{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_38929/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_38929","id":"gutenberg_38929","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38929","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Health & Medicine","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Osteopathic medicine","Quacks and quackery"],"text":"Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at\nhttp://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images\ngenerously made available by The Internet Archive.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  QUACKS AND GRAFTERS\n\n\n  BY EX-OSTEOPATH\n\n\n  _BEING AN EXPOSE OF THE STATE OF\n  THERAPEUTICS AT THE PRESENT TIME,\n  WITH SOME REASONS WHY SUCH\n  GRAFTERS FLOURISH, AND SUGGESTIONS\n  TO REMEDY THE\n  DEPLORABLE MUDDLE_\n\n\n  PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR 1908 BY\n  THE CINCINNATI MEDICAL BOOK COMPANY\n  CINCINNATI OHIO\n\n\n\n\n  COPYRIGHTED, 1908,\n  BY THE CINCINNATI MEDICAL BOOK CO.\n\n\n  THE LANCET-CLINIC PRESS,\n  CINCINNATI, OHIO.\n\n\n\n\n  TO THE\n  GREAT AMERICAN PUBLIC\n  IS DEDICATED\n  THIS BOOK, WITH EVERY\n  CONFIDENCE IN ITS PROVERBIAL COMMON SENSE AND\n  DISCRIMINATION, AND WITH THE HOPE OF\n  HAVING ADDED A MITE TOWARD GREATER\n  AND BETTER THINGS IN THE\n  ART OF AESCULAPIUS.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThere has been but one other period in the history of medicine when so\nmany systems of the healing art were in vogue. In the seventeenth century,\nduring the Reform Period, following the many epoch-making discoveries, as\nthe blood and lymph circulation; when alchemy was abandoned and chemistry\nbecame a science; when Galileo regenerated physics, and zoology and botany\nwere largely extended; when Newton enunciated the laws of gravitation;\nwhen cinchona bark, the great febrifuge, was introduced into Europe, and\nthe cell doctrine was founded by Hooke, Malpighi and Grew, the old\nHippocratic, Galenic and Arabic systems of medicine were undermined. In\nthat transition period, when the medical profession was trying to adjust\nits practice with the many new theories, its authoritative voice was lost,\nand in the struggle for something tangible, innumerable new systems sprang\nup.\n\nFour systems stood out most prominently--the pietistically colored\nParacelsism of Von Helmont, with its sal, sulphur and mercury; the\nchemical system of Sylvius and Willis, with its acid and alkali theory of\ncause and cure of disease; the iatro-chemical system, with its\nfermentation theory; and the iatro-physical system, which contended that\nhealth was dependent upon proper adjustment of physical and mechanical\narrangements of the body. The old humoral theory of Galen had its\nadherents, influencing all of the newer systems. And suggestive\ntherapeutics was rampant in most grotesque and fanciful forms. Witchcraft,\nsuperstition and cabalism were fostered even at the various European\ncourts. As Roswell Park says in his History of Medicine: \"With delightful\nsatire Harvey divided the physicians of the day into six classes--the\nFerrea, Asinaria, Jesuitica, Aquaria, Laniaria and Stercoraria--according\nas their favorite systems of treatment were the administration of iron,\nasses' milk, cinchona, mineral water, venesection or purgatives.\"\n\nThat history repeats itself is a truism well illustrated in medicine\nto-day. The new cellular pathology, founded by Virchow and Cohnheim and\nelaborated by innumerable men since; the discovery of parasitism and the\ngerm theory by Davaine, Pasteur and Koch; antisepsis by Lister; the\nintroduction of anesthesia by Morton, Simpson and Koller; the application\nof more exact methods in diagnosis by Skoda and others, and many other\ninnovations and discoveries have revolutionized medicine in the nineteenth\ncentury. The transition period of to-day is very analogous to that of the\nseventeenth century.\n\nSuggestive therapeutics has its advocates in the Emmanuel movement,\nLourdes water, Christian Science, New Thought, faith cure and\npsycho-therapy. The uric acid theory is a curious survival of the old\nchemical system. The iatro-chemical system is the prototype of\nMetchnikoff's theory of longevity. And, strange to relate, despite the\nclaims of wonderful discovery by A. T. Still and D. D. Palmer, the\niatro-physical system of the seventeenth century was more complete as a\nguide to healing than is Osteopathy and Chiropractics to-day. Verily,\nthere is nothing novel under the solar rays.\n\nThat graft in surgery and shystering in internal medicine exists no one in\nthe medical profession denies. It has come so insidiously that the\nprofession itself was taken unawares. However, that sweeping denunciation\nof the entire profession should follow is unwarranted. Every other\nprofession and calling has its black sheep, and it is the duty of the\nleaders in each to eliminate them. Elimination, however, cannot come\nentirely from within. The public has its share of responsibility and duty\nto perform, and the sooner this is realized, the better for all concerned.\n\nTo aid in the work of obtaining better things in therapeutics, the\nestablishment and extension of a national bureau or department of health\nis imperative. Any effort along this line will hasten the day of rational\nhealing. Preventive medicine will then gradually supplant the present\nhaphazard system of palliation and cure.\n\nAnd education is the watchword of the day!\n\nG. STROHBACH, M.D.\n\nCincinnati, Ohio, 1908.\n\n\n\n\nPUBLISHERS' NOTE.\n\n\nThough written in a satirical vein, this book is intended as a warning to\nthe medical profession and the public alike. And, while amusing, the\nwealth of information and comment on certain abuses in the healing art\nshould lead to serious consideration. This book is published without bias\nor prejudice toward any school of medicine or system of therapeutics as\nsuch. But that quackery and graft are rampant among those who pose as\nhealers has become so apparent that we believe every influence to expose\nand weed out the pretenders is timely.\n\nThe author is an Osteopath who abandoned the practice of Osteopathy after\na few years' earnest endeavor, convinced of the untenable position of\nthose professing the practice of this art. He returned to the more\ncongenial profession of teaching. For obvious reasons he publishes this\nbook under a _nom de plume_. He is abundantly fortified with facts to\nsubstantiate his criticism.\n\nThat his effort may be of some service in clarifying the situation and\nlead to better therapeutics in the near future, is the sincere hope of\n\nTHE PUBLISHERS.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n  PART I--IN GENERAL.\n\n  CHAPTER I--BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION                                     17\n\n    The Augean Stables of Therapeutics--The Remedy--Reason for\n    Absence of Dignified Literary Style--Diploma Mills--\"All\n    but Holy\"--Dr. Geo. H. Simmons' Opinion--American Medical\n    Association Not Tyrannical--Therapeutics a Deplorable\n    Muddle.\n\n\n  CHAPTER II--GRAFT AND FAILUREPHOBIA                                   25\n\n    The Commercial Spirit--Commercialism in Medicine--Stock\n    Company Medical Colleges--Graft in Medicines, Drugs and\n    Nostrums--Encyclopedia Graft--\"Get-Rich-Quick\"\n    Propositions--Paradoxes in Character of Shysters--Money\n    Madness--Professional Failurephobia--The Fortunate Few and\n    the Unfortunate Many--A Cause of Quackery--The Grafter's\n    Herald--The World's Standard--Solitary Confinement--The\n    Prisoner's Dream--Working up a Cough--Situation Appalling\n    Among St. Louis Physicians--A Moral Pointed.\n\n\n  CHAPTER III--WHY QUACKS FLOURISH                                      37\n\n    American Public Generally Intelligent--But Densely\n    Ignorant in Important Particulars--Cotton Mather and\n    Witchcraft--A.B.s, A.M.s, M.D.s and Ph.D.s Espousing\n    Christian Science, Chiropractics and Osteopathy--\n    Gullibility of the College Bred--The Ignorant Suspicious\n    of New Things--The Educated Man's Creed--Dearth of\n    Therapeutic Knowledge by the Laity--Is the Medical\n    Profession to Blame?--Physician's Arguments\n    Controvertible--Host of Incompetents Among the Regular\n    Physicians--Report of Committee on Medical Colleges--The\n    \"Big Doctors\"--Doc Booze--The \"Leading Doctor\"--Osler's\n    Drug Nihilism--The X-Ray Graft.\n\n\n  CHAPTER IV--TURBID THERAPEUTICS                                       51\n\n    An Astounding Array of Therapeutic\n    Systems--Diet--Water--Optics--Hemotherapy--Consumption\n    Cures--Placebos--Inconsistencies and Contradictions--\n    Osler's Opinion of Appendicitis--Fair Statement of\n    Limitations in Medicine Desirable.\n\n\n  CHAPTER V--THE EXPERT WITNESS AND PROPRIETARY MEDICINES               57\n\n    The \"Great Nerve Specialist\"--The Professional Witness a\n    Jonah--The \"Railway Spine\"--Is it Lack of Fairness and\n    Honesty or Lack of Skill and Learning?--Destruction of\n    Fine Herds of Cattle Without Compensation--Koch's Dictum\n    and Denial--Koch's Tuberculin--The Serum Tribe--Stupendous\n    Sale of Nostrums--Druggist's Arguments--Use of Proprietary\n    Medicines Stimulates Sale of Nostrums.\n\n\n  CHAPTER VI--FAITH CURE AND GRAFT IN SURGERY                           62\n\n    Suggestive Therapeutics Chief Stock in Trade--Advice of a\n    Medical College President--Disease Prevention Rather than\n    Cure--Hygienic Living--The Medical Pretender--\"Dangerous\n    Diagnosis\" Graft--Great Flourish of Trumpets--No \"Starving\n    Time\" for Him--\"Big Operations\"--Mutilating the Human\n    Body--Dr. C. W. Oviatt's Views--Dr. Maurice H.\n    Richardson's Incisive Statements--Crying Need for\n    Reform--Surgery that is Useless, Conscienceless and for\n    Purely Commercial Ends--Spirit of Surgical Graft\n    Especially in the West--Fee-Splitting and Commissions--A\n    Nation of \"Dollar-Chasers\"--The Public's Share of\n    Responsibility--Senn's Advice--The \"Surgical Conscience.\"\n\n\n  PART II--OSTEOPATHY.\n\n  CHAPTER VII--SOME DEFINITIONS AND HISTORIES                           79\n\n    Romantic Story of Osteopathy's Origin--An Asthma\n    Cure--Headache Cured by Plowlines--Log Rolling to Relieve\n    Dysentery--Osteopathy is Drugless Healing--Osteopathy is\n    Manual Treatment--Liberty of Blood, Nerves and\n    Arteries--Perfect Skeletal Alignment and Tonic,\n    Ligamentous, Muscular and Facial Relaxation--Andrew T.\n    Still in 1874--Kirksville, Mo., as a Mecca--American\n    School of Osteopathy--The Promised Golden Stream of\n    Prosperity--The \"Mossbacks\"--\"Who's Who in Osteopathy.\"\n\n\n  CHAPTER VIII--THE OSTEOPATHIC PROPAGANDA                              88\n\n    Wonderful Growth Claimed to Prove Merit--Osteopathy is\n    Rational Physio-Therapy--Growth is in Exact Proportion to\n    Advertising Received--Booklets and Journals for Gratuitous\n    Distribution--Osteopathy Languishes or Flourishes by\n    Patent Medicine Devices--Circular Letter from Secretary of\n    American Osteopathic Association--Boosts by Governors and\n    Senators--The Especial Protege of Authors--Mark\n    Twain--Opie Reed--Emerson Hough--Sam Jones--The Orificial\n    Surgeon--The M.D. Seeking Job as \"Professor\"--The Lure of\n    \"Honored Doctor\" with \"Big Income\"--No Competition.\n\n\n  CHAPTER IX--THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF OSTEOPATHY                 97\n\n    Infallible, Touch-the-Button System that Always\n    Cured--Indefinite Movements and Manipulations--Wealth of\n    Undeveloped Scientific Facts--Osteopaths Taking M.D.\n    Course--The Standpatter and the Drifter--The\n    \"Lesionist\"--\"Bone Setting\"--\"Inhibiting a\n    Center\"--Chiropractics--\"Finest Anatomists in the\n    World\"--How to Cure Torticollis, Goitre and Enteric\n    Troubles--A Successful Osteopath--Timid Old\n    Maids--Osteopathic Philanthropy.\n\n\n  CHAPTER X--OSTEOPATHY AS RELATED TO SOME NOTORIOUS FAKES             111\n\n    Sure Shot Rheumatism Cure--Regular Practitioner's\n    Discomfiture--Medicines Alone Failed to Cure\n    Rheumatism--Osteopathy Relieves Rheumatic and Neuralgic\n    Pains--\"Move Things\"--\"Pop\" Stray Cervical Vertebrae--Find\n    Something Wrong and Put it Right--Terrible Neck-Wrenching,\n    Bone-Twisting Ordeal.\n\n\n  CHAPTER XI--TAPEWORMS AND GALLSTONES                                 119\n\n    Plug-hatted Faker--Frequency of Tapeworms--Some Tricks\n    Exposed--How the Defunct Worm was Passed--Rubber\n    Near-Worm--New Gallstone Cure--Relation to\n    Osteopathy--Perfect, Self-Oiling, \"Autotherapeutic\"\n    Machine--Touch the Button--The Truth About the Consumption\n    and Insanity Cures.\n\n\n  THE MORAL TO THE TALE                                                125\n\n  Honesty--Plain Dealing--Education.\n\n\n\n\nPART ONE\n\nIN GENERAL\n\n\n\n\nQuacks and Grafters\n\nBy EX-OSTEOPATH\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nBY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.\n\n    The Augean Stables of Therapeutics--The Remedy--Reason for Absence of\n    Dignified Literary Style--Diploma Mills--\"All but Holy\"--Dr. Geo. H.\n    Simmons' Opinion--American Medical Association Not\n    Tyrannical--Therapeutics of To-day a Deplorable Muddle.\n\n\nIn writing this booklet I do not pose as a Hercules come to cleanse the\nAugean stables of therapeutics. No power but that of a public conscience\nawakened to the prevalence of quackery and grafting in connection with\ndoctoring can clear away the accumulated filth.\n\nLike Marc Antony, I claim neither wit, wisdom nor eloquence; but as a\nplain, blunt man I shall \"speak right on of the things I do know\" about\nquacks and grafters. In writing of Osteopathy I claim the right to speak\nas \"one having authority,\" for I have been on the \"inside.\" As to grafting\nin connection with the practice of medicine I take the viewpoint of a\nlayman, who for years has carefully read the medical literature of the\npopular press, and of late years a number of representative professional\njournals, in an effort to get an intelligent conception of the theory and\npractice of therapeutics.\n\nI have not tried to write in a professional style. I have been reading\nprofessional literature steadily for some time, and need a rest from the\ndignified ponderosity of some of the stuff I had to flounder through.\n\nI have just read an exposition of the beautiful and rational simplicity of\nOsteopathy. This exposition is found in a so-called great American\nencyclopedia that has been put into our schools as an authoritative source\nof knowledge for the making of intelligent citizens of our children. It is\nwritten by a man whose name, like that of the scholar James Whitcomb Riley\ndescribes, is \"set plumb at the dash-board of the whole indurin'\nalphabet,\" so many are his scholarly degrees.\n\nHow impressive it is to look through an Osteopathic journal, and see\nexhaustive (and exhausting) dissertations under mighty names followed by\nsuch proof of profound wisdom as, A.M., M.S., D.O., or A.B., A.M., M.D.,\nD.O. Who could believe that a man with all the wisdom testified to by such\nan array of degrees (no doubt there were more, but the modesty that goes\nwith great learning forbade their display) could be imposed upon by a fad\nor fake? Or would espouse and proclaim anything that was not born of\ntruth, and filled with blessing and benefaction for mankind?\n\nScholarly degrees should be accepted as proof of wisdom, but after reading\nsuch expositions as that in the cyclopedia, or some of those in the\njournals, one sometimes wonders if all the above degrees might not be\ncondensed into the one--D.F.\n\nAs for dignified style in discussing the subject before me, I believe my\nreaders will agree that dignity fits such subjects about as appropriately\nas a ten-dollar silk hat fits a ten-cent corn doctor, or a hod-carrier\nconverted into a first-class Osteopath.\n\nWhile speaking of dignity, I want to commend an utterance of the editor of\nthe _Journal of the American Medical Association_, made in a recent issue\nof that journal. It was in reply to a correspondent who had \"jumped onto\"\nthe editor of a popular magazine because in exposing graft and quackery he\nhad necessarily implicated a certain brand of medical practitioners. The\nman who criticised the editor of the popular magazine impresses a layman\nas one of that class of physicians that has done so much to destroy the\nrespect and confidence of intelligent students of social conditions for\nmedical men as a class, and in the efficacy of their therapeutic agencies.\nAlthough the committee appointed by the great society, of which he is\npresumably a member, reported that more than half of the medical colleges\nin this country are utterly unfit by equipment to turn out properly\nqualified physicians; that a large per cent of these unworthy schools are\nlittle better than diploma mills conducted for revenue only, and in spite\nof the incompetency and shystering that reputable physicians, in\nself-defense and in duty to the public must expose, this man proclaims\nthat the medical profession is \"all but holy\" in its care for the souls\nand minds as well as the bodies of the people. With all respect for the\ndevoted gentlemen among physicians we ask, Is it any wonder that the\nintelligent laity smile at such gush? And this man goes on to say that\n\"99 per cent. of the practicing physicians of the country belong to this\ngenuine class.\"\n\nMembers of the American Medical Association may think that such\ndiscussions are for the profession, and should be kept \"in the family.\"\nPerhaps they should, and no doubt it would be much better for the\nprofession if many of the things said by leading medical men never reached\nthe thinking public. But the fact remains that the contradictory and\ninconsistent things said do reach the public, and usually in garbled and\ndistorted form. The better and safer way is, if possible, to see to it\nthat there is no cause to say such things, or if criticisms must be made\nlet physicians be fair and frank with the people, and treat the public as\na party deeply concerned in all therapeutic discussions and\ninvestigations. And here applies the utterance of the editor of the\n_Journal of the American Medical Association_ that I wanted to commend:\n\n    \"The time has passed when we can wrap ourselves in a cloak of\n    professional dignity and assume an attitude of infallibility toward\n    the public. The more intelligent of the laity have opinions on medical\n    subjects, often _bizarre_, it must be admitted, but frequently well\n    grounded, and a fair discussion of such opinions can result only in a\n    greater measure of confidence in and respect for the medical\n    profession.\"\n\nSuch honest, fair-minded declarations, together with expressions of\nsimilar import from scores of brainy physicians and surgeons in active\npractice, are the anchors that hold the medical ship from being dashed to\nwreckage upon the rocks of public opinion by the currents, cross-currents\nand counter-currents of the turbid stream of therapeutics.\n\nThe people have strongly suspected graft in surgery, many of them know it,\nand nearly all have been taught by journals of the new schools that such\ngrafting is a characteristic of medical schools, and is asserted to be\ncondoned and encouraged by the profession as a whole. How refreshing,\nthen, to hear a representative surgeon of the American Medical Association\nsay:\n\n    \"The moral standards set for professional men are going to be higher\n    in the future, and with the limelight of public opinion turned on the\n    medical and surgical grafter, the evil will cease to exist.\"\n\nContrast such frankness with the gush of the writer who, in the same\norgan, said 99 per cent. of the medical men were \"all but holy\" soul\nguardians, and judge which is most likely to inspire confidence in the\nintelligent laity.\n\nRight here I want to say that since I have been studying through a\ncartload of miscellaneous medical journals, I have changed my opinion of\nthe American Medical Association. It is a matter of little consequence to\nmedical men, of course, what my individual opinion may be. It may,\nhowever, be of some consequence and interest to them to know that the\nopinion of multitudes are being formed by the same distorting agencies\nthat formed the opinion I held until I studied copies of the _Journal of\nthe American Medical Association_ in comparison with the \"riff-raff,\nrag-tag and bob-tail\" of the representative organs of the myriad cults,\nisms, fads and fancies that \"swarm like half-formed insects on the banks\nof the Nile.