More Quacks

New Zealand Tablet, 20 September 1906, Page 9

More Quacks

Huck Finn • didn't care a dum for a thing 'thout it was tollable hard to git.' It has been ' tollable hard to git ' our Legislature into motion against what Carlyle calls the ' brass-faced, vociferous, . voracious,' and pestilent tribe of quacks. But when. our legislative wisdom is precipitated in the form of an Act of Parliament upon our Statute Book, we hope that it will be something worth the waiting for. The crass credulity to which the quack appeals is in one respect like insanity or case-hardened yokel-pre-judice : you will volley argument against it in vain. You may (as Max O'Rell says in another connection) call to your aid all the principles of algebra, trigonometry, and differential and integral calculus, to prove that it is wrong. But it is effort idly spent. The dupes upon whom the quack-parasite fastens are, in this matter, mentally •in statu pupillari '—in a condition of legal infancy, so to speak ; and they require the protection of the State from those pestiferous harpies, just as the normal citizen requires protection from the insinuating fingers of the pickpocket and the unseen blow of the sandbagger.

* There is one peculiarly odious class of quack that seems to us not to have come within the purview of the Bill now before Parliament. We refer to the socalled hypnotist and ;- hypnotic healer '. Male creatures of this description are to . be found in every large city in New Zealand ; and their operations should be brought to a full stop in the. interests of the physical, mental, and moral well-being of their hapless victims. One thing more : To this hour . the New Zealand mails are used for the carriage •of disgusting circulars that are posjLed by thousands to mere boys. The Federal Postmaster-General some time ago refused to make the country's^ mails the_ medium of spreading the circulars bothi of "advertising professionals' and of medical quacks, \some of whom use the confessions of clients for the purpose of blackmail, terrorism, and extortion. \Ve once more commend to the special attention of the police and of the postal authB pities the sort of ' literature ' that is being circulated through the mails by certain blackguards that are doing an extensive business in mountebank ' electric ' remedies. Young people who" would retain the

bxight flower of innocence will avoid the .whole horde of advertising ' specialists ? and - quacksalvers.. Samuel Rogers kept- both physician , and • :charlatan from his door, - and " lived to ninety-two ~on_ this prescription : ,- ' Temperance, the bath and flesh-brush, and don't fret . - Good advice ; but, like patience and "- cod-liver oil,- the last part of it. is more easily prescribed, than. taken. ' - *"""♦ - ~ _ — - - Cagliostro, the prince of quacks and mountebanks, concocted an ' elixir of immortal - youth ' that Jhad a great run, especially with ladies,,, and -bulged the enterprising impostor's fob .with golden guineas. Some years ago there ,lived in Melbourne a Chinese 'doctor', childlike and bland, .was much sought after - by white people who were, or fancied that ~ they , were, ' not themselves at all" '—like: the swain that loved the Widow - Malone, och hone ! " Ching's great curative agent was a pill about the. size" ;6i^ ping-pong ball. It was composed -of honey, *" dates, earth, sawdust, ground horn, and half-a-dozen other equally variegated ingredients,. This indigestible 'salmagundi" is known in Chinese Pharmacopoeia as ning-s-hin-yoon— ' repose to the" spirit T Kee Sam (another bland Eastern) got one ' repose to the spirit ' and ate it. Then his spirit flitted. There was an inquest. The Medical Society • ' said ' about Chinese ' doctors ' and their diagnoses and their ' remedies '. But the gullibles,- ' white and yellow, flocked to the ' doctor ' as before, and ate his balls (of honey and sawdust and street-sweepings" and ground rotten-stone just as heartily as ever. It is the way of the world, as Poor Richard sadly discovered long ago. Many of those-^who developed- a sturdy appetite for ' repose to the spirit ' were soon sleeping with Kee Sam where the lilies blow. The" others recovered by the blessing of God, sound. con-~ stitutions, or non-lethal doses. And the rumbling of the hearse-wheels and the noise the clods falling on the coffins, of Sam Kee aoid the others were drowned in the hymns of praise which the white .survivors sang to the praise -of ning-sMn-yoon. It does not, after all, seem as if the schoolmaster has been abroad to very much purpose in our day. The quack was a meagre incident in the social life of., bygone .days. Nowadays he is like lying— one of .the world's Great Powers.