof against graft. In fact, it seems that when
it comes to belief in "new scientific discoveries," the educated are even
more easily imposed upon than the ignorant. The ignorant man is apt to be
suspicious of new things, especially things that are supposed to require
scientific knowledge to comprehend. On the other hand, the man who prides
himself on his learning is sure he can take care of himself, and often
thinks it a proof of his superior intelligence to be one of the charter
members of every scientific fad that is sprung on the people by some
college professor who is striving for a medal for work done in original
research.
Whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that frauds and grafts are
perpetrated upon educated people to-day. In the preceding chapter I tried
to tell in a general way what some of the grafts are, and something of the
social conditions that help to produce the grafters. I shall now give some
of the reasons why shysters find so many easy victims for their grafts.
When it comes to grafting in connection with therapeutics, the layman's
educational armor, which affords him protection against most forms of
graft in business, seems utterly useless. True, it affords protection
against the more vulgar nostrum grafting that claims its millions of
victims among the masses; but when the educated man meets the "new
discovery," "new method" grafter he bares his bosom and welcomes him as a
friend and fellow-scientist. It is the educated man's creed to-day to
accept everything that comes to him in the name of science.
The average educated man knows nothing whatever of the theory and _modus
operandi_ of therapeutics. He is perhaps possessed of some knowledge of
everything on the earth, in the heaven above, and in the waters beneath.
He is, however, densely ignorant of one of the most important things of
all--therapeutics--the matter of possessing an intelligent conception of
what are rational and competent means of caring for his body when it is
attacked by disease. A man who writes A.M., D.D., or LL.D. after his name
will send for a physician of "any old school," and put his life or the
life of a member of his family into his hands with no intelligent idea
whatever as to whether the right thing is being done to save that life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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