Some intellectual weeds of American growth / by George M. Gould.

  • Gould, George Milbrey, 1848-1922.
Date:
[1904]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Some intellectual weeds of American growth / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Whenever a quack advertises, the most prominent part of the adver- tisement, the most of the costly space is occupied by the portrait of the great man. The more a man in the regular medical profession ap- proaches to quackery and secret advertising the more his photograph appears in the lay or socalled professional journals. When vanity or money-making enterprise becomes an outspoken disease this tendency is illustrated most amusingly as -well as instructively. In all the literature of faddism and crankery the everlasting photograph appears, and in one journal every contributor’s picture heads his article, and each of the dozen “ editors of departments ” has the inevitable photo- graph in every week. The New Thought advocates and editors are especially prone to this sort of thing. The pictures of “ Ella ” and of “ William ” and of “ Elizabeth ” are everywhere. (They call each other in this familiar way in their papers, so no disrespect is implied here.) Ella’s rings and arm are very ‘^fetching,” and William’s (one of the Williams) stern piercing glance transfixes you with true Hub- bardesquesness. But Elizabeth’s photograph would certainly scare away an intending lover, so indescribably terrible is it. “ Glasses ” would not “ destroy that magnetic gaze.” She publishes and sells her own books, and praises them too, as straight at you as her photographic eyes would indicate. Each copy of “ The Constitution of Man,” she says, “ is full of power and inspiration,” and contains a speaking likeness of the author.” “ Experiences in self-healing,” “ is the latest , and greatest of my books ” (each is always the greatest), “ alive, help- ful, inspiring. Beautiful book, good picture of me.” Indeed, the mark of morbid self-consciousness is in every article and sentence of most of the crazy or crank literature so rampant among us. It is not only marked by it, but is rather drenched in it, so that teachers, priestesses, and humble pupils seem to delight in standing and paddling in their own slush. It , is an old and well recognized law of disease and insanity that one is unconscious of healthy organs. Most people, for instance, go through life without a moment’s attention to their knees, their ears, or their “ desires.” But let them get synovitis, middle-ear inflammation, or the New-Thought disease, and at once all their attention is absorbed by their knee, ear, or “ mind.” In all of this literature, psychometry,” fortune-telling, ‘^character readings,” somnopathy,” phrenology, mediumship, “ graphology,” astrology,” “ self-^healing,” hypnotism, occultism, and a hundred forms of morbid “ ministering to the mind diseased ” form the staple of ‘‘ instruction,” the substance of page after page of magniloquent nonsense, and more important still, fill all the advertising pages to repletion. The psr- sonal answers to correspondents illustrate it to satiety. How shall I