\"\n\nAs portrayed by the numerous new school journals I receive, the American\nMedical Association is a tyrannical monster, conceived in greed and\nbigotry, born of selfishness and arrogance, cradled in iniquity and\ngeneral cussedness, improved by man-slaughter, forced upon the people at\nthe point of the bayonet and maintained by ignorance and superstition.\nMost magazines representing various \"drugless\" therapies, I found, spoke\nof the American Medical Association in about the same way. And not only\nthese, but a number of so-called regular medical journals, as well as\nindependent journals and booklets circulated to boost some individual, all\nadded their modicum of vituperation.\n\nWhen you consider that thousands of Osteopaths (yes, there are several\nthousand of them in the field treating the people) are buying some one of\nthe various Osteopathic journals by the hundreds every month and\ndistributing them gratis to the people until the whole country is\nliterally saturated, and that other cults are almost as busy disseminating\ntheir literature, do you wonder that the people are getting biased notions\nof the medical profession in general and the American Medical Association\nin particular? While my faith in the integrity and efficacy of the \"new\nschool\" remained intact and at a fanatical pitch, my sympathy was with the\n\"independent\" journals. The doctrine of \"therapeutic liberty\" seemed a\nfair one, and one that was only American. After studying both sides, and\ncomparing the journals, I have commenced to wonder if the man who preaches\nuniversal liberty so strenuously is not, in most cases, only working for\n_individual license_.\n\nI wrote a paper some time ago, out of which this booklet has grown, and\nsent it to the editor of the _Journal of the American Medical\nAssociation_. He was kind enough to say it was full of \"severe truth\" that\nshould be published to the laity. In that paper I diagnosed the\ntherapeutic situation of to-day as a \"deplorable muddle,\" and I am glad to\nhave my diagnosis confirmed by a prominent writer in the _Journal_ of the\nAssociation. He says:\n\n    \"Therapeutics to-day cannot be called a science, it can only be called\n    a confusion. With a dozen dissenting opinions as to the most essential\n    and efficacious therapeutic agents inside the school, and a horde of\n    new school pretenders outside, each with his own little system that he\n    heralds as the best and _only_ right way, and all these separated in\n    everything but their attack on the regulars, there certainly is a\n    'turbidity of therapeutics!'\"\n\nAnd this therapeutic stream is the one that flows for the \"healing of\nnations!\" Should not its waters be pure and uncontaminated, so that the\ninvalid who thirsts for health may drink with confidence in their healing\nvirtues?\n\nIf the stream shows turbid to the physician, how must it appear to his\npatient as he stands upon the shore and sees conflicting currents boil and\nswirl in fierce contention, forming eddies that are continually stranding\npoor devils on the drifts of discarded remedies, while streams of murky\nwaters (new schools) pour in from every side and add their filth. To the\npatient it becomes \"confusion, worse confounded.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nGRAFT AND FAILUREPHOBIA.\n\n    The Commercial Spirit--Commercialism in Medicine--Stock Company\n    Medical Colleges--Graft in Medicines, Drugs and Nostrums--Encyclopedia\n    Graft--\"Get-Rich-Quick\" Propositions--Paradoxes in Character of\n    Shysters--Money Madness--Professional Failurephobia--The Fortunate Few\n    and the Unfortunate Many--A Cause of Quackery--The Grafter's\n    Herald--The World's Standard--Solitary Confinement--The Prisoner's\n    Dream--Working up a Cough--Situation Appalling Among St. Louis\n    Physicians--A Moral Pointed.\n\n\nThis chapter is not written because I possess a hammer that must be used.\nMy liver is sound, and I have a pretty good job. Neither palpation nor\n\"osculation\" (as one of our bright Osteopathic students once said in\ngiving means used in physical diagnosis) reveals any \"lesion\" in my\ndomestic affairs.\n\nHowever, it doesn't take the jaundiced eye of a pessimist to see the graft\nthat abounds to-day. The grafter is abroad in the land like a wolf seeking\nwhom he may devour, and the sheep-skin (sometimes a diploma) that once\ndisguised his wolfish character has become so tattered by much use that it\nnow deceives only the most foolish sheep. Once a sheep-skin of patriotism\ndisguised the politician, and people fancied that a public office was a\npublic trust. The revelations of the last few years have taught us that\ntoo often a public office is but a public steal.\n\nThe commercial spirit dominates the age. Nothing is too sacred for its\ndefiling hands to touch. The church does not escape. Preachers accuse each\nother of following their Lord for the loaves and fishes. Lawyers accuse\neach other of taking fees from both sides. Leading physicians\nunhesitatingly say that commercialism is the bane of the medical\nprofession. They say hundreds are rushing into medicine because they have\nheard of the large earnings of a few fortunate city physicians, and think\nthey are going into something that will bring them plenty of \"easy money.\"\nStock company medical colleges have been organized by men whose main\nobject was to get a share of the money these hosts of would-be doctors had\nto spend. Even the new systems of therapeutics such as Osteopathy, that\nhave boomed themselves into a kind of popularity, have their schools that,\nto believe what some of them say of each other, are dominated by the\nrankest commercialism, being, in fact, nothing but Osteopathic diploma\nmills.\n\nNot alone has graft pervaded the schools whose business it is supposed to\nbe to make capable physicians. The graft that has been uncovered lately in\nconnection with the preparation and sale of medicines, drugs and nostrums\nis almost incredible when we think of the danger to health and human life\ninvolved. The same brand of ghouls who tamper with and juggle medicines\nfor gain, do not hesitate to adulterate and poison food. With their\ninferior, filthy and \"preserved\" milk they slaughter the innocents to\nmake a paltry profit. The story Sinclair wrote of the nauseating horrors\nof slaughter-houses was enough to drive us all to the ranks of vegetarians\nforever.\n\nOnly recently I chanced to learn that even in the business of publishing\nthere is a little world of graft peculiar to itself. I was told by a\nresponsible book man that the encyclopedia containing a learned (?)\nexposition of the science of Osteopathy is the product of grafters, who\ntook old material and worked in a little new matter, such as the\nexposition of Osteopathy, to make their work appear up to date to the\ncasual observer. Then, to make the graft worse, for a consideration, it\nwas alleged, a popular publisher let his name be used, and thus thousands\nwere caught who bought the work relying on the reputation of the\npublisher, who, it appears, had nothing whatever to do with the\nencyclopedia.\n\nPhysicians, school teachers and preachers, all supposedly poor financiers,\nknow about the swarms of grafters who hound them with \"get-rich-quick\"\npropositions into which they want them to put their scant surplus of\nsalary or income as they get it. A physician told me he would have been\n$2,000 better off if a year or two before he had been a subscriber to a\ncertain medical journal that poses as a sort of \"watch dog\" of the\nphysician's treasury.\n\nPessimistic as this review may seem, there is yet room for optimism, and,\nparadoxical as it may sound, men are not always as bad as their business.\nI know of a lawyer who in his profession has the reputation of being the\nworst shyster that ever argued a case. No scheme is too dishonest for his\nuse if it will win his case. Yet this man outside of his profession, in\nhis home, and in his society, is as fine a gentleman as you would wish to\nmeet--a model husband and father, a kind and obliging neighbor, a generous\nsupporter of all that is for the upbuilding and bettering of society.\nStrong case, do you say? I believe our country is full of such cases. And\nI believe the medical profession has thousands of just such men, men whose\ninstincts are for nobility of character and whose moral ideals are high,\nbut whose business standards are groveling.\n\nThey live a sort of \"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde\" life, and why? Are they not\nto blame? And are they not to be classed as scoundrels? Yes--and no. These\nmen are diseased. Their contact with the world has inoculated them with\nthe world's contagion. What is this disease? The diagnosis has been\nconsidered simple. So simple that the world has called it commercialism,\nor money madness, and treated the disease according to this diagnosis\nwithout studying it further. May it not be true that, for many cases at\nleast, the diagnosis is wrong? Do men choose the strenuous, money-grabbing\nlife because they really love it, or love the money? I believe thousands\nof men in professional life to-day, who are known as dollar-chasers,\nreally long for a more simple life, but the disease they have has robbed\nthem of the power to choose \"that better part.\" And that disease is not\nmoney madness, but _failurephobia_.\n\nThe fear of failing, or of being called a failure, dominates the\nprofessional world as no other power could. It claims thousands of poor\nfellows who were brought up to the active, worth-while life of the farm or\nof a trade, and chains them to a miserable, sham, death-in-life sort of\nexistence, that they come to loathe, but dare not leave because of their\ndisease, failurephobia.\n\nSuccess is the world's standard. Succeed in your business or profession,\nby honest means if you can, but _succeed_! At least, keep up the\nappearance of succeeding, and you may keep your place in society. It may\nbe known that your business is poor, and that you go to your office and\nsit in solitude day in and day out, and that you starve and skimp at home,\nbut so long as you keep up the _show_, you are a \"professional man!\" What\nmighty courage it takes to acknowledge what everybody else knows, and\n_quit_! A writer in a medical journal told of a young physician in Boston\nwho put an ad. in a daily paper asking for a job in which a strong man\ncould use the strength a manly man ought to be proud of, to earn an honest\nliving. If men only had the courage, I wonder how many such ads. would\nappear in the columns of our papers!\n\nAn old schoolmate, who is a lawyer in a Western city, told me that of the\nmore than two hundred lawyers of that city, twenty had practically all the\nlaw business, and of that twenty a half dozen got the big cases in which\nthere was most money. It is largely so in every city and town. And what\napplies to the lawyer applies to the physician, though perhaps not to so\ngreat an extent. And while the fortunate few get most of the practice,\nand make most of the money, what are the unfortunate many doing? Holding\non, starving, skimping, keeping up appearances, and, while young, hoping\nagainst hope for better days. But when hope long deferred has made the\nsoul sick, and hope itself dies, what then? Keep up appearances, you are a\nprofessional man. You can't be a quitter. It would be humorous, were it\nnot so pathetic, to see the old doctor who has dragged along for years,\nbarely eking out a living, put on the silk hat of his more ambitious days\nand wear it with dignity along with his shiny threadbare trousers and\nshort coat, making a desperate spurt to keep up with the dashing young\nfellow just out of school.\n\n_Failurephobia!_ Among professional men what a terrible disease it is! I\nhave known it to drive a young man, who might have been happy and useful\nas a farmer or mechanic, into a suicide's grave. Such cases are not\nuncommon. Who are the M.D.s whose pictures and glaring ads. appear in\nthose 15-cent papers published in Augusta, Me., and in many daily and even\nreligious papers? Are they men who took to graft and disgraced their\nprofession because they loved that kind of life, and the stigma it brings?\nNot in many cases. Most of them perhaps come from the ranks of ambitious\nfellows who lost out in the strife for legitimate practice, but who would\nnot acknowledge failure, so launched into quackery, and became _notorious_\nif they could not become noted.\n\nStrange as it may seem, the fact that a professional man is a notorious\ngrafter abroad does not necessarily deprive him of social standing at\nhome. I have in mind a man whose smug face appears in connection with a\npage of loud and lurid literature in almost every 15-cent _Grafters\nHerald_ from Maine to California; yet this man at home was pointed to with\npride as an eminently successful man. He wore his silk hat to church, and\nthe church of which he was a valued member was proud of the distinction he\ngave it. A Western city has an industry to which it \"points with pride,\"\nand the pictures of the huge plant appear conspicuously placed in\nillustrated boom editions of the city's enterprising papers. This octopus\nreaches out its slimy tentacles to every corner of the United States,\nfeeling for poor wretches smitten by disease, real or fancied. When once\nit gets hold of them it spews its inky fluids around them until they\n\"cough up\" their hard-earned dollars that go to perpetuate this \"pride of\nthe West.\"\n\nThe most popular themes of the preacher, lecturer and magazine writer\nto-day are Honesty, Anti-graft, Tainted Money, True Success, etc. You have\nheard and read them all, and have been thrilled with the stirring words\n\"An honest man is the noblest work of God.\" The preacher and the people\nthink they are sincere, and go home congratulating themselves that they\nare capable of entertaining such sentiment. When we observe their social\nlives we are led to wonder how much of that noble sentiment is only cant\nafter all.\n\n  THE WORLD'S STANDARD.\n\n  The world will say that goodness is the only thing worth while,\n  But the man who's been successful is the man who gets the smile.\n  If the \"good\" man is a failure, a fellow who is down,\n  He's a fellow \"up against it,\" and gets nothing but a frown.\n\n  The fellow who is frosted is the fellow who is down,\n  No matter how he came there, how honest he has been,\n  They find him just the same when being there's a sin.\n\n  A man is scarce insulted if you tell him he is bad,\n  To tell him he is tricky will never make him mad;\n  If you say that he's a schemer the world will say he's smart,\n  But say that he's a failure if you want to break his heart.\n\n  If you want to be \"respected\" and \"pointed to with pride,\"\n  \"Air\" yourselves in \"autos\" when you go to take a ride;\n  No matter how you get them, with the world that \"cuts no ice,\"\n  Your neighbors know you have them and know they're new and nice.\n\n  The preacher in the pulpit will tell you, with a sigh,\n  That rich men go with Dives when they come at last to die;\n  And men who've been like Lazarus, failures here on earth,\n  Will find their home in Heaven where the angels know their worth.\n\n  But the preacher goes with Dives when the dinner hour comes;\n  He prefers a groaning table to grabbing after crumbs.\n  Yes; he'll take Dives' \"tainted money\" just to lighten up his load.\n  Enough to let him travel in the little camel road.\n\nThat may sound like the wail of a pessimistic knocker, but every observing\nman knows it's mostly truth. The successful man is the man who gets the\nworld's smile, and he gets the smile with little regard to the methods\nemployed to achieve his \"success.\"\n\nThis deplorable social condition is largely responsible for the\nmultitudinous forms of graft that exist to-day. To \"cut any ice\" in\n\"society\" you must be somebody or keep up the appearance of being\nsomebody. Even if the world knows you are going mainly on pretensions, it\nwill \"wink the other eye\" and give you the place your pretensions claim.\nMost of the folk who make up \"society\" are slow to engage in stone\nslinging, for they are wise enough to consider the material of which their\nown domiciles are constructed.\n\nTo make an application of all this, let us not be too hard on the quack\nand the shyster. He is largely a product of our social system. Society has\nplaced temptations before him to get money, and he must keep up the\nappearances of success at any cost of honesty and independent manhood. The\npoor professional man who is a victim of that fearful disease,\nfailurephobia, in his weakness has become a slave to public opinion. He is\nmade to \"tread the mill\" daily in the monotonous round to and from his\noffice where he is serving a life sentence of solitary confinement, while\nhis wife sews or makes lace or gives music lessons to support the family.\n\nI say solitary confinement advisedly, for now a professional man is even\ndenied the solid comfort of the old-time village doctor or lawyer who\ncould sit with his cronies and fellow-loafers in the shade of the tavern\nelm, or around the grocer's stove, and maintain his professional standing\n(or rather sitting). In the large towns and cities that will not do\nto-day. If the professional man is not busy, he must _seem_ busy. A\nphysician changed his office to get a south front, as he felt he _must_\nhave sunshine, and he dared not do like Dr. Jones, get it loafing on the\nstreets. Not that a doctor would not enjoy spending some of his long,\nlonely hours talking with his friends in the glorious sunshine, but it\nwould not do. People would say: \"Doctor Blank must not get much to do now.\nI see him loafing on the street like old Doc Jones. I guess Doctor\nNewcomer has made a 'has been' of him, too.\"\n\nI know a young lawyer who sat in his office for two long years without a\nsingle case. Yet every day he passed through the street with the brisk\nwalk of one in a hurry to get back to pressing business. He was so busy\n(?) that he had to read the paper as he walked to save time to--wait!\n\nDid you ever sit in the office with one of these prisoners and watch him\nlooking out of his window upon prosperous farmers as they untied fine\nteams and drove away in comfortable carriages? Did you know how to\ntranslate that look in his eye, and the sad abstraction of manner into\nwhich he momentarily sank, in spite of his creed, which taught him to\nalways seem prosperous and contented? The translation was not hard. His\nmind was following that farmer out of town and along the green lanes,\nbordered by meadows and clover bloom, and on down the road through the\ncool twilight of the quiet summer evening, to where the ribbon of dark\ngreen forest, whose cool cadence had called to him so often, changed to\ngroves of whispering trees that bordered the winding stream that spoke of\nthe swimming holes and fishing pools of his boyhood. And on up the road\nagain, across the fertile prairie lands, until he turns in at the gate of\nan orchard-embowered home. And do you think the picture is less attractive\nto this exile because it has not the stately front and the glistening\npaint of the smart house in town? Not at all. The smart house with\nglistening paint is the one he must aspire to in town, but his ideal home\nis that snug farmhouse to which his fancy has followed the prosperous\nfarmer.\n\nThat picture is not altogether a product of poetic fancy. We get glimpses\nof such pictures in confidential talks with lawyers and doctors in almost\nevery town. These poor fellows may fret and sigh for change, \"and spend\ntheir lives for naught,\" but the hunger never leaves them. Not long ago a\nprofessional man who has spent twenty-five years of his life imprisoned in\nan office, most of the time just waiting, spoke to me of his longing to\n\"get out.\" His longing had become almost a madness. He forgot the creed,\nto always appear prosperous, and spoke in bitterness of his life of sham.\nHe said he was like the general of the old rhyme who \"marched up the hill\nand--marched down again.\" He went up to his office and--went home again,\nday in and day out, year in and year out, and for what? But\n_failurephobia_ held him there, and he is there yet.\n\nWhat schemes such unfortunates sometimes concoct to escape their fate! I\nwas told of a physician who was \"working up a cough,\" to have an excuse to\ngo west \"for his health.\" How often we hear or read of some bright doctor\nor lawyer who had a \"growing\" practice and a \"bright future\" before him,\nhaving to change his occupation on account of his health failing!