Quack Doctors. Medical quackery is a product of all countries and of all ages; it flourishes among civilised and uncivilised communities alike, and was as rampant before the Christian era as it is in our own day. At all times it has found a numerous public ready and willing to be gulled, and this not only among the illiterate and vulgar, but even specially among the higher and better educated classes. In many cases royalty itself has set the fashion by lending its patronage to notorious charlatans. An exact definition of what constitutes medical quackery is not easy to give. The term 'quacksalver,' in use in the 17th century for quack doctor, seems to be derived from the Dutch kwakzalver (Ger. quacksalber), meaning a person who praised loudly his own medicines or methods of cure. The first part of the word is derived from the well-known but unmusical note of the duck, and typifies the hoarse blatant tones in which itinerant medicine vendors are accustomed to land their wares. The equivalent French term is Charlatan, derived from the Italian ciarlaro, 'to chatter' (Lat. circulari; circulator, 'a pedlar or mountebank')—a name which also indicates their characteristic and persistent loquacity. In more ancient days the loquacity and persistence were verbal; now they are both verbal and literary, as is shown in the deluge of advertisements with which medical quacks flood the world.
Quackery may be taken to include all devices—whether practised by legally qualified medical practitioners or by those who have had no recognised medical training—which tend to deceive the public by disseminating false ideas of disease, or a belief in imaginary ailments, which vaunt certain medicines or methods of treatment as panaceas or cure-alls, or which attribute to an individual a supernatural or exceptional power of influencing and curing disease. The element of pecuniary gain or of personal vainglory also comes into a definition of quackery, as opposed to the singleness of purpose and devotion to the interests of the patient which are traditionally held to be the guiding principles of the orthodox practitioner of medicine. Perhaps the most amusing description of quacks and their methods has been given by Goldsmith in his Citizen of the World, and it is as true and as trenchant to-day as it was then. He says: 'Whatever may be the merits of the English in other sciences, they seem peculiarly excellent in the art of healing. There is scarcely a disorder incident to humanity against which they are not possessed with a most infallible antidote. The professors of other arts confess the inevitable intricacies of things, talk with doubt, and decide with hesitation. But doubting is entirely unknown in medicine; the advertising professors here delight in cases of difficulty; be the disorder ever so desperate or radical, you will find numbers in every street, who, by levelling a pill at the part affected, promise a certain cure without loss of time, knowledge of a bedfellow, or hinderance of business. When I consider the assiduity of this profession their benevolence amazes me. They not only in general give their medicines for half value, but use the most persuasive remonstrances to induce the sick to come and be cured. Sure there must be something strangely obstinate in an English patient who refuses so much health upon such easy terms.'
The Sieur de Courval, writing in 1610, gives a lamentable account of the way in which France, Germany, and Italy were overrun with medical quacks in his day. He describes them as being apostates, vagabonds, disgraced clergy, women of loose character, and rascals of all kinds, and says that they are more dangerous to mankind than vultures, for the latter devour only the dead, while the former prey upon the living. Cadet de Gassicourt, classified quack doctors in a whimsical manner in groups, families, and species, of which the following is an abridgment. Circulatores: Insects, very venomous, of the order of suckers; common everywhere, found in all countries and all latitudes. Their external characters are very varied. Some have brilliant elytra, velvety, and studded with gold; others have them more coarsely formed, dull, not entire, and marked with rents. Their intestines have an enormous capacity, the heart is wanting or very small; they attack man exclusively, their stings being always injurious and sometimes mortal. The sting is sometimes very evident, sometimes quite hidden or little apparent. He divides them into two great groups, the Circulatores Phanerorhynchi, or peripatetic quacks who practise in public, and the Circulatores Cryptorhynchi, or Charlatans en Chambre. The latter are described as 'the charlatan of the aristocracy, of the bourgeoisie, and of those who do not wish to be seen consulting him in public. This honest son of toil is imbued with a sense of his own importance, his language is sententious, he speaks with assurance, and is lodged luxuriously. He is often a specialist, and so on. These two groups are further largely subdivided, and an amusing description given of each species.'
The methods of quack doctors have been the same from all time, and consist principally in attracting and impressing public attention by extraordinary surroundings and behaviour, and in loudly and persistently asseverating the virtues of their nostrums. This is essentially advertising; and while the invention of printing has stimulated many industries, there are few which it has benefited to a greater extent than that of the quack doctor, as it at once opened the way to a much wider public. The enormous modern spread of newspaper reading has further been largely turned by the quack to his own advantage, as it opens up a still wider field for the puffing of his wares. When once public attention has been caught, the battle is more than half won; patronage, popularity, and success follow almost as a matter of course. Fortunately these are frequently of a very temporary character; but, as quack doctors are essentially a migratory tribe, this drawback troubles them comparatively little. When they return to their old haunts a new crop of dupes is certain to have come up. The success of quacks must be attributed largely to an imperfect knowledge among the general public of what constitutes disease, added to which there is often an implicit faith in the curative power of drugs. There is little popular conception of what is possible or impossible in the way of healing, and thus the most absurd and extravagant statements are received as facts. Their success, however, has a deeper origin—viz. in the most potent of all human passions—the desire to preserve life. The strong desire for life, health, and the relief of pain clouds the judgment and causes the chance of relief from any source to be eagerly grasped at. The popular love of the marvellous and mysterious has also been of great assistance in pushing the fortunes of many quacks.
Quack medicines, as a rule, form no real additions to our means of treating disease. Almost without exception they are formulæ taken from some old or modern pharmacopœia, or the prescription of some well-known physician, christened with a name calculated to strike the popular fancy, and then puffed and advertised into fame. Such remedies are to be found for every real and imaginary ailment of mankind; but the happy hunting-ground of the quack is more especially in the regions of chronic, but not fatal, disease, such as the multifarious rheumatic affections, chronic skin affections, asthma, hysteria, hypochondriasis, 'nervous disorders,' and a host of others. Persons afflicted with such ailments have naturally alternations of good, bad, and indifferent health, and are often very prone to attribute what is simply natural improvement to the action of the remedy last taken. It is such people who certify so confidently and so gratefully to the curative powers of quack medicines. Cures for cancer, sterility, and consumption, various elixirs of life and youth, and single antidotes efficacious against all poisons must alone have made the fortunes of many thousands of quack doctors. The sad part of the whole matter is that mankind never seems to learn by experience; no new methods of deception are introduced, no real originality or inventive enterprise is ever shown by quacks; they rely upon exactly the same old artifices as their predecessors did, and generation after generation are duped by them just as surely.