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.Crabtre, Addison Darre
History
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.
Crabtre, Addison Darre
Medicine -- Anecdotes; Quacks and quackery
More than forty years ago, a young, fair, and promising girl came to this
city from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. From her maiden home, near
Meredith Village, from under the humble roof of Christian parents, she
wandered into the haunts of vice and the abodes of wretchedness and
disease in the lower part of Boston.
Her maiden name was Elizabeth Leach. You will find her name in the City
Directory (1871) "_Madam Ester, midwife_."
We have not space to write out her whole history, nor inclination to
spread before the refined reader the first years of the gay life of this
attractive damsel, the seductive and sinful debaucheries of the
fascinating, unprincipled woman, nor the more repulsive declination of the
diseased and malevolent _bawd_!
The writer has seen a picture of her home in New Hampshire, a
daguerreotype of her in her virginity, and a painting, taken from her
sittings, in middle life. In stature, she is tall and stout; in manner,
coarse and repulsive. If ever I saw a woman carrying, stamped in every
lineament of her countenance, a hard, heartless, soulless, murderous
expression, that woman is Madam Ester. Neither the tears, the
heart-anguishes, nor the life's blood of the fatherless infant, the
husbandless mother, the orphaned or friendless maiden, could draw a
sympathizing look or expression from the hardened features of that
wretched woman. _She is the John Allen of Boston._
For years she has carried on, under the cloak of a "midwife," the most
cruel and reprehensible occupation which ever disgraced an outraged
community. By extortionate prices she has gained no inconsiderable wealth,
and her house, though located in a narrow, darkened alley, or court, is
fitted up with an elegance equalling that of some of our best and
wealthiest merchants. From parlor to attic, it is splendidly furnished.
She assured me she hated mankind with inexpressible hatred; that man had
been her ruin, the instrument of her disease, and would eventually be the
cause of her death. She cursed both man and her Maker!
Last spring there appeared an advertisement in a city paper of a young
girl who was lost, or abducted from the home of her parents, in which the
young lady was described as being but sixteen to seventeen years of age,
of light complexion, blue eyes, of but medium height, named Mary ----; and
as she took no clothes but those she had on, never before went from home
without her parents' consent, and had no trouble at home, her absence
could not be accounted for. Any information respecting her would be
gratefully received by her distressed parents.
She was all this time at the home of Madam Ester.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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