Revelations of quacks and quackery / a series of letters by 'Detector'.

  • Courtenay, Francis Burdett, 1811-1886.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Revelations of quacks and quackery / a series of letters by 'Detector'. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    ings and minds of girls. Sacred Heaven! if we did not daily see it, who would believe that parents would be so criminally careless ? But it is not only in regard to the female members of a family that the admission of this class of papeiib into the domestic circle is to be most strongly condemned; it is equally to be reprobated in respect to the interest and the welfare of our sons. Eefraining altogether from a reference to the moral contamination contained in them, I would just glance at the evils hence resulting from another point of view. These advertisements are the traps set by a cowardl}) class of miscreants to catch the young and credulous, suffer- ing, in reality or imagination, under any one of the maladies, the pretended cure of which forms the basis of their frauds and extortions. How, then, can fathers be so blind, be so cruelly thoughtless, as to incur the risk of their sons being thus entrapped into the merciless toils of these vagabonds ? I confess that to me such conduct is perfectly inexplicable. In my next I shall treat of the quacks themselves; that is, I shall lay before your readers an account of the manner in which the quack firms are first established. I shall then relate to you the schemes they adopt to palm themselves on the public as duly-qualified medical men, and thus entrap the suffering and credulous ; and, finally, I g-hall expose the various dodges they practise in order to plunder those who are so unfortunate as to fall into their toils. In this narra- tion I shall refer only to the proceedings of two or three of the more notorious quacks; for it is obvious that it would be impossible, within the space of these communications, to refer pointedly to each one of the numerous impostors who infest this metropolis. Indeed, if it were possible, it would scarcely be necessary to my object, inasmuch as the exposure of the means whereby some of the principal quacks carry on their nefarious trade will serve as a type of the methods of fraud and extortion which the whole gang more or less pursue, and will be a sufficient warning against seeking the aid of any one of them.