VILLAGE MAGICIAN

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1935, Page 21 (Supplement)

VILLAGE MAGICIAN

: ; ip i 20TH-CENTURY - WITCH WCTOR. How •-easily* ••the’ superstitions and credulous can be'tricked by'the-clever, sometimes' to their' 1 mutual'' benefit, is .'amusingly ; shown’ by thtf ettiry, which comes from Czechoslovakia. '■ ■■ . ’ , - About twelve jnonths ago the. little' village of Frain, near the town of Brunn, became. aware that it had a miracle worker in its midst; someone half-doc- , tor, half-magician, who effected marvellous cures and snatched from the brink of the grave patients given up as dost by regular practitioners. • . Wider and wider did the fame of this

wonderful man spread, till the whole countryside began to come to him with its ailments—unaware that at le£st half Of his success lay'in the immeasurable faith that his mysterious ways, ; .his long white beard, , and formidable hump inspired (hunchbacks being regarded as bringers'bf - luckr by the superstitious). So dangerous a rival did' this seeming charlatan become to the regular medical profession - that ail the doctors of the district combined to lodge a Complaint against him in the law courts. >An investigation W. ordered, in the course of which it appeared that - the' whitebearded old hunchback whom they had all taken.for a quack was in reality a fully qualified younf medical r man, beardless and humpless, whom' eofiipeti- . tion had driven from Prague,: and who had chosen this original method of posing as a twentieth-century witch doctor in order to make a living.