\n\nThis is not an overdrawn picture. I believe old and observing professional\nmen will bear me out in it. Statistics of the conditions in the\nprofessions are unobtainable, but I feel sure would only corroborate my\nstatement. In a recent medical journal was an article by a St. Louis\nphysician, which said the situation among medical men of that city was\n\"appalling.\" Of the 1,100 doctors there, dozens of them were living on\nten-cent lunches at the saloons, and with shiny clothes and unkempt\npersons were holding on in despair, waiting for something better, or\nsinking out of sight of the profession in hopeless defeat.\n\nThis is a discouraging outlook, but it is time some such pictures were\nheld up before the multitude of young people of both sexes who are\nentering medical and other schools, aspiring to professional life. And it\nis time for society to recognize some of the responsibility for graft that\nrests on it, for setting standards that cause commercialism to dominate\nthe age.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nWHY QUACKS FLOURISH.\n\n    American Public Generally Intelligent, but Densely Ignorant in\n    Important Particulars--Cotton Mather and Witchcraft--A.B.'s, A.M.'s,\n    M.D.'s and Ph.D.'s Espousing Christian Science, Chiropractics and\n    Osteopathy--Gullibility of the College Bred--The Ignorant Suspicious\n    of New Things--The Educated Man's Creed--Dearth of Therapeutic\n    Knowledge by the Laity--Is the Medical Profession to\n    Blame?--Physicians' Arguments Controvertible--Host of Incompetents\n    Among the Regular Physicians--Report of Committee on Medical\n    Colleges--The \"Big Doctors\"--Doc Booze--The \"Leading Doctor\"--Osler's\n    Drug Nihilism--The X-Ray Graft.\n\n\nIn spite of the apparent prevalence of graft and the seemingly\nunprecedented dishonesty of those who serve the public, there are not\nwanting signs of the coming of better things. The eminent physician who\nspoke of the turbidity of therapeutics thought it was only that agitation\nthat precedes crystallization and clarification that brings purity, and\nnot greater pollution. May the seeming bad condition not be due in part\nalso to the fact that a larger number of our American people are becoming\nintelligent enough to know the sham from the genuine, and to know when\nthey are being imposed upon?\n\nThat our American people are generally intelligent we know; but that a\npeople may be generally intelligent and yet densely ignorant in important\nparticulars has been demonstrated in all ages, and in no age more clearly\nthan in our own. We wonder how the great scholar, Cotton Mather, could\nhave believed in and taught witchcraft. What shall we think, in this\nenlightened age, of judges pleading for the healing (?) virtues of\nChristian Science, or of college professors taking treatment from a\nChiropractor or magnetic healer; or of the scores of A.B.s, A.M.s, M.D.s,\nPh.D.s, who espouse Osteopathy and use the powers of their supposedly\nsuperior intellect in its propagation?\n\nWe can only come to this conclusion: The college education of to-day does\nnot necessarily make one proof against graft. In fact, it seems that when\nit comes to belief in \"new scientific discoveries,\" the educated are even\nmore easily imposed upon than the ignorant. The ignorant man is apt to be\nsuspicious of new things, especially things that are supposed to require\nscientific knowledge to comprehend. On the other hand, the man who prides\nhimself on his learning is sure he can take care of himself, and often\nthinks it a proof of his superior intelligence to be one of the charter\nmembers of every scientific fad that is sprung on the people by some\ncollege professor who is striving for a medal for work done in original\nresearch.\n\nWhatever the reason may be, the fact remains that frauds and grafts are\nperpetrated upon educated people to-day. In the preceding chapter I tried\nto tell in a general way what some of the grafts are, and something of the\nsocial conditions that help to produce the grafters. I shall now give some\nof the reasons why shysters find so many easy victims for their grafts.\n\nWhen it comes to grafting in connection with therapeutics, the layman's\neducational armor, which affords him protection against most forms of\ngraft in business, seems utterly useless. True, it affords protection\nagainst the more vulgar nostrum grafting that claims its millions of\nvictims among the masses; but when the educated man meets the \"new\ndiscovery,\" \"new method\" grafter he bares his bosom and welcomes him as a\nfriend and fellow-scientist. It is the educated man's creed to-day to\naccept everything that comes to him in the name of science.\n\nThe average educated man knows nothing whatever of the theory and _modus\noperandi_ of therapeutics. He is perhaps possessed of some knowledge of\neverything on the earth, in the heaven above, and in the waters beneath.\nHe is, however, densely ignorant of one of the most important things of\nall--therapeutics--the matter of possessing an intelligent conception of\nwhat are rational and competent means of caring for his body when it is\nattacked by disease. A man who writes A.M., D.D., or LL.D. after his name\nwill send for a physician of \"any old school,\" and put his life or the\nlife of a member of his family into his hands with no intelligent idea\nwhatever as to whether the right thing is being done to save that life.\n\nIs this ignorance of therapeutics on the part of the otherwise educated\nthe result of a studied policy of physicians to mystify the public and\nkeep their theories from the laity? I don't know. Such accusations are\noften made. I read in a medical magazine recently a question the editor\nput to his patrons. He told them he had returned money sent by a layman\nfor a year's subscription to his journal, and asked if such action met\ntheir approval. If the majority of the physicians who read his journal do\napprove his action, their motives _may_ be based on considerations that\nare for the public good, for aught I know, but as a representative layman\nI see much more to commend in the attitude of the editor of the _Journal\nof the A. M. A._ on the question of admitting the public to the confidence\nof the physician. As I have quoted before, he says: \"The time has passed\nwhen we can wrap ourselves in a cloak of professional dignity and assume\nan attitude of infallibility toward the public.\" Such sentiment freely\nexpressed would, I believe, soon change the attitude of the laity toward\nphysicians from one which is either suspicion or open hostility to one of\nrespect and sympathy.\n\nThe argument has been made by physicians that it would not do for the\npublic to read all their discussions and descriptions of diseases, as\ntheir imagination would reproduce all the symptoms in themselves. Others\nhave urged that it will not do to let the public read professional\nliterature, for they might draw conclusions from the varied opinions they\nread that would not be for the good of the profession. Both arguments\nremind one of the arguments parents make as an excuse for not teaching\ntheir children the mysteries of reproduction. They did not want to put\nthoughts into the minds of their children that might do them harm. At the\nsame time they should know that the thoughts would be, and were being, put\ninto their children's minds from the most harmful and corrupting sources.\n\nSo in therapeutics. Are not all symptoms of disease put before the people\nanyway, and from the worst possible sources? If medical men do not know\nthis, let them read some of the ads. in the _Grafter's Herald_. And are\nthe contradictions and inconsistencies in discussions in medical journals\nkept from the public? If medical men think so, let them read the\nOsteopathic and \"independent\" journals. The public knows too much already,\nconsidering the sources from which the knowledge comes. Since people will\nbe informed, why not let them get information that is authentic?\n\nBefore I studied the literature of leading medical journals I believed\nthat the biggest and brainiest physicians were in favor of fair and frank\ndealing with the public. I had learned this much from observation and\ncontact with medical men. After a careful study of the organ of the\nAmerican Medical Association my respect for that organization is greatly\nincreased by finding expressions in numbers of articles which show that my\nopinion was correct. In spite of all the vituperation that is heaped upon\nit, and in spite of the narrowness of individual members, the American\nMedical Association does seem to exist for the good of humanity. The\nstrongest recommendation I have found for it lies in the character of the\nschools and individuals who are most bitter against it. It is usually\ncomplimentary to a man to have rascals array themselves against him.\n\nThere are many able men among physicians who feel keenly their\nlimitations, when they have done their best, and this class would gladly\nhave their patients understand the limitations as well as the powers of\nthe physician. In sorrow and disgust sometimes the conscientious physician\nrealizes that he is handicapped in his work to either prevent or cure\ndisease, because he has to work with people who have wrong notions of his\npower and of the potency of agencies he employs. With shame he must\nacknowledge that the people hold such erroneous ideas of medicine, not\nbecause of general ignorance, but because they have been intentionally\ntaught them by the army of quacks outside and the host of grafters and\nincompetents _inside_ the regular medical profession.\n\nIncompetent physicians, to succeed financially (and that is the only idea\nof success incompetents are capable of appreciating), must practice as\nshysters. They fully understand how necessary it is to the successful\nworking of their grafts to keep the people in ignorance of what a\nphysician may legitimately and conscientiously do.\n\nOur medical brethren who preach the \"all but holy\" doctrine, and want to\nmaintain the \"attitude of infallibility toward the public,\" will disagree\nwith me about there being \"a host\" of incompetents in the regular school\nof medical practice. I shall not ask that they take the possibly biased\nopinion of an ex-Osteopath, but refer them to the report of the committee\nappointed by the American Medical Association to examine the medical\ncolleges of the United States as to their ability to make competent\nphysicians. \"One-half of all the medical schools of our country are\nutterly unfit to turn out properly qualified physicians, and many of them\nare so dominated by commercialism that they are but little better than\ndiploma mills\"! That's what the committee said.\n\nIt has been argued that the capable physician need not fear the\nincompetent pretender, for, like dregs, he must \"settle to the bottom\" and\nfind his place. This might be true if the people had correct notions of\nthe true theory of therapeutics. As it is, the scholarly, competent\nphysician knows (and intelligent laymen often know) that the pretenders\ntoo often are the fellows who get the reputations of being the \"big\ndoctors.\" Why? I think mainly because, being ignorant, they practice\nlargely as quacks, and by curing (?) all kinds of dangerous (on their own\ndiagnosis) diseases quickly, \"breaking up\" this and \"aborting\" that\nunbreakable and unabortable disease (by \"hot air\" treatment mainly), they\nplace the whole system upon such a basis of quackery that the deluded\nmasses often pronounce the best equipped and most conscientious physician\na \"poor doctor,\" because he will not pretend to do all that the\nwind-jamming grafter claims _he has_ done and _can_ do.\n\nHere is a case in point which I know to be true. The farce began some\nyears ago in a small college in Oregon. A big, awkward, harmless-looking\nfellow came to the college one fall and entered the preparatory\ndepartment. At the end of the year, after he had failed in every\nexamination and shown conclusively that he had no capacity to learn\nanything, he was told that it was a waste of time for him to go to school,\nand they could not admit him for another year. Was he squelched? Not he.\nThe fires of ambition yet burned in his breast, and the next year he\nturned up at a medical college. I presume it had the same high educational\nrequirements for admission that some other medical colleges have, and\nenforced them in about the same way. At any rate he met the requirements\n($$$), and pursued his medical researches with bright visions of being a\ndoctor to lure him on. But his inability to learn anything manifested\nitself again, and, presumably, his money gave out. At any rate he was sent\naway without a diploma. Still the fire of ambition was not extinguished in\nhis manly bosom. Regulations were not strict in those days, so he went to\na small town, wore fine clothes, a silk hat and a pompous air, and--within\na short time was being called for forty miles around to \"counsel little\ndoctors\" in their desperate cases. Such cases are all too common, as\nhonest physicians know.\n\nHow humiliating to the conscientiously equipped doctor to hear people say\nof a man who never had more brains than he needed, and had hopelessly\nmuddled what he had by using his own dope and stimulants: \"I tell you Doc\nBooze is the best doctor in town yet when he's half sober!\" Strange, isn't\nit, that in many communities people have an idea that an inclination on\nthe part of a physician toward whisky or dope indicates some peculiar\nmental fitness for a doctor? \"Poor fellow, he formed the habit of taking\nstimulants to keep up when he had to go night and day during the big\ntyphoid epidemic, you know.\" For what per cent. of cases of medical\ndipsomaniacs this constitutes a stock excuse, only medical men know. As an\nOsteopathic physician I was never rushed so that I felt the necessity for\n\"keeping up on stimulants.\" If I had been, to be consistent, I should have\nhad to stimulate (?) mechanically, of course.\n\nNot only do shysters and pretenders abuse the confidence of the masses in\nmatters of diagnosis and medication, but of late years they are working\nanother species of graft that is beginning to react against the\nprofession. This graft consists in the over-use of therapeutic appliances\nthat are all right in their place when legitimately used.\n\nBy what standard is the physician judged by the people who enter his\noffice? It used to be the display of medical literature. Sometimes some of\nit was pseudo-medical literature. Did you ever know a shyster to pad his\nlibrary with Congressional reports? I have. The literature used to be\nconspicuously placed in the waiting-room, with a ponderous volume lying\nopen on the desk.\n\nHave you a \"leading doctor\" in your town? Often he is not only in the lead\nbut has flagged all the others at the quarter post--put them all into the\n\"has been\" class. What an elegant office he has! Plush rugs and luxurious\ncouches in the waiting-room. Double doors into the private and\noperating-rooms, left open when not in actual use to give impressive\nglimpses of glass cases filled with glittering instruments, any one of\nwhich would give the lie to Solomon's declaration that \"there is nothing\nnew under the sun.\" An X-ray machine fills a conspicuous corner. In the\nsame room are tanks, tubes, inhalers, hot-air appliances, vibrators, etc.\nOne full side of the room is filled with shelves that groan under a load\nof the medicines he \"keeps and dispenses.\" What are all of these hundreds\nof bottles for if it is true, as many of our greatest physicians say, that\na comparatively few people are benefited by drugs? These numerous bottles\nmay contain placebos. I do not know as to that, but I do know something of\nthe impression such a display makes on the mind of an intelligent layman.\nThe query in his mind is how much of that entire display is for its\nlegitimate effect on the minds of the patients, and how much of it is to\nimpress the people with the powers of this physician, with his \"wonderful\nequipment\" to cope with all manner of disease?\n\nIf there is any doubt in the minds of physicians that laymen do know and\nthink well over the sayings of drug nihilists, let them talk with\nintelligent people and hear them quote from the editorial page of a great\ndaily such sentiments as this (from the Chicago _Record-Herald_):\n\n    \"Prof. William Osier, the distinguished teacher of medicine, who was\n    taken from this country a few years ago to occupy the most important\n    medical chair in Great Britain, has shocked his profession repeatedly\n    by his pronouncements against the use of drugs and medicines of almost\n    every kind. Only a few days ago he made an address in which he\n    declared that even though most physicians will be deprived of their\n    livelihood, the time must soon come when sound hygienic advice for the\n    prevention of disease will take the place of the present system of\n    prescription and _pretense of cure_. The most able physicians agree\n    with him, even when they are not frank enough to express themselves to\n    the same effect.\"\n\nMedical men need not think, either, that the people who happened to read\nthe editorial pages referred to are the only ones who know of that\ndeclaration from Osier. Osteopathic journals, Christian Science journals,\nhealth culture journals, and all the riff-raff of journals published as\nindividual boosters, are ever on the watch for just such things, and when\nthey find them they \"roll them under their tongue as sweet morsels.\" They\nchew them, as Carleton says, with \"the cud of fancy,\" and hand them along\nas latest news to tens of thousands of people who are quick to believe\nthem.\n\nGoing back to the physician who has the well-equipped office, is he a\ngrafter in any sense? I shall not give my opinion. Perhaps every thing he\nhas in the office is legitimate. In the opinion of the masses of that\ncommunity he is the greatest doctor that ever prescribed a pill or\npurloined an appendix. Taking the word of the physicians whom he has put\ninto the \"has been\" class for it, he is the greatest fake that ever fooled\nthe people. Most of those outclassed doctors will talk at any time, in any\nplace, to any one, of the pretensions of this type of physician. They will\ntell how he dazzles the people with his display of apparatus \"kept for\nshow;\" how he diagnoses malarial fever as typhoid, and thus gets the\nreputation of curing a larger per cent. of typhoid than any other doctor\nin town; how he gets the reputation of being a big surgeon by cutting out\nhealthy ovaries and appendices, and how he assists with his knife women\nwho do not desire Rooseveltian families. They point to the number of\nappendectomies he has performed, and recall how rare such cases were\nbefore his advent, and yet how few people died with appendicitis. Is it to\nbe wondered that intelligent laymen sometimes lose faith in and respect\nfor the profession of medicine and surgery?\n\nTo show that people may be imposed upon by illegitimate use of legitimate\nagencies I call attention to an article published recently in the _Iowa\nHealth Bulletin_. The Iowa Medical Board is winning admiration from many\nby conducting a campaign to educate the people of the State in matters\npertaining to hygienic living. In line with this work they published an\narticle to correct the erroneous idea the laity have of the X-ray. They\nsay:\n\n    \"The people think that with the X-ray the doctor can look right into\n    the body and examine any part or organ and tell just what is the\n    matter with it, when the fact is all that is ever seen is a lot of dim\n    shadows that even the expert often fails to understand or recognize.\"\n\nWhy do the people have such erroneous conceptions of the X-ray? Is it\naccidental, or the result of their innate stupidity? Certainly it is not.\nThe people have just such conceptions of the X-ray as they receive from\nthe faker who uses it as he uses his opiates and stimulants--to get an\neffect and give the people wrong ideas of his power.\n\nA lady of a small town who was far advanced in consumption was taken to a\ncity to be examined by a \"big doctor\" who possessed an X-ray. He\n\"examined\" her thoroughly by the aid of the penetrating light made by his\nmachine, and sent them home delighted with the assurance that his\nwonderful instrument revealed no tuberculosis. He assured her that if she\nwould avail herself of his superior skill she might yet be restored to\nhealth. She died within a year from the ravages of tuberculosis.