The Funny Side of Physic Part 1

The Funny Side of Physic.

by A. D. Crabtre.

PREFACE.

The books which most please while instructing the reader, are those which mingle the lively and gay with the sedate spirit in the narration of important facts. The verdict of the reader of this work must be (it is modestly suggested), that the author has luckily hit the happy vein in its construction.

Of all facts which bear upon human happiness or sorrow, those which serve to increase the former, and alleviate or banish the latter, are most desirable for everybody to know; and of all professions which most intimately concern the personal well-being of the public at large, that of the physician is most important. The author of this book has spared no pains of research to collect the facts of which he discourses, and has endeavored to cover the whole ground embraced by his subject with pertinent and important suggestions, statements, scientific discoveries, incidents in the career of great physicians, etc., and to fix them in the reader's mind by _apt anecdotes, which will be found in abundance throughout the work_.

There is no better man in the world than the true physician, and no more base wretch than the ordinary "Quack," or medical charlatan. If the author has spared no pains of study to make his book acceptable, he may be said, also, to have as unsparingly visited his indignation upon the quacks who have all along the line of historic medicine disgraced the physician's and the surgeon's profession.

The general public but little understand what a vast amount of ignorance has at times been cunningly concealed by medical pract.i.tioners, and how grossly the people of every city and village are even nowadays trifled with by some who arrogate to themselves the honorable t.i.tle of Doctor of Medicine.

Herein not only the base and the good physician, but the honorable and the trifling apothecary, receive their due reward, or well-merited punishment, so far as the pen can give them. The reader will be utterly surprised when he comes to learn how the quacks of the past and the present have brought themselves into note by tricks and schemes very similar and equally infamous. The wanton trifling with the health and life of their patients, the greed of gain, and the perfect dest.i.tution of all moral nature, which some of these men have exhibited in their career, are astounding.

The apothecaries, as well as physicians, are descanted on, and the miserable tricks to which the large majority of them resort, exposed. The public will be astonished to find what trash in the matter of drugs it pays for; how filthy, vile, and often poisonous and hurtful materials people buy for medicines at extortionate prices; how even the syrups which they drink in soda drawn from costly and splendid fountains are often made from the most filthy materials, and are not fit for the lower animals, not to say human beings, to drink. And this fact is only ill.u.s.trative of hundreds of others set forth in this work.

This work not only exposes the multifold frauds of quacks, apothecaries, travelling doctors, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, certain clairvoyants, and "spiritual mediums," and the like, who "practise medicine" to a more or less extent, or profess to discover and heal diseases,--but it points out to the reader the most approved rules for protecting the health, and recovering it when lost. In short, it is a work embodying the most sound advice, founded upon the judgment of the best physicians of the past and present, as tested in the Author's experience for a period of twenty years' active practice. In other words, it is a compendium of sound medical advice, as well as a racy, lively, and incisive dissection and exposure of the villanies of quacks and other medical empirics, etc.

Persons of all ages will find the work not only interesting to read, but most valuable in a practical sense. To the young who would shun the crafts and villanies to which they must be exposed as they grow up,--for all are liable to be more or less ill at times,--it will prove invaluable, enabling them to detect the spurious from the reliable in medicine, and how to judge between the pretentious charlatan (even enjoying a large ride) and the true physician. And none are so old that they may not reap great advantages from the work.

I.

MEDICAL HUMBUGS.

_Marina._ ... Should I tell my history, 'Twould seem like lies disdained in the reporting.

_Pericles._ Pray thee, speak.--_Shakspeare._

ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF "HUMBUG."--A FIFTH AVENUE HUMBUG.--JOB'S OPINION OF DOCTORS.--EARLY PHYSICIANS.--PRIESTS AS DOCTORS.--WIZARDS COME TO GRIEF.--A "CAPITAL" OPERATION.--A WOMAN CUT INTO TWELVE PIECES.--ANECDOTE.--ROBIN HOOD'S LITTLE JOKE.--t.i.t FOR TAT.--ENGLISH HUMBUGS.--FRENCH DITTO.--A FORTUNE ON DIRTY WATER.--AMERICAN HUMBUGS.--A FIRST CLa.s.s "DODGE."--A FREE RIDE.--A SHARP INTERROGATOR.--DOCTOR PUSBELLY.--A WICKED STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY.--"OLD PILGARLIC" TAKES A BATH.--LUDICROUS SCENE.--PROFESSOR BREWSTER.

