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
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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
Mr. Jeaffreson, in the "Book about Doctors," before often quoted, says of
the English travelling doctor of the last century,--
"When Dr. Pulsfeel was tired of London, or felt the want of country air,
he adopted the pleasant occupation of fleecing rustic simplicity. For his
journeys he provided himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack--stout,
that it might bear weighty parcels of medical composition; fast, that in
case the ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of stoning their
benefactor as an impostor,--a mishap that would occasionally
occur,--escape might be effected.
"In his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs, markets, wakes, and
public festivals, not disdaining to stop an entire week, or even month, at
an assize town, where he found the sick anxious to benefit by his
marvellous wisdom.
"His manner of making himself known in a new place was to ride boldly into
the thickest crowd of a town, and inform his listeners that he had come
straight from the Duke of So-and-so, or the Emperor of Wallachia, out of
an innate desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was born in that
very town. He had left it when an orphan boy, to seek his fortune in the
great world. His adventures had been wonderful. He had visited the Sultan
and the Great Mogul; and the King of Mesopotamia had tried to persuade him
to tarry and keep the Mesopotamians out of the devil's clutches by the
offer of a thousand pieces of gold a month. He had cured thousands of
emperors, kings, queens, princes, grand duchesses, and generalissimos. He
sold all kinds of medicaments--dyes for the hair, washes for the
complexion, lotions, rings, and love charms, powders to stay the palsy,
fevers, croup, and jaundice. His powder was expensive; he couldn't help
that; it was made of pearl-dust and dried violet leaves from the middle of
Tartary. Still, he would sell his friends a package at bare cost,--one
crown,--as he did not want to make money out of them.
"Nothing could surpass the impudence of the fellow's lies, save the
admiration with which his credulous auditors swallowed his assertions.
There they stood--stout yeomen, drunken squires, gay peasant girls, gawky
hinds and gabbling crones, deeming themselves in luck to have lived to
behold such a miracle of wisdom. Possibly a young student, home from
Oxford, with the rashness of inexperience, would smile scornfully, and cry
out, 'Quack!' (quack-salver, from the article he used to cure wens); but
such interruption was usually frowned down by the orthodox friends of the
student, and he was warned that he would come to no good end, if he went
on as he had begun, a contemptuous unbeliever, and a mocker of wise men."
A MUSICAL DOCTOR.
Mr. Dayton, vocalist, told me of a fellow who cut a swell in various
capacities a few years ago. He first knew him as a fiddler at fairs. The
next time he turned up was under the following circumstances:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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