\n\nA boy of four had an aggravated attack of bronchitis. His symptoms were\nsuch that his parents thought some object might have lodged in his\ntrachea. A noted surgeon who had come one hundred miles from a hospital to\nsee another case was consulted. He told the parents that the boy had\nsucked something down his windpipe, and advised them to bring him to the\nhospital for an operation. They did so, and a $100 incision was made\nafter the X-ray had located (?) an object lodged at the bifurcation of the\ntrachea. The knife found nothing, however, and the boy still had his\nbronchitis, and the parents had their hospital and surgeon's bills, and,\nincidentally, their faith in the X-ray somewhat shattered.\n\nThe X-rays, Finsen rays, electric light and sunlight have their place in\ntherapy. Informed people do not doubt their efficacy. However, the history\nof the use of these agents is a common one. A scientist, after possibly a\nlifetime of research, develops a new therapeutic agent or a new\napplication of some old agent. He gives his findings to the world.\nImmediately a lot of half-baked professional men seize upon it, more with\nthe object of self-laudation and advertisement than in a true scientific\nspirit. Serious study in the application of the new agent is not thought\nof. The object is rather to have the reputation of being an up-to-snuff\nman. The results obtained are not what the originator claimed, which is\nnot to be wondered at. The abuse of the remedy leads to abuse of the\noriginator, which is entirely unfair to both.\n\nThis state of affairs has grown so bad that scientists now are beginning\nto restrict the application of their discoveries to their own pupils. A\nBerlin _savant_, assistant to Koch, has developed the use of tuberculin to\nsuch a point as to make it one of the most valuable remedies in\ntuberculosis. It is manufactured under his personal supervision, and sold\nonly to such physicians as will study in his laboratory and show\nthemselves competent to grasp the principles involved.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTURBID THERAPEUTICS.\n\n    An Astounding Array of Therapeutic\n    Systems--Diet--Water--Optics--Hemotherapy--Consumption\n    Cures--Placebos--Inconsistencies and Contradictions--Osler's Opinion\n    of Appendicitis--Fair Statement of Limitations in Medicine Desirable.\n\n\nTo be convinced that therapeutics are turbid, note the increasing numbers\nof diametrically opposed schools springing up and claiming to advocate the\nonly true system of healing. Look at the astounding array:\n\nAllopathy, Homeopathy, Eclecticism, Osteopathy, Electrotherapy, Christian\nScience, Emmanuel movement, Hydrotherapy, Chiropractics, Viteopathy,\nMagnetic Healing, Suggestive Therapeutics, Naturopathy, Massotherapy,\nPhysio-Therapy, and a host of minor fads that are rainbow-hued bubbles for\na day. They come and go as Byron said some therapeutic fads came and went\nin his day. He spoke of the new things that astounded the people for a\nday, and then, as it has been with\n\n  \"Cowpox, tractors, galvanism and gas,\n  The bubble bursts and all is air at last.\"\n\nOne says he has found that fasting is a panacea. Another says: \"He is a\nfool; you must feed the body if you expect it to be built up.\"\n\nOne says drinking floods of water is a cure-all. Another says the water is\nall right, but you must use it for the \"internal bath.\" Still another\nagrees that water is the thing, but it must be used in hot and cold\napplications.\n\nOne faker says _he_ has found that most diseases are caused by defective\neyes, and proposes to cure anything from consumption to ingrown toe-nails\nwith glasses. Another agrees that the predisposing cause of diseases is\neye strain, but the first fellow is irrational in his treatment. Glasses\nare unnatural and therefore all wrong. To cure the eyes use his wonderful\nnature-assisting ointment; that goes right to the optic nerve and makes\nold eyes young, weak eyes strong, relieves nerve strain and thereby makes\nsick people well.\n\nAnother has found that \"infused\" blood is the real elixir of life. He\nreports 100 per cent. of twenty cases of tuberculosis cured by his\nbeneficent discovery. I wonder why we have a \"Great White Plague\" at all;\nor why we have international conventions to discuss means of staying the\nravages of this terrible disease; or why State medical boards are devoting\nso much space in their bulletins to warn and educate the people against\nthe awful fatality of consumption, when to cure it is so easy if doctors\nwill only use blood?\n\nEven if the hemotherapist does claim a little too much, there is yet no\ncause for terror. A leading Osteopathic journal proclaims in large\nletters that the Osteopath can remove the obstruction so that nature will\ncure consumption.\n\nChristian Scientists and Magnetic Healers have not yet admitted their\ndefeat, and there are many regulars who have not surrendered to the\nplague. So the poor consumptive may hope on (while his money lasts). Our\nmost conscientious physicians not only admit limitations in curing\ntuberculosis, but try to teach the people that they must not rely on being\n\"cured\" if they are attacked, but must work with the physician to prevent\nits contagion. The intelligent layman can say \"Amen\" to that doctrine.\n\nThe question may be fairly put: \"Why not have more of such frankness from\nthe physician?\" The manner in which the admissions of doctors that they\nare unable to control tuberculosis with medicine or surgery alone has been\nreceived by intelligent people should encourage the profession. It would\nseem more fair to take the stand of Professor Osler when he says that\nsound hygienic advice for the prevention of diseases must largely take the\nplace of present medication and pretence of cure.\n\nAs a member of the American Medical Association recently said, \"The\nplacebo will not fool intelligent people always.\" And when it is generally\nknown that most of a physician's medicines are given as placebos, do you\nwonder that the claims of \"drugless healers\" receive such serious\nconsideration?\n\nThe absurd, conflicting claims of quack pretenders are bad enough to\nmuddle the situation and add to the turbidity of therapeutics; but all\nthis is not doing the medical profession nearly as much harm, nor driving\nas many people into the ranks of fad followers, as the inconsistencies and\ncontradictions among the so-called regulars.\n\nThis was my opinion before I made any special study of therapeutics, and\nwhile studying I found numbers of prominent medical men who agree with me.\nOne of them says that the \"criticisms,\" quarrels, contradictions, and\ninconsistencies of medical men are doing more to lower the profession in\nthe estimation of the intelligent laity and to cause people to follow the\nfads of \"new schools\" than all else combined.\n\nThink for a moment of some of these inconsistencies and contradictions.\nOne doctor in a town tells the people that he \"breaks up\" typhoid fever.\nHis rival, perhaps from the same college, tells the people that typhoid\nmust \"run its course\" and cannot be broken up, and that any man who claims\nthe contrary is a liar and a shyster. One surgeon makes a portion of the\npeople believe he has saved dozens of lives in that community by surgical\noperations; the other physicians of the town tell the people openly, or at\nleast hint, that there has been a great deal of needless butchery\nperformed in that community in the name of surgery. And then the people\nsee editorials in the daily press about the fad of having operations\nperformed, and read in their health culture or Osteopathic journals from\narticles by the greatest M.D.s, in which it is admitted that surgery is\npracticed too largely as a graft. Professor Osler is quoted as saying:\n\n    \"Surgeons are finding altogether too many cases of appendicitis these\n    days. Appendicitis is becoming so common and so easily detected that\n    the physician's wife can diagnose a case of it over the telephone.\"\n\nOne leading physician says medical treatment has little beneficial effect\non pneumonia; another claims to be able to cure it, and lets the friends\nof his patient rely entirely on his medicine in the most desperate cases.\nAnother says the main reliance should be heat. Another says ice-packs.\nAnother says Antiphlogistine. Another says, \"All those clay preparations\nare frauds, and the only safe way to treat pneumonia is by blood letting.\"\nThus it goes, and this is only a sample of contradictions that arise in\nthe treatment of diseases.\n\nNor is the above an overdrawn picture. Most of it was from the journal of\nthe editor who said he refused to send it to a layman who had sent his\nmoney in advance. But all that same stuff has been hashed and rehashed to\nthe people through the sources I have already mentioned. There are not\nonly these evidences of inconsistencies to edify (?) the people, but\nconstantly recurring examples of incompetency and pretensions.\n\nThere is no doubt a middle ground in all this, but it is not evident to\nthe casual observer. If the true physician would honestly admit his\nlimitations to the intelligent laity, much of this muddle would be\navoided. While by such a course he may occasionally temporarily lose a\npatient, in the end both the public and profession would gain. The time\nhas gone by to \"assume an air of infallibility toward the public.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nTHE EXPERT WITNESS AND PROPRIETARY MEDICINES.\n\n    The \"Great Nerve Specialist\"--The Professional Witness a Jonah--The\n    \"Railway Spine\"--Is it Lack of Fairness and Honesty or Lack of Skill\n    and Learning?--Destruction of Fine Herds of Cattle Without\n    Compensation--Koch's Dictum and Denial--Koch's Tuberculin--The Serum\n    Tribe--Stupendous Sale of Nostrums--Druggist's Arguments--Use of\n    Proprietary Medicines Stimulates Sale of Nostrums.\n\n\nI wonder what the patrons of the sanitarium of the \"great nerve\nspecialist\" thought of his display of knowledge of the nervous system when\nhe was on the witness stand in a recent notorious case? A lawyer tangled\nhim up completely, and showed that the doctor had no accurate knowledge of\nthe anatomy of the nervous system. When asked the origin of the\nall-important pneumogastric nerve, he _thought_ it originated in a certain\nsegment of the spinal cord! This noted \"specialist\" was made perfectly\ncontemptible, and the whole profession must have blushed in shame at the\nspectacle presented. And that spectacle was not unnoticed by the\nintelligent laity.\n\nThe professional witness has in most cases been a Jonah to the profession.\nIt is about as easy to get the kind of testimony you want from a\nprofessional witness in a suit for damages for personal injuries as it is\nto get a doctor's certificate to get out of working your poll-tax, or a\ncertificate of physical soundness to carry fraternal life insurance.\n\nLet me recall the substance of a paper read a few years ago by perhaps the\ngreatest lawyer in Iowa (afterward governor of that State). He told of a\ntrial in which he had examined and cross-examined ten physicians. It was a\ntrial in which suit was brought to recover damages for personal injury, a\ngood illustration of the \"railway spine.\" One physician testified that the\npatient was afflicted with sclerosis of the spinal cord; another said it\nwas a plain case of congestion of the cord; another diagnosed degeneration\nof the cord; yet another said it was a true combination of all the\nconditions named by the first three. They all said there was atrophy of\nthe muscles of the left leg, and predicted that complete paralysis would\nsurely supervene.\n\nOn the other side five noted physicians testified as positively that\nneither the spinal cord nor any nerve was injured; that there was no sign\nof atrophy or loss of power in the leg; and they seemed to think the\ndisease afflicting the patient was due to a fixed desire to secure a\nverdict for large damages from the railway company. One eminent specialist\nmade oath that the electrical test showed the partial reaction of\ndegeneration; another as famous challenged him to make the test again in\nthe presence of both. After it was made this second specialist went before\nthe jury and positively declared that there was no trace whatever of the\nreaction of degeneration, and that the muscles responded to the current\nprecisely as healthy muscles should.\n\nThen this eminent attorney adds: \"If the instances of such diversity were\nrare they might pass unnoticed, but they occur and re-occur as often as\nphysicians are called to the temple of justice for the expression of\nopinions.\"\n\nThe lay mind imputes this clash of opinions either to lack of fairness and\nhonesty or lack of skill and learning. In either case the profession\nsuffers great injury in the estimation of those who should have for it\nonly the profoundest admiration and the most implicit faith. Again I ask,\nIs it any wonder people have lost implicit faith when they read many\nreports of similar cases rehashed in the various yellow journals put into\ntheir hands?\n\nFarmers submitted with all possible grace to the decrees of science when,\nby the authority of such a great man as Koch, their fine herds of cattle\nwere condemned as breeders and disseminators of the great white plague and\ndestroyed without compensation. But how do you think these same farmers\nfeel when they read in yellow journals that Koch has changed his mind\nabout bovine and human tuberculosis being identical, and has serious\ndoubts about the one contracting in any way the disease of the other.\nPeople read with renewed hope the glowing accounts of the wonderful\nachievements of Dr. Koch in finding a destroyer for the germ of\nconsumption. Somehow time has slipped by since that renowned discovery,\nwith consumption still claiming its victims, and many physicians are\nsaying \"Koch's great discovery is proving only a great disappointment.\"\n\nDrugless therapy journals are continually pouring out the vials of their\nwrath upon vaccination, antitoxin and all the serum tribe, and their\nvituperation is even excelled by vindictive denunciations of the same\nthings by the individual boomer journals that flood the land.\n\nAnother bitter contention that is confusing some, and disgusting others,\nis the acrimonious strife between users and non-users of proprietary\nmedicines. This usually develops into a sort of \"rough house\" affair, the\ndruggist mixing up as savagely as the doctors before the fight is\nfinished. I know nothing of the rights or wrongs of the case nor of the\nmerits or demerits of proprietary medicines, but I do know this, however:\nThe stupendous sale of nostrums that in 1907 represented a sum of money\nsufficient to have provided every practitioner of medicine in the United\nStates with a two thousand dollar salary, has been helped by the use of\nproprietary medicines. I am aware that my position is likely to be called\nin question by many physicians. But they should hear druggists arguing\nwith people who hesitate about buying patent medicines because their\nphysicians tell them they should seldom take medicine unless prescribed by\na doctor. They would hear him say: \"Your doctor gives you medicines that\nare put up in quantities for him just as these patent medicines are put up\nfor us.\" He then produces literature and proves it--at least beyond the\nrefutation of the patient. Physicians would then realize, perhaps, how the\nuse of proprietary medicines stimulates the sale of nostrums.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nFAITH CURE AND GRAFT IN SURGERY.\n\n    Suggestive Therapeutics Chief Stock in Trade--Advice of a Medical\n    College President--Disease Prevention Rather than Cure--Hygienic\n    Living--The Medical Pretender--\"Dangerous Diagnosis\" Graft--Great\n    Flourish of Trumpets--No \"Starving Time\" for Him--\"Big\n    Operations\"--Mutilating the Human Body--Dr. C. W. Oviatt's Views--Dr.\n    Maurice H. Richardson's Incisive Statements--Crying Need for\n    Reform--Surgery that is Useless, Conscienceless and for Purely\n    Commercial Ends--Spirit of Surgical Graft, Especially in the\n    West--Fee-Splitting and Commissions--A Nation of \"Dollar-Chasers\"--The\n    Public's Share of Responsibility--Senn's Advice--The \"Surgical\n    Conscience.\"\n\n\nI think we have enough before us to show why intelligent people become\nfollowers of fads. Seeing so many impositions and frauds, they forget all\nthe patient research and beneficent discoveries of noble men who have\ndevoted their lives to the work of giving humanity better health and\nlonger life. They are ready at once to denounce the whole medical system\nas a fraud, and become victims of the first \"new system\" or healing fad\nthat is plausibly presented to them.\n\nAnd here a question arises that is puzzling to many. If these systems are\nfads and frauds, why do they so rapidly get and retain so large a\nfollowing among intelligent people? The answer is not hard to find. The\nquacks of these fad schools get their cures, as every intelligent doctor\nof the old schools knows, in the same way and upon the same principle that\nis so important a factor in medical practice, _i. e._, _faith cure_--the\npsychic effect of the thing done, whether it be the giving of a dose of\nmedicine, a Christian Science pow-wow, the laying on of hands, the\n\"removal of a lesion\" by an Osteopath, the \"adjustment\" of the spine by a\nChiropractor, or what not.\n\nThe principles of mind or faith cure are legitimately used by the honest\nphysician. Suggestive therapeutics is being systematically studied by many\nwho want to use it with honesty and intelligence. They realize fully that\nabuse of this principle figures largely in the maintenance of the shysters\nin their own school, and it is the very foundation of all new schools and\nhealing fads. The people must be made to know this, or fads will continue\nto flourish.\n\nThe honest physician would be glad to have the people know more than this.\nHe would be glad to have them know enough about symptoms of diseases to\nhave some idea when they really need the help of a physician. For he knows\nthat if the people knew this much all quacks would be speedily put out of\nbusiness.\n\nI wonder how many doctors know that observing people are beginning to\nsuspect that many physicians regulate the number of calls they make on a\npatient by motives other than the condition of the patient--size of\npocketbook and the condition of the roads, for instance. I am aware that\nsuch imputation is an insult to any physician worthy of the name, but the\nsad fact is that there are so many, when we count the quacks of all\nschools, unworthy of the name.\n\nThe president of a St. Louis medical college once said to a large\ngraduating class: \"Young men, don't go to your work with timidity and\ndoubts of your ability to succeed. Look and act your part as physicians,\nand when you have doubts concerning your power over disease _remember\nthis_, ninety-five out of every hundred people who send for you would get\nwell just the same if they never took a drop of your medicine.\" I have\nnever mentioned this to a doctor who did not admit that it is perhaps\ntrue. If so, is there not enough in it alone to explain the apparent\nsuccess of quacks?\n\nAgain I say there are many noble and brainy physicians, and these have\nmade practically all the great discoveries, invented all the useful\nappliances, written all the great books for other schools to study, and\nthey should have credit from the people for all this, and not be\nmisrepresented by little pretenders. Their teachings should be applied as\nthey gave them. The best of them to-day would have the people taught that\na physician's greatest work may be done in preventing rather than in\ncuring disease. Physicians of the Osler type would like to have the people\nunderstand how little potency drugs have to cure many dangerous diseases\nwhen they have a firm hold on the system. They would have some of the\nresponsibility removed from the shoulders of the physician by having the\npeople understand how much they may do by hygienic living and common-sense\nuse of natural remedies.\n\nBut the conscientious doctor too often has to compete with the pretender\nwho wants the people to believe that _he_ is their hope and their\nsalvation, and in him they must trust. He wants them to believe that he\nhas a specific remedy for every disease that will go \"right to the spot\"\nand have the desired effect. People who believe this, and believe that\nwithout doctoring the patient could never get well, will sometimes try, or\nsee their neighbors try, a doctor of a \"new school.\" When they see about\nthe same proportion of sick recover, they conclude, of course, that the\ndoctor of the \"new school\" cured them, and is worthy to be forever after\nintrusted with every case of disease that may arise in their families.