Leeches that Bleed the Poor

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 14, 5 April 1906, Page 1

Leeches that Bleed the Poor

Our esteemed friend the ' Outlook ' (the Presby-terian-Methodist-Conigregationalist organ' of New Zealand) is out with its Mauser after quacks. So have we been, on and off, for many a year. And in hunting this sort of noxious animal one is better in company —and especially in such good company—than following the trail alone. The poor are nowadays the chiefest sufferers from the wiles and ways of the quack. Most of the fraternity would/ be in appropriate surroundings if placed under lock and key in gaol for playing dice with human lives, or—to slightly alter Voltaire's saying—conveying drugs of which they know nothing into bodies of which they know less. And a good many of them would be 1 nane-the waur o' a hangin'.' To the former class belong the ignorant >cure-alls and the blatant charlatans whose claim to occult power is put forward with as calm assurance in the advertising columns of the secular press as it was from the stage in Elizabeth's days by voluble adventurers like ' Doctor ' Dee. * A good many of our readers will remember the enterprising dame who—flourishing a bogus medical title—netted such a rich haul of shekels from the gobemouches in New Zealand some years ago. In an age when the schoolmaster is so much abroad, it ■seems passing strange that persons of average education and intelligence should be-so readily deceived by any vociferous charlatan who sets forth to ' cure without operation ' diseases that in the present state of medical science are known to be incurable. This is a riddle which even the ' Lancet ' cannot solve. iFor it is a question for the psychologist rather than for the physician or the journalist. The solution of the puzzle may, perhaps, in part be accounted for By the following considerations : (1) That there is an insane spot somewhere in many people's brain-cells ; (2) that ' hope springs eternal in the human breast ' —and especially in the breast, of the man who is (or fancies that he is), like Molly .Carew's lovier, • not himself at all ' ; (3) that (as • Hudibras ' phrases it) ' Doubtless .the pleasure is as great # Of being cheated as to cheat } and (4) "that (as Lecky has observed) ages that are marked by a decline of religious faith are the ages of greatest credulity. It was. so in the days of Digby and Paracelsus and Cagliostro. It is so even now. The age of radium and of eight-cylinder motor-cars is also the age of adulterated adulterants, of wooden cloves, of glorified ' fake,' and of diminished religious faith. And it is the golden age of quackery. In what things so-

■ever a man .hath- ofitended, in the same shall he bte punished. Fraud preys on fraud, and imposition is made the victim of imposition. Thcreis a jsort of dramatic-jus-tice in it all. "~ - - . . • The charlatans that would be * nane the waur- o' " a hangin' ' are, above all, the brazen-faced and voracious tribe of ' specialists ' that are permitted ■to make the secular press their sounding-board. The ' Outlook ' .tells this story of a lecturer-to boys who is now in New Zealand :—: — ' ' He waited upon the proprietor of one of the leading newspapers in Southland and gave him ocular proof of the disgusting nature of the circulars, posted to mere boys, emanating from one of the firms of quacks, advertising in the columns of his paper. To his credit be it said,, the newspaper proprietor at once issued orders to have the offending advertisement taken out of the paper, and wrote to the firm of quacks declining further transactions. Similar concerted action on the part of all newspaper proprietors would do much "to an insidious and malignant evil. The postal authorities in Australia (and, we believe, in New Zealand) refuse to make the public marls a medium for spreading the circulars of • advertising professionals ' and radical quacks, some of whom use the confessions of clients for the purposes of blackmail, terrorism, and extortion. It is well to prevent the mail, as far as possible, from being turned into a means of corruption and degradation to youth. While upon this subject of quacks and quack literature, we might commend to the attention of the police and the postal authorities the sort of ' literature ' that is (or lately was) being circulated through the mails by certain blackguards that are doing \a business in mountebank ' electric ' remedies. Young people who would retain the bright flower, of innocence will avoid ithe whole horde of advertising * specialists ' and quacksalvers. Samuel Rogers kept both physician and charlatan from his door and lived till ninety-two on this prescription : * Temperance, the bath and flesh-brush, and don't fret.' Sydney Smith's saying was : ' The best physicians are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman '—an adaptation of the 014 Latin distich :—: — ' Si tibi deficiant medici, tibi fiant Haec tria : mens laeta, reqjuies, moderata diaeta.' When they fail, call in the doctor, not the quack.