Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) [Illustration] THE FUNNY SIDE OF PHYSIC: OR, THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE, PRESENTING THE HUMOROUS AND SERIOUS SIDES OF MEDICAL PRACTICE. AN EXPOSÉ OF MEDICAL HUMBUGS, QUACKS, AND CHARLATANS IN ALL AGES AND ALL COUNTRIES. By A. D. CRABTRE, M. D. HARTFORD: J. B. BURR & HYDE. CHICAGO AND CINCINNATI: J. B. BURR, HYDE & COMPANY. 1872. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by J. B. BURR AND HYDE, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE. The books which most please while instructing the reader, are those which mingle the lively and gay with the sedate spirit in the narration of important facts. The verdict of the reader of this work must be (it is modestly suggested), that the author has luckily hit the happy vein in its construction. Of all facts which bear upon human happiness or sorrow, those which serve to increase the former, and alleviate or banish the latter, are most desirable for everybody to know; and of all professions which most intimately concern the personal well-being of the public at large, that of the physician is most important. The author of this book has spared no pains of research to collect the facts of which he discourses, and has endeavored to cover the whole ground embraced by his subject with pertinent and important suggestions, statements, scientific discoveries, incidents in the career of great physicians, etc., and to fix them in the reader's mind by _apt anecdotes, which will be found in abundance throughout the work_. There is no better man in the world than the true physician, and no more base wretch than the ordinary "Quack," or medical charlatan. If the author has spared no pains of study to make his book acceptable, he may be said, also, to have as unsparingly visited his indignation upon the quacks who have all along the line of historic medicine disgraced the physician's and the surgeon's profession. The general public but little understand what a vast amount of ignorance has at times been cunningly concealed by medical practitioners, and how grossly the people of every city and village are even nowadays trifled with by some who arrogate to themselves the honorable title of Doctor of Medicine.