A Book About Doctors
J.C.Jeaffreson
[n.d.]
Page 64
The fortunes which pretenders to the healing art have
amassed would justify a belief that empiricism, under favourable
circumstances, is the best trade to be found in the entire
list of industrial occupations. Quacks have in all ages found
staunch suporters amongst the powerful and affluent.
Dr Myersbach,
whom Lettsom endeavoured to drive back into
obscurity, continued, long after the publication of the “Observations,”
to make a large income out of the credulity of the
fashionable classes of English society. Without learning of
any kind, this man raised himself to opulence. His degree
was bought at Erfurt for a few shillings, just before that
university raised the prices of its academical distinctions, in
consequence of the pleasant raillery of a young Englishman,
who paid the fees for a Doctor’s diploma, and had it duly recorded
in the Collegiate archives as having been presented to
Anglicus Ponto; Ponto being no other than his mastiff dog.
With such a degree Myersbach set up for a philosopher.
Patients crowded to his consulting-room, and those who were
unable to come sent their servants with descriptions of their
cases. But his success was less than that of the inventor of
Ailhaud’s Powders, which ran their devastating course through
every country in Europe, sending to the silence of the grave
almost as many thousands as were destroyed in all Napoleon's
campaigns. Tissot, in his “Avis au Peuple,” published in
1803, attacked Ailhaud with characteristic vehemence, and put
an end to his destructive power; but ere this took place the
charlatan had mounted on his slaughtered myriads to the possession
of three baroinies, and was figuring in European courts
as the Baron de Castelet.
Source: British Library W14/6993 DSC