Medical humbugs began to exist with the first pretenders to the science of healing. Quacks originated at a much later period. So materially different are the two cla.s.ses, that I am compelled to treat of them separately.

The word _humbug_ is a corruption of _Hamburg_, Germany, and seems to have originated in London. The following episode is in ill.u.s.tration of both its origin and meaning:--

"O, Bridget, Bridget!" exclaimed the fas.h.i.+onable mistress of a brown stone front in Fifth Avenue, New York, to her surprised servant girl, "what have you been doing at the front door?"

"Och, murther! Nothin', ma'am."

"Nothing!" repeated the mistress.

"Yes'm--that is--" stammered Bridget, greatly embarra.s.sed.

"What were you doing at the front door but a moment since?"

"Nothin', ma'am, but spakin' to me cousin; he's a p'leeceman, ma'am, if ye plaze, ma'am," replied Bridget, dropping a low courtesy to the mistress.

"No, no; I did not mean that. But haven't you been cleaning the door-k.n.o.b and the bell-pull?"

"Yes'm," replied Bridget, changing from embarra.s.sment to surprise.

"Why, Bridget, didn't I tell you never to polish the front door-k.n.o.bs during the warm season? Now my friends will think that I have returned from Saratoga--"

"And is it to Saratogy ye've been, ma'am?" exclaimed Bridget.

"No, you dunce; but was not the front of the house closed, and the servants forbidden to polish the plates and gla.s.s, that my friends might be led to believe we had all gone to the watering-place?"

That was true humbug. Double humb.u.g.g.e.ry! for the servant girl was humbugging her mistress by pretending to polish the door-k.n.o.bs, while she was really coqueting with a policeman; and the mistress was humbugging her friends into the belief that the house was closed, and the family gone to Saratoga.

So, Hamburg, on the Elbe, being a fas.h.i.+onable resort of the upper-ten-dom of London, those who would ape aristocracy, yet being unable to bear the expense of a trip to the Continent, closed the front of their dwellings, moved into the rear, giving out word that they had gone to _Hamburg_.

When a house was observed so closed, with a notice on the door, the pa.s.sers by would wag their heads, and exclaim, questionably, "Ah, gone to Hamburg!" or, "All gone to Hamburg!" "It's all Hamburg!" and so on. And, like a thousand other words in the English language, this became corrupted, and "humbug" followed. Hence, taking the sense from the derivation of the word, humbug means "an imposition, under fair pretences;" cheat; hoax; a deception without malicious intent. Webster says it is "a low word."

The humbugs in medicine, we a.s.sert, began to exist with the first persons of whom we have any account in the history of the healing art. Among the early Egyptian physicians, aesculapius was esteemed as the most celebrated.

He was the first humbug in his line. However, nearly all the accounts we have of him are mythological. If we are to credit the early writers, this great healer restored so many to life, that he greatly interfered with undertaker Pluto's occupation, who picked a quarrel with aesculapius, and the two referred the matter to Jupiter for adjudication.

But we may go back of this "G.o.d of medicine." If he was physician to the Argonauts, we must fix the date of his great exploits at about the year B.

C. 1263. It is claimed by good authority that the Book of Job dates back to B. C. 1520, and is the oldest book extant. Herein we find Job saying, "Ye are forgers of lies; ye are all physicians of no value." Since his friends were trying their best to humbug him, Job certainly intimates that physicians--some of them, at least--were looked upon as humbugs. But, then, Job was only an Arab prince; not an Israelite, at all; nor does he condescend to mention that "peculiar people" in his book. And besides, what reliance can be based upon the opinion of a man respecting physicians, whose only surgical instrument consisted of a "piece or fragment of a broken pot"?

