THE esteem of the world for particular persons, Sir, is in general justly proportioned to the benefits it conceives it has received from their labours. On this foot I would make my grateful acknowledgements to your correspondent who has lately obliged your readers with his reflections on that pernicious class of men denoted by the word Quack. Nothing can shew a baser and more detestable principle, than the sporting with the health and lives of mankind to promote the sordid views of private interest. That this great city abounds with this execrable pest of society to an astonishing degree, is very certain; but should we take the word in its true sense and just latitude, Quacks are perhaps much more numerous than they are generally thought.
A man may have been brought up at Oxford or Cambridge, and have had a learned education; he may have read Hippocrates and Galen in Greek, and yet in practice be an arrant Quack. The knowledge of characters and words is one thing, but the knowledge of diseases and of medicines and their virtues, is a very different thing, and has no natural or neccessary connection with each other.
If this reasoning be just, a man who understands no language but his mother tongue may be an able and skilful Physician, and another who is well read in the learned languages may be an ignorant Quack. I am sensible this is judging out of the common road, and therefore perhaps an opinion not likely to be adopted: but I have no apprehensions, how impalatable soever it may prove to many, that it will ever be refuted. I could willingly pursue these observations a[sic] much greater length, were it not incompatible with the design of your paper; but that being the case, I must stop short, in order to pursue my intention of coming to the aid of your former correspondent, requesting the reader to judge of what follows, by the foregoing observations.
It is evidently the intention of that (I hope) well meaning writer to expose the mischiefs of quackery in the very extensive practice of a most popular GERMAN DOCTOR. For a foreigner to practice physic, without the usual licence to kill with impunity, argues a well-grounded consciousness of great medical abilities, or the greatest ignorance and effrontery. It the first be just, and common sense prevails, surely he has the truest protection; if the later, nothing can be a just protection In the language of the faculty, the gentleman in question is a most impudent fellow, who in the judgement of some impartial observers cures as many patients in one month, as half a dozen of the most ignorant among the regulars kills in six. If this be true, of which I have not the least doubt, he is certainly an invaluable member of society, though a most dangerous enemy to his profession. He may be a very good physician, but a wretched politician; in short he is not in the secret. The art of healing is the sole object of physic, but not of the physician; with him, ’tis a matter of secondary consideration, and takes place so far only as it quadrates with his primary object, which is his own interest. This fellow, say they, is a fool; he has more patients than any fifty of us, and cures more than any 500. If he goes on thus, there will not soon be a patient left either for us or himself. A very natural and commendable ground of dislike to be sure, and a plain demonstration of his ignorance. However, upon the whole, the balance is certainly against him, for every patient he cures gives half a score of the faculty the gripes, and one of them seeing a coach with a coronet at his door fell down in a swoon. All these evils he is justly justly accountable for. But to shew his extreme ignorance, and the imminent danger his patients run, I beg leave to give you a short state of a case, as it came verbatim from his patient’s father; by which the world will judge how far it may be prudent to rely on such an impudent Quack. A tradesman in the city had a lovely daughter who had been under the care of a Physician several months; she grew worse daily, and there was little hope of her recovery. Her Physician setting one day by her bed-side, her father and mother standing by, he apprehended she had but a very few hours to live, and being a compassionate man burst into tears; saying, the dear little angel must go, this is the last time I shall see her alive, and took his leave. Soon after a friend came in, and seeing their distress, prevailed upon them to consult the German, of whom he said he had heard something that astonished him. At length they were prevailed upon, and the Doctor was called. In less than three weeks from that day, he restored her health and strength, and she was as well as ever she was in her life. Notwithstanding this, said he, I have a very good opinion of her former Physician; he is a man of great practice and reputed skill, but he certainly mistook my daughter’s case. In the course of his visits I paid him 20 guineas, and the Apothecaries bill came to 25L. To the German, to whum[sic] my obligations are infinites, for fees and medicines he only charged me two guineas.
Now, Sir, can there be a clearer proof of the ignorance of this foreign Quack, and of the dreadful danger of those misguided people who are so infatuated as to apply to him for relief, than is furnished by this interesting case. If your quondam correspondent should, in compassion to the public, give fresh warnings of its danger from this most infamous Quack; I shall certainly second his endeavours by the relation of several more cases, wherein his ignorance and want of medical ability are equally conspicuous and atrocious with that above cited. I am, Sir, an old correspondent, and your humble servant,
Aug. 20. THE LONDON SPY.
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British Library Newspaper Collection Colindale - Burney Collection
22 August 1776 (14,820) Page 1 Column 4 and Page 2 Column 1 |