\n\nThis is often brought about by the shyster M.D. overreaching himself by\ndiagnosing some simple affection as something very dangerous, in order to\nhave the greater credit in curing it. But he at times overestimates the\nconfidence of the family in his ability. They are ready to believe that\nthe patient's condition is critical, and in terror, wanting the help of\neverything that promises help, call in a doctor of some \"new school\"\nbecause neighbors told how he performed wonderful cures in their families.\nWhen the patient recovers speedily, as he would have done with no\ntreatment of any kind, and just as the shyster M.D. thought he would, the\nglory and credit of curing a \"bad case\" of a \"dangerous disease\" go to the\nnew system instead of redounding to the glory of Dr. Shyster, as he\nplanned it would.\n\nIs it any wonder true physicians sometimes get disgusted with their\nprofession when they see a shyster come into the town where they have\nworked for years, patiently and conscientiously building up a legitimate\npractice that begins to promise a decent living, and by such quack methods\nas diagnosing cases of simple fever, such as might come from acute\nindigestion or too much play in children, as something dangerous, typhoid\nor \"threatened typhoid,\" or cases of congestion of the lungs as \"lung\nfever,\" and by \"aborting\" or \"curing\" these terrible diseases in short\norder and having his patients out in a few days, jumps into fame and\n(financial) success at a bound? Because the typhoid (real typhoid)\npatients of the honest doctor lingered for weeks and sometimes died, and\nbecause frequently he lost a case of real pneumonia, he made but a poor\nshowing in comparison with the new doctor. \"He's just fresh from school,\nyou know, from a post-graduate course in the East.\" Or, \"He's been to the\nold country and _knows_ something.\" Just as if any physician, though he\nmay have been out of school for many years, does not, or may not, know of\nall the curative agencies of demonstrated merit!\n\nWould a medical journal fail to keep its readers posted concerning any new\ndiscovery in medicine, or helpful appliance that promises real good to the\nprofession? Yet people speak of one doctor's superior knowledge of the\nbest treatment of a particular disease as if that doctor had access to\nsome mysterious source of therapeutic knowledge unknown to other\nphysicians. It is becoming less easy to work the \"dangerous diagnosis\"\ngraft than formerly, for many people are learning that certain diseases\nmust \"run their course,\" and that there are no medicines that have\nspecific curative effects on them.\n\nThere is another graft now that is taking the place of the one just\nmentioned, to some extent at least. In the hands of a fellow with lots of\nnerve and little conscience it is the greatest of them all. This is the\ngraft of the smart young fellow direct from a post-graduate course in the\nclinics of some great surgeon.\n\nHe comes to town with a great flourish of trumpets. Of course, he observes\nthe ethics of the profession! The long accounts of his superior education\nand unusual experience with operative surgery are only legitimate items of\nnews for the local papers. Certainly! It is only right that such an\nunusual doctor should have so much attention.\n\nThere is no \"starving time\" for him. No weary wait of years for patients\nto come. At one bound he leaps into fame and fortune by performing \"big\noperations\" right and left, when before his coming such cases were only\noccasionally found, and then taken to surgeons of known ability and\nexperience. The reputable physician respects surgery, and would respect\nthe bright young fellow fresh from contact with the latest approved\nmethods who has nerve to undertake the responsibility of a dangerous\noperation when such an operation is really indicated. But when it comes to\nmutilating the human body by cutting away an appendix or an ovary because\nit is known that to remove them when neither they nor the victim are much\ndiseased is a comparatively safe and very _quick_ way to get a big\nreputation--that is the limit of quackery. And no wonder such a man is so\ncordially hated by his brethren. He not always hated because he mutilates\nhumanity so much, as because his spectacular graft in surgery is sure to\nbe taken as proof conclusive that he is superior in all other departments\nof therapeutics.\n\nAnd it puzzles observing laymen sometimes to know why all the successful\n(?) operations are considered such desirable items of news, while the\ncases that are not flattering in their outcome pass unmentioned.\n\nI find most complete corroboration of my contention in the president's\naddress, delivered before the Western Surgical and Gynecological\nAssociation at St. Louis, in 1907, by Charles W. Oviatt, M.D. This address\nwas published in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_, and I\nherewith reprint it in part:\n\n    \"The ambitious medical student does not usually get far into college\n    work before he aspires to become a surgeon. He sees in the surgical\n    clinics more definite and striking results than are discernible in\n    other branches. Without being able to judge of his own relative\n    fitness or whether he possesses the special aptitude so essential to\n    success, he decides to become a surgeon. There will always be room for\n    the young surgeon who, fitted by nature for the work, takes the time\n    and opportunity to properly prepare himself. There is more good\n    surgery being done to-day than ever before, and there are more good\n    surgeons being educated to do the work. If, however, the surgeon of\n    the future is to hold the high and honorable position our leaders have\n    held in the past, there must be some standard of qualification\n    established that shall protect the people against incompetency and\n    dishonesty in surgeons.\n\n    \"That there is much that passes under the name of surgery being done\n    by ill-trained, incompetent men, will not be denied. What standard,\n    then, should be established, and what requirement should be made\n    before one should be permitted to do surgery? In his address as\n    chairman of the Section on Surgery and Anatomy of the American Medical\n    Association, at the Portland (1905) meeting, Dr. Maurice H. Richardson\n    deals with this subject in such a forceful, clear-cut way, that I take\n    the liberty to quote him at some length:\n\n        \"'The burden of the following remarks is that those only should\n        practice surgery who by education in the laboratory, in the\n        dissecting-room, by the bedside, and at the operating-table, are\n        qualified, first, to make reasonably correct deductions from\n        subjective and objective signs; secondly, to give sound advice for\n        or against operations; thirdly, to perform operations skillfully\n        and quickly, and, fourthly, to conduct wisely the after-treatment.\n\n        \"'The task before me is a serious criticism of what is going on in\n        every community. I do not single out any community or any man.\n        There is in my mind no doubt whatever that surgery is being\n        practiced by those who are incompetent to practice it--by those\n        whose education is imperfect, who lack natural aptitude, whose\n        environment is such that they never can gain that personal\n        experience which alone will really fit them for what surgery means\n        to-day. They are unable to make correct deductions from histories;\n        to predict probable events; to perform operations skillfully, or\n        to manage after-treatment.\n\n        \"'All surgeons are liable to error, not only in diagnosis, but in\n        the performance of operations based on diagnosis. Such errors must\n        always be expected and included in the contingencies of the\n        practice of medicine and surgery. Doubtless many of my hearers can\n        recall cases of their own in which useless--or worse than\n        useless--operations have been performed. If, however, serious\n        operations are in the hands of men of large experience, such\n        errors will be reduced to a minimum.\n\n        \"'Many physicians send patients for diagnosis and opinion as to\n        the advisability of operation without telling the consultant that\n        they themselves are to perform the operation. The diagnosis is\n        made and the operation perhaps recommended, when it appears that\n        the operation is to be in incompetent hands. His advice should be\n        conditional that it be carried out only by the competent. Many\n        operations, like the removal of the vermiform appendix in the\n        period of health, the removal of fibroids which are not seriously\n        offending, the removal of gall-stones that are not causing\n        symptoms, are operations of choice rather than of necessity; they\n        are operations which should never be advised unless they are to be\n        performed by men of the greatest skill. Furthermore, many\n        emergency operations, such as the removal of an inflamed appendix\n        and other operations for lesions which are not necessarily\n        fatal--should be forbidden and the patient left to the chances of\n        spontaneous recovery, if the operation proposed is to be performed\n        by an incompetent.\n\n        \"'And is not the surgeon, appreciating his own unfitness in spite\n        of years of devotion, in the position to condemn those who lightly\n        take up such burdens without preparation and too often without\n        conscience?\n\n        \"'In view of these facts, who should perform surgery? How shall\n        the surgeon be best fitted for these grave duties? As a matter of\n        right and wrong, who shall, in the opinion of the medical\n        profession, advise and perform these responsible acts and who\n        shall not? Surgical operations should be performed only by those\n        who are educated for that special purpose.\n\n        \"'I have no hesitation in saying that the proper fitting of a man\n        for surgical practice requires a much longer experience as a\n        student and assistant than the most exacting schools demand. A man\n        should serve four, five or six years as assistant to an active\n        surgeon. During this period of preparation, as it were, as much\n        time as possible should be given to observing the work of the\n        masters of surgery throughout the world.'\n\n    \"While Dr. Richardson's ideal may seem almost utopian, there being so\n    wide a difference between the standard he would erect and the one\n    generally established, we must all agree that however impossible of\n    attainment under present conditions, such an ideal is none too high\n    and its future realization not too much to hope for.\n\n    \"While there is being done enough poor surgery that is honest and well\n    intended, there is much being done that is useless, conscienceless,\n    and done for purely commercial ends. This is truly a disagreeable and\n    painful topic and one that I would gladly pass by, did I not feel that\n    its importance demands some word of condemnation coming through such\n    representative surgical organizations as this.\n\n    \"The spirit of graft that has pervaded our ranks, especially here in\n    the West, is doing much to lower the standard and undermine the morals\n    and ethics of the profession. When fee-splitting and the paying of\n    commissions for surgical work began to be heard of something like a\n    decade ago, it seemed so palpably dishonest and wrong that it was\n    believed that it would soon die out, or be at least confined to the\n    few in whom the inherited commercial instinct was so strong that they\n    could not get away from it. But it did not die; on the other hand, it\n    has grown and flourished.\n\n    \"In looking for an explanation for the existence of this evil, I think\n    several factors must be taken into account, among them being certain\n    changes in our social and economic conditions. This is an age of\n    commercialism. We are known to the world as a nation of \"dollar\n    chasers,\" where nearly everything that should contribute to right\n    living is sacrificed to the Moloch of money. The mad rush for wealth\n    which has characterized the business world, has in a way induced some\n    medical men, whether rightfully or wrongfully, to adopt the same\n    measures in self-protection. The patient or his friends too often\n    insist on measuring the value of our services with a commercial\n    yard-stick, the fee to be paid being the chief consideration. In this\n    way the public must come in for its share of responsibility for\n    existing conditions. So long as there are people who care so little\n    who operates on them, just so long will there be cheap surgeons, cheap\n    in every respect, to supply the demand. The demand for better\n    physicians and surgeons must come in part from those who employ their\n    services.\n\n    \"Another source of the graft evil is the existence of low-grade,\n    irregular and stock-company medical schools. In many of these schools\n    the entrance requirements are not in evidence outside of their\n    catalogues. With no standard of character or ethics, these schools\n    turn out men who have gotten the little learning they possess in the\n    very atmosphere of graft. The existence of these schools seems less\n    excusable when we consider that our leading medical colleges rank with\n    the best in the world and are ample for the needs of all who should\n    enter the profession. Their constant aim is to still further elevate\n    the standard and to admit as students only those who give unmistakable\n    evidence of being morally and intellectually fit to become members of\n    the profession.\n\n    \"Enough men of character, however, are entering the field through\n    these better schools to ensure the upholding of those lofty ideals\n    that have characterized the profession in the past and which are\n    essential to our continued progress. I think, therefore, that we may\n    take a hopeful view of the future. The demand for better prepared\n    physicians will eventually close many avenues that are now open to\n    students, greatly to the benefit of all. With the curtailing of the\n    number of students and a less fierce competition which this will\n    bring, there will be less temptation, less necessity, if you will, on\n    the part of general practitioners to ask for a division of fees. He\n    will come to see that honest dealing on his part with the patient\n    requiring special skill will in the long run be the best policy. He\n    will make a just, open charge for the services he has rendered and not\n    attempt to collect a surreptitious fee through a dishonest surgeon for\n    services he has not rendered and could not render. Then, too, there\n    will be less inducement and less opportunity for incompetent and\n    conscienceless men to disgrace the art of surgery.\n\n    \"The public mind is becoming especially active just at this time in\n    combating graft in all forms, and is ready to aid in its destruction.\n    The intelligent portion of the laity is becoming alive to the patent\n    medicine evil. It is only a question of time when the people will\n    demand that the secular papers which go into our homes shall not\n    contain the vile, disgusting and suggestive quack advertisements that\n    are found to-day. A campaign of reform is being instituted against\n    dishonest politicians, financiers, railroad and insurance magnates,\n    showing that their methods will be no longer tolerated. The moral\n    standards set for professional men and men in public life are going to\n    be higher in the future, and with the limelight of public opinion\n    turned on the medical and surgical grafter, the evil will cease to\n    exist. Hand in hand with this reform let us hope that there will come\n    to be established a legal and moral standard of qualification for\n    those who assume to do surgery.\n\n    \"I feel sure that it is the wish of every member of this association\n    to do everything possible to hasten the coming of this day and to aid\n    in the uplifting of the art of surgery. Our individual effort in this\n    direction must lie largely through the influence we exert over those\n    who seek our advice before beginning the study of medicine, and over\n    those who, having entered the work, are to follow in our immediate\n    footsteps. To the young man who seeks our counsel as to the\n    advisability of commencing the study of medicine, it is our duty to\n    make a plain statement of what would be expected of him, of the cost\n    in time and money, and an estimate of what he might reasonably expect\n    as a reward for a life devoted to ceaseless study, toil and\n    responsibility. If, from our knowledge of the character, attainments\n    and qualifications of the young man we feel that at best he could make\n    but a modicum of success in the work, we should endeavor to divert his\n    ambition into some other channel.\n\n    \"We should advise the 'expectant surgeon' in his preparation to follow\n    as nearly as possible the line of study suggested by Richardson. Then\n    I would add the advice of Senn, viz: 'To do general practice for\n    several years, return to laboratory work and surgical anatomy, attend\n    the clinics of different operators, and never cease to be a physician.\n    If this advice is followed there will be less unnecessary operating\n    done in the future than has been the case in the past.' The young man\n    who enters special work without having had experience as a general\n    practitioner, is seriously handicapped. In this age, when we have so\n    frequently to deal with the so-called border-line cases, it is\n    especially well never to cease being a physician.\n\n    \"We would next have the young man assure himself that he is the\n    possessor of a well-developed, healthy, working 'surgical conscience.'\n    No matter how well qualified he may be, his enthusiasm in the earlier\n    years of his work will lead him to do operations that he would refrain\n    from in later life. This will be especially true of malignant disease.\n    He knows that early and thorough radical measures alone hold out hope,\n    and only by repeated unsuccessful efforts will he learn to temper his\n    ambition by the judgment that comes of experience. Pirogoff, the noted\n    surgeon, suffered from a malignant growth. Billroth refused to operate\n    or advise operation. In writing to another surgeon friend he said: 'I\n    am not the bold operator whom you knew years ago in Zurich. Before\n    deciding on the necessity of an operation, I always propose to myself\n    this question: Would you permit such an operation as you intend\n    performing on your patient to be done on yourself? Years and\n    experience bring in their train a certain degree of hesitancy.' This,\n    coming from one who in his day was the most brilliant operator in the\n    world, should be remembered by every surgeon, young and old.\"\n\nOh, surgery! Modern aseptic surgery! In the hands of the skilled,\nconscientious surgeon how great are thy powers for good to suffering\nhumanity! In the hands of shysters \"what crimes are committed in thy\nname!\"\n\nWith his own school full of shysters and incompetents, and grafters of\n\"new schools\" and \"systems\" to compete with on every hand, the\nconscientious physician seems to be \"between the devil and the deep sea!\"\n\nWith quacks to the right of him, quacks to the left of him, quacks in\nfront of him, all volleying and thundering with their literature to prove\nthat the old schools, and all schools other than theirs, are frauds,\nimpostors and poisoners, about all that is left for the layman to do when\nsick is to take to the woods.\n\n\n\n\nPART TWO\n\nOSTEOPATHY\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nSOME DEFINITIONS AND HISTORIES.\n\n    Romantic Story of Osteopathy's Origin--An Asthma Cure--Headache Cured\n    by Plowlines--Log Rolling to Relieve Dysentery--Osteopathy is Drugless\n    Healing--Osteopathy is Manual Treatment--Liberty of Blood, Nerves and\n    Arteries--Perfect Skeletal Alignment and Tonic, Ligamentous, Muscular\n    and Facial Relaxation--Andrew T. Still in 1874--Kirksville, Mo., as a\n    Mecca--American School of Osteopathy--The Promised Golden Stream of\n    Prosperity--Shams and Pretenses--The \"Mossbacks\"--\"Who's Who in\n    Osteopathy.