Therefore, leaving the "Arab prince," we will turn for a moment to the early Jewish physicians. Josephus does not enlighten us much respecting them. The Old Testament makes mention of physicians in three instances,--the last figuratively.

The first instance--a rather amusing one--where physicians are mentioned in the sacred writings, is in 2 Chron. xvi. 12: "And Asa, in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, was diseased in his feet, until the disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians." The compiler adds, very coolly, as though a natural consequence, "_And Asa slept with his fathers_!" This reminds us of an anecdote by the late Dr. Waterhouse. An Irishman obtained twenty grains of morphine, which, instead of quinine, he took at one dose, to cure the chills. The doctor, in relating it long afterwards, added, laconically, "He being a good Catholic, his funeral was numerously attended."

For generations nearly all the pretensions to healing were made by the priests and magicians, who humbugged and "bamboozled" the ignorant and superst.i.tious rabble to their hearts' content. Kings and subjects were alike believers in the Magi. Saul believed in the magic powers of the "witch of Endor." The wicked king Nebuchadnezzar cla.s.sed Daniel and his three companions with the magicians, although Daniel (chap. xi. 10) denied the imputation. Joseph laid claim to the power of divination; for, having caused the silver cup to be placed in the sack of corn, and after having sent and brought his brother back, he said (Gen. xliv. 15), "What deed is this that ye have done? Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine?" It seemed necessary to deal with the people according to their belief. It was useless to dispute with them. As late as the preaching of Paul and Barnabas, the whole nations of Jews and Greeks were so tinctured with belief in magic and enchantment in healing, taught and promulgated by the priesthood, that when the apostles healed the cripple of Lystra, the rabble, headed by the priests, cried out, "The G.o.ds are come down to us in the likeness of men." And they called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercurius.

The town clerk in the theatre said to the excited crowd, "These men are neither robbers of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your G.o.ddess."

Diana was appealed to for women in childbirth; Mercurius for the healing of cutaneous diseases (_herpes_), probably because he carried a _herpe_, or short sword, also, at times, the caduceus; and Jupiter for various diseases. But to return to the times of Saul and David.

It seems that the business became overcrowded, and the vilest and most degraded of both s.e.xes swelled the ranks of sorcerers, astrologers, and spiritualists, until every cla.s.s and condition of people became impregnated with these beliefs, from kings to the lowest subject. Finally, the strong arm of the law laid hold of them, and the edict went forth that "a witch shall not live," that "a wizard shall be put to death," and that "the soothsayer be stoned."

Nevertheless, the wretches continued to practise their deceptions, but less openly for a time, and they are made mention of throughout the sacred writings, until "the closing of the canon."

But the Scriptures are almost totally silent on surgery, and the remedies resorted to by those pretending to the science--as also by physicians and priests--were such as to lead us to believe that their _materia medica_ was very limited. Under the head of Ridiculous Prescriptions, we shall mention these remedies:--

The earliest record we find of surgical operations in the Old Testament is in Judges xix. 29,--a "capital operation," we may judge, for the account informs us that the patient, a woman, "was divided into twelve pieces."

Turning to the profane writers for information, we plunge into an abyss of uncertainty, with this exception; that the practice of medicine--it could not be called a science--was still in the hands of the priesthood, and partook largely of the fabulous notions of the age, being connected almost entirely with idolatries and humb.u.g.g.e.ries. The cunning priests caused the rabble, from first to last, to believe that all disease was inflicted, not from the violation of the laws of nature, but by some angry and outraged divinity, whose wrath must be appeased by bribes (_paid to the priests_), by incantations, and absurd ceremonies, or else the afflicted victim must die a painful death, and forever after suffer a more horrible eternity.

The priests' receiving the pay reminds us of the following little anecdote.

A very pious man, recently congratulating a convalescing patient upon his recovery, asked his friend who had been his physician.