\"\n\n\nThe story of the origin of Osteopathy is romantic enough to appeal to the\nfancy of impressionists. It is almost as romantic as the finding of the\nmysterious stones by the immortal Joe Smith. In this story is embodied the\nlife history of an old-time doctor and pioneer hero in his restless\nmigrations about the frontiers of Kansas and Missouri. His thrilling\nexperiences in the days of border wars and through the Civil War are\nnarrated, and how the germ of the idea of the true cause and cure of\ndisease was planted in his mind by the remark of a comrade as the two lay\nconcealed in a thicket for days to escape border ruffians. Then, later,\nhow the almost simultaneous death of two or three beloved children, whom\nall his medical learning and that of other doctors he had summoned had\nbeen powerless to save, had caused him to renounce forever the belief that\ndrugs could cure disease. He believed Nature had a true system, and for\nthis he began a patient search. He wandered here and there, almost in the\ncondition of the religious reformers of old, who \"wandered up and down\nclad in sheep-skins and goat-hides, of whom the world was not worthy.\" In\nthe name of suffering humanity he desecrated the grave of poor Lo, that he\nmight read from his red bones some clue to the secret.\n\nOne Osteopathic journal claims to tell authentically how Still was led to\nthe discovery of the \"great truth.\" It states that by accidentally curing\na case of asthma by \"fooling with the bones of the chest,\" he was led to\nthe belief that bones out of normal position cause disease.\n\nStill himself tells a rather different story in a popular magazine posing\nof late years as a public educator in matters of therapeutics. In this\nmagazine Still tells how he discovered the principles of Osteopathy by\ncuring a terrible headache resting the back of his neck across a swing\nmade of his father's plowlines, and next by writhing on his back across a\nlog to relieve the pain of dysentery. Accidentally the \"lesion\" was\ncorrected, or the proper center \"inhibited,\" and his headache and flux\nimmediately cured.\n\nYou can take your choice of these various versions of the wonderful\ndiscovery.\n\nEver since Osteopathy began to attract attention, and people began to\ninquire \"What is it?\" its leading promoters have vied with each other in\ntrying to construct a good definition for their \"great new science.\"\n\nHere are some of the definitions:\n\n\"Osteopathy is the science of drugless healing.\" For a genuine \"lesion\"\nOsteopath that would not do at all. It is too broad and gives too much\nscope to the physicians who would do more than \"pull bones.\"\n\n\"Osteopathy is practical anatomy and physiology skillfully and\nscientifically applied as _manual_ treatment of disease.\" That definition\nsuits better, because of the \"manual treatment.\" If you are a true\nOsteopath you must do it _all_ with your hands. It will not do to use any\nmechanical appliances, for if you do you cannot keep up the impression\nthat you are \"handling the body with the skilled touch of a master who\nknows every part of his machine.\"\n\n\"The human body is a machine run by the unseen force called life, and that\nit may run harmoniously it is necessary that there be liberty of blood,\nnerves, and arteries from the generating point to destination.\" This\ndefinition may be impressive to the popular mind, but, upon analysis, we\nwonder if any other string of big words might not have had the same\neffect. \"Liberty of blood\" is a proposition even a stupid medical man must\nadmit. Of course, there must be free circulation of blood, and massage, or\nhot and cold applications, or exercise, or anything that will stimulate\ncirculation, is rational. But when \"liberty of blood\" is mentioned, what\nis meant by \"liberty of arteries\"?\n\n\"Osteopathy seeks to obtain perfect skeletal alignment and tonic\nligamentous, muscular and facial relaxation.\" Some Osteopaths and other\ntherapeutic reformers (?) have contended that medical men purposely used\n\"big words\" and Latin names to confound the laity. What must we think of\nthe one just given as a popular definition?\n\nA good many Osteopaths are becoming disgusted with the big words,\ntechnical terms and \"high-sounding nothings\" used by so many Osteopathic\nwriters. The limit of this was never reached, however, until an A.B.,\nPh.D., D.O. wrote an article to elucidate Osteopathy for the general\npublic in an American encyclopedia. It takes scholarly wisdom to simplify\ngreat truths and bring them to the comprehension of ordinary minds. If\nwriters for the medical profession want a lesson in the art of simplifying\nand popularizing therapeutic science, they should study this article on\nOsteopathy in the encyclopedia.\n\nA brief history of Osteopathy is perhaps in place. The following summary\nis taken from leading Osteopathic journals. As to the personality and\nmotives of its founders I know but little; of the motives of its leading\npromoters a candid public must be the judge. But judgment should be\nwithheld until all the truth is known.\n\nThe principles of Osteopathy were discovered by Dr. Andrew T. Still in\n1874. He was at that time a physician of the old school practicing in\nKansas. His father, brothers and uncles were all medical practitioners. He\nwas at one time scout surgeon under General Fremont. During the Civil War\nhe was surgeon in the Union army in a volunteer corps. It was during the\nwar that he began to lose faith in drugs, and to search for something\nnatural in combating disease.\n\nThen began a long struggle with poverty and abuse. He was obstructed by\nhis profession and ridiculed by his friends. Fifteen years after the\ndiscovery of Osteopathy found Dr. Still located in the little town of\nKirksville, Mo., where he had gradually attracted a following who had\nimplicit faith in his power to heal by what to them seemed mysterious\nmovements.\n\nHis fame spread beyond the town, and chronic sufferers began to turn\ntoward Kirksville as a Mecca of healing. Others began to desire Still's\nhealing powers. In 1892 the American School of Osteopathy was founded,\nwhich from a small beginning has grown until the present buildings and\nequipment cost more than $100,000. Hundreds of students are graduated\nyearly from this school, and large, well-equipped schools have been\nfounded in Des Moines, Philadelphia, Boston and California, with a number\nof schools of greater or less magnitude scattered in other parts of the\ncountry. More than four thousand Osteopaths were in the field in 1907, and\nthis number is being augmented every year by a larger number of physicians\nthan are graduated from Homeopathic colleges, according to Osteopathic\nreports.\n\nAbout thirty-five States have given Osteopathy more or less favorable\nlegal recognition.\n\nThe discussion of the subject of Osteopathy is of very grave importance.\nImportant to practitioners of the old schools of medicine for reasons I\nshall give further on, and of vital importance to the thousands of men and\nwomen who have chosen Osteopathy as their life work. It is even of greater\nimportance in another sense to the people who are called upon to decide\nwhich system is right, and which school they ought to rely upon when their\nlives are at stake.\n\nI shall try to speak advisedly and conservatively, as I wish to do no one\ninjustice. I should be sorry indeed to speak a word that might hinder the\ncause of truth and progress. I started out to tell of all that prevents\nthe sway of truth and honesty in therapeutics. I should come far short of\ntelling all if I omitted the inconsistencies of this \"new science\" of\nhealing that dares to assume the responsibility for human life, and makes\nbold to charge that time-tried systems, with their tens of thousands of\npractitioners, are wrong, and that the right remedy, or the best remedy\nfor disease has been unknown through all these years until the coming of\nOsteopathy. And further dares to make the still more serious charge that\nsince the truth has been brought to light, the majority of medical men are\nso blinded by prejudice or ignorance that they _will_ not see.\n\nThis is not the first time I have spoken about inconsistencies in the\npractice of Osteopathy. I saw so much of it in a leading Osteopathic\ncollege that when I had finished I could not conscientiously proclaim\nmyself as an exponent of a \"complete and well-rounded system of healing,\nadequate for every emergency,\" as Osteopathy is heralded to be by the\njournals published for \"Osteopathic physicians\" to scatter broadcast among\nthe people. I practiced Osteopathy for three years, but only as an\nOsteopathic specialist. I never during that time accepted responsibility\nfor human life when I did not feel sure that I could do as much for the\ncase as any other might do with other means or some other system.\n\nBecause I practiced as a specialist and would not claim that Osteopathy\nwould cure everything that any other means might cure, I have never been\ncalled a good disciple of the new science by my brethren. I would not\npractice as a grafter, find bones dislocated and \"subluxated,\" and tell\npeople that they must take two or three months' treatment at twenty-five\ndollars per month, to have one or two \"subluxations\" corrected. In\nconsequence I was never overwhelmed by the golden stream of prosperity the\nliterature that made me a convert had assured me would be forthcoming to\nall \"Osteopathic physicians\" of even ordinary ability.\n\nAs I said, this is not the first time I have spoken of the inconsistencies\nof Osteopathy. While yet in active practice I became so disgusted with\nsome of the shams and pretences that I wrote a long letter to the editor\nof an Osteopathic journal published for the good of the profession. This\neditor, a bright and capable man, wrote me a nice letter in reply, in\nwhich he agreed with me about quackery and incompetency in our profession.\nHe did not publish the letter I wrote, or express his honest sentiments,\nas I had hoped he might. If what I wrote to that editor was the truth, as\nhe acknowledged in private, it is time the public knew something of it. I\nbelieve, also, that many of the large number of Osteopaths who have been\ndiscouraged or disgusted, and quit the practice, will approve what I am\nwriting. There is another class of Osteopathic practitioners who, I\nbelieve, will welcome the truth I have to tell. This consists of the large\nnumber of men and women who are practicing Osteopathy as standing for all\nthat makes up rational physio-therapy.\n\nSpeaking of those who have quit the practice of Osteopathy, I will say\nthat they are known by the Osteopathic faculties to be a large and growing\nnumber. Yet Osteopathic literature sent to prospective students tells of\nthe small per cent. of those who take the course who fail. It may not be\nknown how many fail, but it is known that many have quit.\n\nA journey half across one of our Western States disclosed one Osteopath in\nthe meat business, one in the real estate business, one clerking in a\nstore, and two, a blind man and his wife, fairly prosperous Osteopathic\nphysicians. This was along one short line of railroad, and there is no\nreason why it may not be taken as a sample of the percentage of those who\nhave quit in the entire country.\n\nI heard three years ago from a bright young man who graduated with honors,\nstarted out with luxurious office rooms in a flourishing city, and was\npointed to as an example of the prosperity that comes to the Osteopath\nfrom the very start. When I heard from him last he was advance\nbill-poster for a cheap show. Another bright classmate was carrying a\nchain for surveyors in California.\n\nI received an Osteopathic journal recently containing a list of names,\nabout eight hundred of them, of \"mossbacks,\" as we were politely called. I\nsay \"we,\" for my name was on the list. The journal said these were the\nnames of Osteopaths whose addresses were lost and no communication could\nbe had with them. They were wanted badly, it seemed. Just for what, aside\nfrom the annual fee to the American Osteopathic Association, was not\nclear.\n\nI do know what the silence of a good many of them meant. They have quit,\nand do not care to read the abuse that some of the Osteopathic journals\nare continually heaping upon those who do not keep their names on the\n\"Who's Who in Osteopathy\" list.\n\nThere is a large percentage of failures in other professions, and it is\nnot strange that there should be some in Osteopathy. But when Osteopathic\njournals dwell upon the large chances of success and prosperity for those\nwho choose Osteopathy as a profession, those who might become students\nshould know the other side.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nTHE OSTEOPATHIC PROPAGANDA.\n\n    Wonderful Growth Claimed to Prove Merit--Osteopathy is Rational\n    Physio-Therapy--Growth is in Exact Proportion to Advertising\n    Received--Booklets and Journals for Gratuitous\n    Distribution--Osteopathy Languishes or Flourishes by Patent Medicine\n    Devices--Circular Letter from Secretary of American Osteopathic\n    Association--Boosts by Governors and Senators--The Especial Protege of\n    Authors--Mark Twain--Opie Reed--Emerson Hough--Sam Jones--The\n    Orificial Surgeon--The M.D. Seeking Job as \"Professor\"--The Lure of\n    \"Honored Doctor\" with \"Big Income\"--No Competition.\n\n\nBut what about Osteopathy? Why has it had such a wonderful growth in\npopularity? Why have nearly four thousand men and women, most of them\nintelligent and some of them educated, espoused it as a profession to\nfollow as a life work? These are questions I shall now try to answer.\n\nOsteopathic promoters and enthusiasts claim that the wonderful growth and\npopularity of Osteopathy prove beyond question its merits as a healing\nsystem. I have already dealt at length with reasons why intelligent people\nare so ready to fall victims to new systems of healing. The \"perfect\nadjustment,\" \"perfect functioning\" theory of Osteopathy is especially\nattractive to people made ripe for some \"drugless healing\" system by\ncauses already mentioned. When Osteopathy is practiced as a combination of\nall manipulations and other natural aids to the inherent recuperative\npowers of the body, it will appeal to reason in such a way and bring such\ngood results as to make and keep friends.\n\nI am fully persuaded, and I believe the facts when presented will\nestablish it, that it is the physio-therapy in Osteopathy that wins and\nholds the favor of intelligent people. But Osteopathy in its own name,\ntaught as \"a well-rounded system of healing adequate for every emergency,\"\nhas grown and spread largely as a \"patent medicine\" flourishes, _i. e._,\nin exact proportion to the advertising it has received. I would not\npresume to make this statement as merely my opinion. The question at issue\nis too important to be treated as a matter of opinion. I will present\nfacts, and let my readers settle the point in their own minds.\n\nEvery week I get booklets or \"sample copies\" of journals heralding the\nwonderful curative powers of Osteopathy. These are published not as\njournals for professional reading, but to be sold to the practitioners by\nthe hundreds or thousands, to be given to their patients for distribution\nby these patients to their friends. The publishers of these \"boosters\"\nsay, and present testimonials to prove it, that Osteopaths find their\npractice languishes or flourishes just in proportion to the numbers of\nthese journals and booklets they keep circulating in their communities.\nHere is a sample testimonial I received some time since on a postal card:\n\n    \"Gentlemen: Since using your journals more patients have come to me\n    than I could treat, many of them coming from neighboring towns. Quite\n    a number have had to go home without being treated, leaving their\n    names so that they could be notified later, as I can get to them. Your\n    booklets bring them O. K.\"\n\nThe boast is often made that Osteopathy is growing in spite of bitter\nopposition and persecution, and is doing it on its merits--doing it\nbecause \"Truth is mighty and will prevail.\" At one time I honestly\nbelieved this to be true, but I have been convinced by highest Osteopathic\nauthority that it is not true. As some of that proof here is an extract\nfrom a circular letter from the secretary of the American Osteopathic\nAssociation:\n\n    \"Now, Doctor, we feel that you have the success of Osteopathy at\n    heart, and if you realize the activity and complete organization of\n    the American Medical Association and their efforts to curb our\n    limitations, and do not become a member of this Association, which\n    stands opposed to the efforts of the big monopoly, we must believe\n    that you are not familiar with the earnestness of the A. O. A. and its\n    efforts. We must work in harmonious accord and with an organized\n    purpose. _When we rest on our oars the death knell begins to sound._\n    Can you not see that unless you co-operate with your\n    fellow-practitioners in this national effort you are _sounding your\n    own limitations_?\"\n\nThis from the _secretary_ of the American Osteopathic Association, when we\nhave boasted of superior equipment for intelligent physicians.\nIncidentally we pause to make excuse for the expressions: \"Curbing our\nlimitations\" and \"sounding your own limitations.\"\n\nBut does the idea that when we quit working as an organized body \"_our\ndeath knell begins to sound_,\" indicate that Osteopathic leaders are\ncontent to trust the future of Osteopathy to its merits?\n\nIf Osteopathic promoters do not feel that the life of their science\ndepends on boosting, what did the secretary of the A.O.A. mean when he\nsaid, \"Upon the success of these efforts depends the weal or woe of\nOsteopathy as an independent system\"? If truth always grows under\npersecution, how can the American Medical Association kill Osteopathy when\nit is so well known by the people?\n\nNearly four thousand Osteopaths are scattered in thirty-six States where\nthey have some legal recognition, and they are treating thousands of\ninvalids every day. If they are performing the wonderful cures Osteopathic\njournals tell of, why are we told that the welfare of the system depends\nupon the noise that is made and the boosting that is done?\n\nHas it required advertising to keep people using anesthetics since it was\ndemonstrated that they would prevent pain?\n\nHas it required boosting to keep the people resorting to surgery since the\nbenefits of modern operations have been proved?\n\nDoes it look as if Osteopathy has been standing or advancing on its\nmerits? Does it not seem that Osteopathy, as a complete system, is mostly\na _name_, and \"lives, moves, and has its being\" in boosting? It seems to\nhave been about the best boosted fad ever fancied by a foolish people.\nGovernors and senators have boosted for it. Osteopathic journals have\npublished again and again the nice things a number of governors said when\nthey signed the bills investing Osteopathy with the dignity of State\nauthority.\n\nA certain United States senator from Ohio has won more notoriety as a\nchampion of Osteopathy than he has lasting fame as a statesman.\n\nOsteopathy has been the especial protege of authors. Mark Twain once went\nup to Albany and routed an army of medical lobbyists who were there to\nresist the passage of a bill favorable to Osteopathy. For this heroic deed\nMark is better known to Osteopaths to-day than even for his renowned\nhistory of Huckleberry Finn. He is in danger of losing his reputation as a\nchampion of the \"under dog in the fight.\" Lately he has gone on the\nwarpath again. This time to annihilate poor Mother Eddy and her fond\ndelusion.\n\nOpie Reed is a delightful writer while he sticks to the portrayal of droll\nSouthern character. Ella Wheeler Wilcox is admirable for the beauty and\nboldness with which she portrays the passions and emotions of humanity.\nBut they are both better known to Osteopaths for the bouquets they have\ntossed at Osteopathy than for their profound human philosophy that used to\nbe promulgated by the _Chicago American_.\n\nEmerson Hough gave a little free advertising in his \"Heart's Desire.\"\nThere may have been \"method in his madness,\" for that Osteopathic horse\ndoctoring scene no doubt sold many a book for the author.\n\nSam Jones also helped along with some of his striking originality. Sam\nsaid, \"There is as much difference between Osteopathy and massage as\nbetween playing a piano and currying a horse.\" The idea of comparing the\nOsteopath's manipulations of the human body to the skilled touch of the\npianist upon his instrument was especially pleasing to Osteopaths.\nHowever, Sam displayed about the same comprehension of his subject that\npreachers usually exhibit who try to say nice things about the doctors\nwhen they get their doctoring gratis or at reduced rates.\n\nThese champions of Osteopathy no doubt mean well. They can be excused on\nthe ground that they got out of place to aid in the cause of \"struggling\ntruth.\" But what shall we say of medical men, some of them of reputation\nand great influence, who uphold and champion new systems under such\nconditions that it is questionable whether they do it from principle or\npolicy?\n\nOsteopathic journals have made much of an article written by a famous\n\"orificial surgeon.\" The article appears on the first page of a leading\nOsteopath journal, and is headed, \"An Expert Opinion on Osteopathy.\" Among\nthe many good things he says of the \"new science\" is this: \"The full\nbenefit of a single sitting can be secured in from three to ten minutes\ninstead of an hour or more, as required by massage.\" I shall discuss the\ntime of an average Osteopathic treatment further on, but I should like to\nsee how long this brother would hold his practice if he were an Osteopath\nand treated from three to ten minutes.\n\nHe also says that \"Osteopathy is so beneficial to cases of insanity that\nit seems quite probable that this large class of terrible sufferers may be\nalmost emancipated from their hell.\" I shall also say more further on of\nwhat I know of Osteopathy's record as an insanity cure. There is this\nsignificant thing in connection with this noted specialist's boost for\nOsteopathy. The journal printing this article comments on it in another\nnumber; tells what a great man the specialist is, and incidentally lets\nOsteopaths know that if any of them want to add a knowledge of \"orificial\nsurgery\" to their \"complete science,\" this doctor is the man from whom to\nget it, as he is the \"great and only\" in his specialty, and is big and\nbroad enough to appreciate Osteopathy.\n\nThe most despicable booster of any new system of therapeutics is the\nphysician who becomes its champion to get a job as \"professor\" in one of\nits colleges. Of course it is a strong temptation to a medical man who has\nnever made much of a reputation in his own profession.\n\nYou may ask, \"Have there been many such medical men?\" Consult the faculty\nrolls of the colleges of these new sciences, and you will be surprised, no\ndoubt, to find how many put M.D. after their names. Why are they there?\nSome of these were honest converts to the system, perhaps. Some wanted\nthe honor of being \"Professor Doctor,\" maybe, and some may have been lured\nby the same bait that attracts so many students into Osteopathic colleges.\nThat is, the positive assurance of \"plenty of easy money\" in it.\n\nOne who has studied the real situation in an effort to learn why\nOsteopathy has grown so fast as a profession, can hardly miss the\nconclusion that advertising keeps the grist of students pouring into\nOsteopathic mills. There is scarcely a corner of the United States that\ntheir seductive literature does not reach. Practitioners in the field are\ncontinually reminded by the schools from which they graduated that their\nalma mater looks largely to their solicitations to keep up the supply of\nrecruits.\n\nTheir advertising, the tales of wonderful cures and big money made, appeal\nto all classes. It seems that none are too scholarly and none too ignorant\nto become infatuated with the idea of becoming an \"honored doctor\" with a\n\"big income.\" College professors and preachers have been lured from\ncomfortable positions to become Osteopaths. Shrewd traveling men, seduced\nby the picture of a permanent home, have left the road to become\nOsteopathic physicians and be \"rich and honored.\"\n\nOther classes come also. To me, when a student of Osteopathy, it was\npathetic and almost tragic to observe the crowds of men and women who had\nbeen seduced from spheres of drudging usefulness, such as clerking,\nteaching, barbering, etc., to become money-making doctors. In their old\ncallings they had lost all hope of gratifying ambition for fame and\nfortune, but were making an honest living. The rosy pictures of honor,\nfame and twenty dollars per day, that the numerous Osteopathic circulars\nand journals painted, were not to be withstood.\n\nThese circulars told them that the fields into which they might go and\nreap that $20 per day were unlimited. They said: \"There are dozens of\nministers ready to occupy each vacant pulpit, and as many applicants for\neach vacancy in the schools. Each hamlet has four or five doctors, where\nit can support but one. The legal profession is filled to the starving\npoint. Young licentiates in the older professions all have to pass through\na starving time. Not so in Osteopathy. There is no competition.\" The\npicture was a rosy dream of triumphant success! When they had mastered the\ngreat science and become \"Doctors of Osteopathy,\" the world was waiting\nwith open arms and pocketbooks to receive them.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nTHEORY AND PRACTICE OF OSTEOPATHY.\n\n    Infallible, Touch-the-Button System that Always Cured--Indefinite\n    Movements and Manipulations--Wealth of Undeveloped Scientific\n    Facts--Osteopaths Taking M.D. Course--The Standpatter and the\n    Drifter--The \"Lesionist\"--\"Bone Setting\"--\"Inhibiting a\n    Center\"--Chiropractics--\"Finest Anatomists in the World\"--How to Cure\n    Torticollis, Goitre and Enteric Troubles--A Successful\n    Osteopath--Timid Old Maids--Osteopathic Philanthropy.\n\n\nHow desperately those students worked. Many of them were men and women\nwith gray heads, who had found themselves stranded at a time of life when\nthey should have been able to retire on a competency. They had staked\ntheir little all on this last venture, and what was before them if they\nshould fail heaven only knew. How eagerly they looked forward to the time\nwhen they should have struggled through the lessons in anatomy, chemistry,\nphysiology, symptomatology and all the rest, and should be ready to\nreceive the wonderful principles of Osteopathy they were to apply in\nperforming the miraculous cures that were to make them wealthy and famous.\nNeed I tell the physician who was a conscientious student of anatomy in\nhis school days, that there was disappointment when the time came to enter\nthe class in \"theory and practice\" of Osteopathy?\n\nThere had been vague ideas of a systematized, infallible, touch-the-button\nsystem that _always_ cured. Instead, we were instructed in a lot of\nindefinite movements and manipulations that somehow left us speculating as\nto just how much of it all was done for effect.\n\nWe had heard so often that Osteopathy was a complete satisfying science\n_that did things specifically_! Now it began to dawn upon us that there\nwas indeed a \"wealth of undeveloped scientific facts\" in Osteopathy, as\nthose glittering circulars had said when they thought to attract young men\nambitious for original research. They had said, \"Much yet remains to be\ndiscovered.\" Some of us wondered if the \"undeveloped\" and \"undiscovered\"\nscientific facts were not the main constituents of the \"science.\"\n\nThe students expected something exact and tangible, and how eagerly they\ngrasped at anything in the way of bringing quick results in curing the\nsick.\n\nIf Osteopathy is so complete, why did so many students, after they had\nreceived everything the learned (?) professors had to impart, procure\nJuettner's \"Modern Physio-Therapy\" and Ling's \"Manual Therapy\" and Rosse's\n\"Cures Without Drugs\" and Kellogg's work on \"Hydrotherapy\"? They felt that\nthey needed all they could get.\n\nIt was customary for the students to begin \"treating\" after they had been\nin school a few months, and medical men will hardly be surprised to know\nthat they worked with more faith in their healing powers and performed\nmore wonderful (?) cures in their freshman year than they ever did\nafterward.\n\nI have in mind a student, one of the brightest I ever met, who read a\ncheap book on Osteopathic practice, went into a community where he was\nunknown, and practiced as an Osteopathic physician. In a few months he had\nmade enough money to pay his way through an Osteopathic college, which he\nentered professing to believe that Osteopathy would cure all the ills\nflesh is heir to, but which he left two years later to take a medical\ncourse. He secured his D.O. degree, but I notice that it is his M.D.\ndegree he flourishes with pride.\n\nCan students be blamed for getting a little weak in faith when men who\ntold them that the great principles of Osteopathy were sufficient to cure\n_everything_, have been known to backslide so far as to go and take\nmedical courses themselves?\n\nHow do you suppose it affects students of an Osteopathic college to read\nin a representative journal that the secretary of their school, and the\ngreatest of all its boosters, calls medical men into his own family when\nthere is sickness in it?\n\nThere are many men and women practicing to-day who try to be honest and\nconscientious, and by using all the good in Osteopathy, massage, Swedish\nmovements, hydrotherapy, and all the rest of the adjuncts of\nphysio-therapy, do a great deal of good. The practitioner who does use\nthese agencies, however, is denounced by the stand-patters as a \"drifter.\"\nThey say he is not a true Osteopath, but a mongrel who is belittling the\ngreat science. That circular letter from the secretary of the American\nOsteopathic Association said that one of the greatest needs of\norganization was to preserve Osteopathy in its primal purity as it came\nfrom its founder, A. T. Still.\n\nIf our medical brethren and the laity could read some of the acrimonious\ndiscussions on the question of using adjuncts, they would certainly be\nimpressed with the exactness (?) of Osteopathic science.\n\nThere is one idea of Osteopathy that even the popular mind has grasped,\nand that is that it is essentially finding \"lesions\" and correcting them.\nYet the question has been very prominent and pertinent among Osteopaths:\n\"Are you a lesion Osteopath?\" Think of it, gentlemen, asking an Osteopath\nif he is a \"lesionist\"! Yet there are plenty of Osteopaths who are stupid\nenough (or honest enough) not to be able to find bones \"subluxed\" every\ntime they look at a patient. Practitioners who really want to do their\npatrons good will use adjuncts even if they are denounced by the\nstand-patters.\n\nI believe every conscientious Osteopath must sometimes feel that it is\nsafer to use rational remedies than to rely on \"bone setting,\" or\n\"inhibiting a center,\" but for the grafter it is not so spectacular and\ninvolves more hard work.\n\nThe stand-patters of the American Osteopathic Association have not\neliminated all trouble when they get Osteopaths to stick to the \"bone\nsetting, inhibiting\" idea. The chiropractic man threatens to steal their\nthunder here. The Chiropractor has found that when it comes to using\nmysterious maneuvers and manipulations as bases for mind cure, one thing\nis about as good as another, except that the more mysterious a thing\nlooks the better it works. So the Chiropractor simply gives his healing\n\"thrusts\" or his wonderful \"adjustments,\" touches the buttons along the\nspine as it were, when--presto! disease has flown before his healing touch\nand blessed health has come to reign instead!\n\nThe Osteopath denounces the Chiropractor as a brazen fraud who has stolen\nall that is good in Chiropractics (if there _is_ anything good) from\nOsteopathy. But Chiropractics follows so closely what the \"old liner\"\ncalls the true theory of Osteopathy that, between him and the drifter who\ngives an hour of crude massage, or uses the forbidden accessories, the\ntrue Osteopath has a hard time maintaining the dignity (?) of Osteopathy\nand keeping its practitioners from drifting.\n\nSome of the most ardent supporters of true Osteopathy I have ever known\nhave drifted entirely away from it. After practicing two or three years,\nabusing medicine and medical men all the time, and proclaiming to the\npeople continually that they had in Osteopathy all that a sick world could\never need, it is suddenly learned that the \"Osteopath is gone.\" He has\n\"silently folded his tent and stolen away,\" and where has he gone? He has\ngone to a medical college to study that same medicine he has so\nindustriously abused while he was gathering in the shekels as an\nOsteopath. Going to learn and practice the science he has so persistently\ndenounced as a fraud and a curse to humanity.\n\nThe intelligent, conscientious Osteopath who dares to brave the scorn of\nthe stand-patter and use all the legitimate adjuncts of Osteopathy found\nin physio-therapy, may do a great deal of good as a physician. I have\nfound many physicians willing to acknowledge this, and even recommend the\nservices of such an Osteopath when physio-therapy was indicated.\n\nWhen a physician, however, meets a fellow who claims to have in his\nOsteopathy a wonderful system, complete and all-sufficient to cope with\nany and all diseases, and that his system is founded on a knowledge of the\nrelation and function of the various parts and organs of the body such as\nno other school of therapeutics has ever been able to discover, then he\nknows that he has met a man of the same mental and moral calibre as the\nshyster in his own school. He knows he has met a fellow who is exploiting\na thing, that may be good in its way and place, as a graft. And he knows\nthat this grafter gets his wonderful cures largely as any other quack gets\nhis; the primary effects of his \"scientific manipulations\" are on the\nminds of those treated.\n\nThe intelligent physician knows that the Osteopath got his boastedly\nsuperior knowledge of anatomy mostly from the same text-books and same\nclass of cadavers that other physicians had to master if they graduated\nfrom a reputable school. All that talk we have heard so much about the\nOsteopaths being the \"finest anatomists in the world\" sounds plausible,\nand is believed by the laity generally.\n\nThe quotation I gave above has been much used in Osteopathic literature\nas coming from an eminent medical man. What foundation is there for such a\nbelief? The Osteopath _may_ be a good anatomist. He has about the same\nopportunities to learn anatomy the medical student has. If he is a good\nand conscientious student he may consider his anatomy of more importance\nthan does the medical student who is not expecting to do much surgery. If\nhe is a natural shyster and shirk he can get through a course in\nOsteopathy and get his diploma, and this diploma may be about the only\nproof he could ever give that he is a \"superior anatomist.\"\n\nGreat stress has always been laid by Osteopaths upon the amount of study\nand research done by their students on the cadaver. I want to give you\nsome specimens of the learning of the man (an M.D.) who presided over the\ndissecting-room when I pursued my \"profound research\" on the \"lateral\nhalf.\" This great man, whose superior knowledge of anatomy, I presume,\ninduced by the wise management of the college to employ him as a\ndemonstrator, in an article written for the organ of the school expresses\nhimself thus:\n\n    \"It is needless to say that the first impression of an M. D. would not\n    be favorable to Osteopathy, because he has spent years fixing in his\n    mind that if you had a bad case of torticollis not to touch it, but\n    give a man morphine or something of the same character with an\n    external blister or hot application and in a week or ten days he would\n    be all right. In the meanwhile watch the patient's general health,\n    relieve the induced constipation by suitable means and rearrange what\n    he has disarranged in his treatment. On the other hand, let the\n    Osteopath get hold of this patient, and with his _vast_ and we might\n    say _perfect_ knowledge of anatomy, he at once, with no other tools\n    than his hands, inhibits the nerves supplying the affected parts, and\n    in five minutes the patient can freely move his head and shoulders,\n    entirely relieved from pain. Would not the medical man be angry? Would\n    he not feel like wiping off the earth with all the Osteopaths? Doctor,\n    with your medical education a course in Osteopathy would teach you\n    that it is not necessary to subject your patients to myxedema by\n    removing the thyroid gland to cure goitre. You would not have to lie\n    awake nights studying means to stop one of those troublesome bowel\n    complaints in children, nor to insist upon the enforced diet in\n    chronic diarrhea, and a thousand other things which are purely\n    physiological and are not done by any magical presto change, but by\n    methods which are perfectly rational if you will only listen long\n    enough to have them explained to you. I will agree that at first\n    impression all methods look alike to the medical man, but when\n    explained by an intelligent teacher they will bring their just\n    reward.\"\n\nGentlemen of the medical profession, study the above\ncarefully--punctuation, composition, profound wisdom and all. Surely you\ndid not read it when it was given to the world a few years ago, or you\nwould all have been converted to Osteopathy then, and the medical\nprofession left desolate. We have heard many bad things of medical men,\nbut never (until we learned it from one who was big-brained enough to\naccept Osteopathy when its great truths dawned upon him) did we know that\nyou are so dull of intellect that it takes you \"years to fix in your minds\nthat if you had a bad case of torticollis not to touch it but to give a\nman morphine.\"\n\nAnd how pleased Osteopaths are to learn from this scholar that the\nOsteopath can \"take hold\" of a case of torticollis, \"and with his vast and\nwe might say perfect knowledge of anatomy\" inhibit the nerves and have the\nman cured in five minutes. We were glad to learn this great truth from\nthis learned ex-M.D., as we never should have known, otherwise, that\nOsteopathy is so potent.\n\nI have had cases of torticollis in my practice, and thought I had done\nwell if after a half hour of hard work massaging contracted muscles I had\nbenefited the case.\n\nAnd note the relevancy of these questions, \"Would not the medical man be\nangry? Would he not feel like wiping off the earth all the Osteopaths?\"\nGentlemen, can you explain your ex-brother's meaning here? Surely you are\nnot all so hard-hearted that you would be angry because a poor wry-necked\nfellow had been cured in five minutes.\n\nTo be serious, I ask you to think of \"the finest anatomists in the world\"\ndoing their \"original research\" work in the dissecting-room under the\ndirection of a man of the scholarly attainments indicated by the\ncomposition and thought of the above article. Do you see now how\nOsteopaths get a \"vast and perfect knowledge of anatomy\"?\n\nDo you suppose that the law of \"the survival of the fittest\" determines\nwho continues in the practice of Osteopathy and succeeds? Is it true worth\nand scholarly ability that get a big reputation of success among medical\nmen? I know, and many medical men know from competition with him (if they\nwould admit that such a fellow may be a competitor), that the ignoramus\nwho as a physician is the product of a diploma mill often has a bigger\nreputation and performs more wonderful cures (?) than the educated\nOsteopath who really mastered the prescribed course but is too\nconscientious to assume responsibility for human life when he is not sure\nthat he can do all that might be done to save life.\n\nI once met an Osteopath whose literary attainments had never reached the\nrudiments of an education. He had never really comprehended a single\nlesson of his entire course. He told me that he was then on a vacation to\nget much-needed rest. He had such a large practice that the physical labor\nof it was wearing him out. I knew of this fellow's qualifications, but I\nthought he might be one of those happy mortals who have the faculty of\n\"doing things,\" even if they cannot learn the theory. To learn the secret\nof this fellow's success, if I could, I let him treat me. I had some\ncontracted muscles that were irritating nerves and holding joints in tense\ncondition, a typical case, if there are any, for an Osteopathic treatment.\nThe fellow began his \"treatment.\" I expected him to do some of that\n\"expert Osteopathic diagnosing\" that you have heard of, but he began in an\naimless desultory way, worked almost an hour, found nothing specific, did\nnothing but give me a poor unsystematic massage. He was giving me a\n\"popular treatment.\"\n\nIn many towns people have come to estimate the value of an Osteopathic\ntreatment by its duration. People used to say to me, \"You don't treat as\nlong as Dr. ----, who was here before you,\" and say it in a way indicating\nthat they were hardly satisfied they had gotten their money's worth. Some\nof them would say: \"He treated me an hour for seventy-five cents.\" Does it\nseem funny to talk of adjusting lesions on one person for an hour at a\ntime, three times a week?\n\nMy picture of incompetency and apparent success of incompetents, is not\noverdrawn. The other day I had a marked copy of a local paper from a town\nin California. It was a flattering write-up of an old classmate. The\ndoctor's automobile was mentioned, and he had marked with a cross a fine\nauto shown in a picture of the city garage. This fellow had been\nconsidered by all the Simple Simon of the class, inferior in almost every\nattribute of true manliness, yet now he flourishes as one of those of our\nclass to whose success the school can \"point with pride.\"\n\nIt is interesting to read the long list of \"changes of location\" among\nOsteopaths, yet between the lines there is a sad story that may be read.\nHow often I have followed these changes. First, \"Doctor Blank has located\nin Philadelphia, with twenty-five patients for the first month and rapidly\ngrowing practice.\" A year or so after another item tells that \"Doctor\nBlank has located in San Francisco with bright prospects.\" Then \"Doctor\nBlank has returned to Missouri on account of his wife's health, and\nlocated in ----, where he has our best wishes for success.\" Their career\nreminds us of Goldsmith's lines:\n\n  \"As the hare whom horn and hounds pursue\n  Pants to the place from whence at first he flew.\"\n\nThere has been many a tragic scene enacted upon the Osteopathic stage, but\nthe curtain has not been raised for the public to behold them. How many\ntimid old maids, after saving a few hundred dollars from wages received\nfor teaching school, have been persuaded that they could learn Osteopathy\nwhile their shattered nerves were repaired and they were made young and\nbeautiful once more by a course of treatment in the clinics of the school.\nThen they would be ready to go out to occupy a place of dignity and honor,\nand treat ten to thirty patients per month at twenty-five dollars per\npatient.\n\nGentlemen of the medical profession, from what you know of the aggressive\nspirit that it takes to succeed in professional life to-day (to say\nnothing of the physical strength required in the practice of Osteopathy),\nwhat per cent. of these timid old maids do you suppose have \"panted to the\nplace from whence at first they flew,\" after leaving their pitiful little\nsavings with the benefactors of humanity who were devoting their splendid\ntalents to the cause of Osteopathy?\n\nIf any one doubts that some Osteopathic schools are conducted from other\nthan philanthropic motives, let him read what the _Osteopathic Physician_\nsaid of a new school founded in California. Of all the fraud, bare-faced\nshystering, and flagrant rascality ever exposed in any profession, the\ncircumstances of the founding of this school, as depicted by the editor of\nthe _Osteopathic Physician_, furnishes the most disgusting instance. Men\nto whom we had clung when the anchor of our faith in Osteopathy seemed\nabout to drag were held up before us as sneaking, cringing, incompetent\nrascals, whose motives in founding the school were commercial in the worst\nsense. And how do you suppose Osteopaths out in the field of practice feel\nwhen they receive catalogues from the leading colleges that teach their\nsystem, and these catalogues tell of the superior education the colleges\nare equipped to give, and among the pictures of learned members of the\nfaculty they recognize the faces of old schoolmates, with glasses, pointed\nbeards and white ties, silk hats maybe, but the same old classmate\nof--sometimes not ordinary ability.\n\nI spoke a moment ago of old maids being induced to believe that they would\nbe made over in the clinics of an Osteopathic college. That was not an\nexaggeration. An Osteopathic journal before me says: \"If it were generally\nknown that Osteopathy has a wonderfully rejuvenating effect upon fading\nbeauty, Osteopathic physicians would be overworked as beauty doctors.\"\n\nAnother journal says: \"If the aged could know how many years might be\nadded to their lives by Osteopathy, they would not hesitate to avail\nthemselves of treatment.\"\n\nA leading D. O. discusses consumption as treated Osteopathically, and\ncloses his discussion with the statement in big letters: \"CONSUMPTION CAN\nBE CURED.\"\n\nAnother Osteopathic doctor says the curse that was placed upon Mother Eve\nin connection with the propagation of the race has been removed by\nOsteopathy, and childbirth \"positively painless\" is a consummated fact.\n\nThe old made young! The homely made beautiful! The insane emancipated from\ntheir hell! Consumption cured! Childbirth robbed of its terrors! Asthma\ncured by moving a bone! What more in therapeutics is left to be desired? O\ngrave, where is thy victory?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nOSTEOPATHY AS RELATED TO SOME OTHER FAKES.\n\n    Sure Shot Rheumatism Cure--Regular Practitioner's\n    Discomfiture--Medicines Alone Failed to Cure Rheumatism--Osteopathy\n    Relieves Rheumatic and Neuralgic Pains--\"Move Things\"--\"Pop\" Stray\n    Cervical Vertebrae--Find Something Wrong and Put it Right--Terrible\n    Neck-Wrenching, Bone-Twisting Ordeal.\n\n\nA discussion of graft in connection with doctoring would not be complete\nif nothing were said about the traveling medicine faker. Every summer our\ntowns are visited by smooth-tongued frauds who give free shows on the\nstreets. They harangue the people by the hour with borrowed spiels, full\nof big medical terms, and usually full of abuse of regular practitioners,\nwhich local physicians must note with humiliation is too often received by\npeople without resentment and often with applause.\n\nOnly last summer I was standing by while one of these grafters was making\nhis spiel, and gathering dollars by the pocketful for a \"sure shot\"\nrheumatism cure. His was a _sure_ cure, doubly guaranteed; no cure, money\nall refunded (if you could get it). A physician standing near laughed\nrather a mirthless laugh, and remarked that Barnum was right when he said,\n\"The American people like to be humbugged.\" When the medical man left, a\nman who had just become the happy possessor of enough of the wonderful\nherb to make a quart of the rheumatism router, remarked: \"He couldn't be a\nworse humbug than that old duffer. He doctored me for six weeks, and told\nme all the time that his medicine would cure me in a few days. I got worse\nall the time until I went to Dr. ----, who told me to use a sack of hot\nbran mash on my back, and I was able to get around in two days.\"\n\nIn this man's remarks there is an explanation of the reason the crowd\nlaughed when they heard the quack abusing the regular practitioner, and of\nthe reason the people handed their hard-earned dollars to the grafter at\nthe rate of forty in ten minutes, by actual count. If all doctors were\nhonest and told the people what all authorities have agreed upon about\nrheumatism, _i. e._, that internal medication does it little good, and the\nmain reliance must be on external application, traveling and patent\nmedicine fakers who make a specialty of rheumatism cure would be \"put out\nof business,\" and there would be eliminated one source of much loss of\nfaith in medicine.\n\nI learned by experience as an Osteopath that many people lose faith in\nmedicine and in the honesty of physicians because of the failure of\nmedicine to cure rheumatism where the physician had promised a cure.\nPatients afflicted with other diseases get well anyway, or the sexton puts\nthem where they cannot tell people of the physician's failure to cure\nthem. The rheumatic patient lives on, and talks on of \"Doc's\" failure to\nstop his rheumatic pains. All doctors know that rheumatism is the\nuniversal disease of our fickle climate. If it were not for rheumatic\npains, and neuralgic pains that often come from nerves irritated by\ncontracted muscles, the Osteopath in the average country town would get\nmore lonesome than he does. People who are otherwise skeptical concerning\nthe merits of Osteopathy will admit that it seems rational treatment for\nrheumatism.\n\nYet this is a disease that Osteopathy of the specific-adjustment,\nbone-setting, nerve-inhibiting brand has little beneficial effect upon.\nAll the Osteopathic treatments I ever gave or saw given in cases of\nrheumatism that really did any good, were long, laborious massages. The\nmedical man who as \"professor\" in an Osteopathic college said, \"When the\nOsteopath with his _vast_ knowledge of anatomy gets hold of a case of\ntorticollis he inhibits the nerves and cures it in five minutes,\" was\ntalking driveling rot.\n\nI have seen some of the best Osteopaths treat wry-neck, and the work they\ndid was to knead and stretch and pull, which by starting circulation and\nworking out soreness, gradually relieved the patient. A hot application,\nby expanding tissues and stimulating circulation, would have had the same\neffect, perhaps more slowly manifested.\n\nTo call any Osteopathic treatment massage is always resented as an insult\nby the guardians of the science. What is the Osteopath doing, who rolls\nand twists and pulls and kneads for a full hour, if he isn't giving a\nmassage treatment? Of course, it sounds more dignified, and perhaps helps\nto \"preserve the purity of Osteopathy as a separate system,\" to call it\n\"reducing subluxations,\" \"correcting lesions,\" \"inhibiting and\nstimulating\" nerves. The treatment also acts better as a placebo to call\nit by these names.\n\nAs students we were taught that all Osteopathic movements were primarily\nto adjust something. Some of us worried for fear we wouldn't know when the\nadjusting was complete. We were told that all the movements we were taught\nto make were potent to \"move things,\" so we worried again for fear we\nmight move something in the wrong direction. We were assured, however,\nthat since the tendency was always toward the normal, all we had to do was\nto agitate, stir things up a bit, and the thing out of place would find\nits place. How _specific_! How scientific!\n\nWe were told that when in the midst of our \"agitation\" we heard something\n\"pop,\" we could be sure the thing out of place had gone back. When a\nstudent had so mastered the great bone-setting science as to be able to\n\"pop\" stray cervical vertebrae he was looked upon with envy by the fellows\nwho had not joined the association for protection against suits for\nmalpractice, and did not know just how much of an owl they could make of a\nman and not break his neck.\n\nThe fellow who lacked clairvoyant powers to locate straying things, and\ncould not always find the \"missing link\" of the spine, could go through\nthe prescribed motions just the same. If he could do it with sufficient\nfacial contortions to indicate supreme physical exertion, and at the same\ntime preserve the look of serious gravity and professional importance of a\nquack medical doctor giving _particular_ directions for the dosing of the\nplacebo he is leaving, he might manage to make a sound vertebra \"pop.\"\nThis, with his big show of doing something, has its effect on the\npatient's mind anyway.\n\nWe were taught that Osteopathy was applied common sense, that it was all\nreasonable and rational, and simply meant \"finding something wrong and\nputting it right.\" Some of us thought it only fair to tell our patients\nwhat we were trying to do, and what we did it for. There is where we made\nour big mistake. To say we were relaxing muscles, or trying to lift and\ntone up a rickety chest wall, or straighten a warped spine, was altogether\ntoo simple. It was like telling a man that you were going to give him a\ndose of oil for the bellyache when he wanted an operation for\nappendicitis. It was too common, and some would go to an Osteopath who\ncould find vertebra and ribs and hips displaced, something that would make\nthe community \"sit up and take notice.\" If one has to be sick, why not\nhave something worth while?\n\nWhere Osteopathy has always been so administered that people have the idea\nthat it means to find things out of place and put them back, it is a\ngentleman's job, professional, scientific and genteel. Men have been known\nto give twenty to forty treatments a day at two dollars per treatment. In\nmany communities, however, the adjustment idea has so degenerated that to\ngive an Osteopathic treatment is no job for a high collar on a hot day. To\nstrip a hard-muscled, two-hundred-pound laborer down to a\nperspiration-soaked and scented undershirt, and manipulate him for an hour\nwhile he has every one of his five hundred work-hardened muscles rigidly\nset to protect himself from the terrible neck-wrenching, bone-twisting\nordeal he has been told an Osteopathic treatment would subject him to--I\nsay when you have tried that sort of a thing for an hour you will conclude\nthat an Osteopathic treatment is no job for a kid-gloved dandy nor for a\nlily-fingered lady, as it has been so glowingly pictured.\n\nI know the brethren will say that true Osteopathy does not give an hour's\nshotgun treatment, but finds the lesion, corrects it, collects its two\ndollars, and quits until \"day after to-morrow,\" when it \"corrects\" and\n_collects_ again as long as there is anything to co--llect!\n\nI practiced for three years in a town where people made their first\nacquaintance with Osteopathy through the treatments of a man who\nafterwards held the position of demonstrator of Osteopathic \"movements\"\nand \"manipulations\" in one of the largest and boastedly superior schools\nof Osteopathy. The people certainly should have received correct ideas of\nOsteopathy from him. He was followed in the town by a bright young fellow\nfrom \"Pap's\" school, where the genuine \"lesion,\" blown-in-the-bottle brand\nof Osteopathy has always been taught. This fellow was such an excellent\nOsteopath that he made enough money in two years to enable him to quit\nOsteopathy forever. This he did, using the money he had gathered as an\nOsteopath to take him through a medical college.\n\nI followed these two shining lights who I supposed had established\nOsteopathy on a correct basis. I started in to give specific treatments as\nI had been taught to do; that is, to hunt for the lesion, correct it if I\nfound it, and quit, even if I had not been more than fifteen or twenty\nminutes at it. I found that in many cases my patients were not satisfied.\nI did not know just what was the matter at first, and lost some desirable\npatients (lost their patronage, I mean--they were not in much danger of\ndying when they came to me). I was soon enlightened, however, by some more\noutspoken than the rest. They said I did not \"treat as long as that other\ndoctor,\" and when I had done what I thought was indicated at times a\npatient would say, \"You didn't give me that neck-twisting movement,\" or\nthat \"leg-pulling treatment.\" No matter what I thought was indicated, I\nhad to give all the movements each time that had ever been given before.\n\nA physician who has had to dose out something he knew would do no good,\njust to satisfy the patient and keep him from sending for another doctor\nwho he feared might give something worse, can appreciate the violence done\na fellow's conscience as he administers those wonderfully curative\nmovements. He cannot, however, appreciate the emotions that come from the\nstrenuous exertion over a sweaty body in a close room on a July day.\n\nIncidentally, this difference in the physical exertion necessary to get\nthe same results has determined a good many to quit Osteopathy and take up\nmedicine. A young man who had almost completed a course in Osteopathy told\nme he was going to study medicine when he had finished Osteopathy, as he\nhad found that giving \"treatments was too d----d hard work.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nTAPEWORMS AND GALLSTONES.\n\n    Plug-hatted Faker--Frequency of Tapeworms--Some Tricks Exposed--How\n    the Defunct Worm was Passed--Rubber Near-Worm--New Gallstone\n    Cure--Relation to Osteopathy--Perfect, Self-Oiling, \"Autotherapeutic\"\n    Machine--Touch the Button--The Truth About the Consumption and\n    Insanity Cures.\n\n\nThere is another trump card the traveling medical grafter plays, which\nwins about as well as the guaranteed rheumatism cure, namely, the tapeworm\nfraud. Last summer I heard a plug-hatted faker delivering a lecture to a\nstreet crowd, in which he said that every mother's son or daughter of them\nwho didn't have the rosy cheek, the sparkling eye and buoyancy of youth\nmight be sure that a tapeworm of monstrous size was, \"like a worm in the\nbud,\" feeding on their \"damask cheeks.\" To prove his assertion and lend\nterror to his tale, he held aloft a glass jar containing one of the\nmonsters that had been driven from its feast on the vitals of its victim\nby his never-failing remedy. The person, \"saved from a living death,\"\nstood at the \"doctor's\" side to corroborate the story, while his\nvoluptuous wife was kept busy handing out the magical remedy and \"pursing\nthe ducats\" given in return.\n\nHow about the worm exhibited? How this one was secured I do not know; but\nintelligent people ought to know that cases of tapeworm are not so common\nthat eight people out of every ten have one, as this grafter positively\nasserted.\n\nAn acquaintance once traveled with one of these tapeworm specialists to\nfurnish the song and dance performances that are so attractive to the\nclass of people who furnish the ready victims for grafters. This is how\nthe game was worked. The \"specialist\" would pick out an emaciated,\ncredulous individual from his crowd, and tell him that he bore the\nunmistakable marks of being the prey of a terrible tapeworm. If he\ncouldn't sell him a bottle of his worm eradicator, he would give him a\nbottle, telling him to take it according to directions and report to him\nat his hotel or tent the next day. The man would report that no dead or\ndying worm had been sighted. This was when Dr. Grafter got in his expert\nwork. The man was told that if he had taken the medicine as directed the\nworm was dead beyond a doubt, but sometimes the \"fangs\" were fastened so\nfirmly to the walls of the intestines, in their death agony, that they\nwould not come away until he had injected a certain preparation that\n_always_ \"produced the goods.\"\n\nThe man was taken into a darkened room for privacy (?), the injection\ngiven, and the defunct worm always came away. At least a worm was always\nfound in the evacuated material, and how was the deluded one to know that\nit was in the vessel or matter injected? Of course, the patient felt\nwondrous relief, and was glad to stand up that night and testify that Dr.\nGrafter was an angel of mercy sent to deliver him from the awful fate of\nliving where \"the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.\"\n\nI was told recently of a new tapeworm graft that makes the old one look\ncrude and unscientific. This one actually brings a tapeworm from the\nintestines in _every_ case, whether the person had one before the magic\nremedy was given or not. The graft is to have a near-worm manufactured of\ndelicate rubber and compressed into a capsule. The patient swallows the\ncapsule supposed to contain the worm destroyer. The rubber worm is not\ndigested, and a strong physic soon produces it, to the great relief of the\n\"patient\" and the greater glory and profit of the shyster. What a\nwonderful age of invention and scientific discoveries!\n\nAnother journal tells of a new gallstone cure that never fails to cause\nthe stones to be passed even if they are big as walnuts. The graft in this\nis that the medicine consists of paraffine dissolved in colored oil. The\nparaffine does not digest, but collects in colored balls, which are passed\nby handfuls and are excellent imitations of the real things.\n\nHow about tapeworms, gallstones and Osteopathy, do you ask?\n\nWe heard about tapeworms and gallstones when we were in Osteopathic\ncollege.\n\nThe one thing that was ground into us early and thoroughly was that\nOsteopathy was a complete system. No matter what any other system had\ndone, we were to remember that Osteopathy could do that thing more surely\nand more scientifically.\n\nStudents soon learned that they were never to ask, \"_Can_ we treat this?\"\nThat indicated skepticism, which was intolerable in the atmosphere of\noptimistic faith that surrounded the freshman and sophomore classes\nespecially. The question was to be put, \"_How_ do we treat this?\" In the\ntreatment of worms the question was, \"How do we treat worms?\" That was\neasy. Had not nature made a machine, perfect in all its parts,\nself-oiling, \"autotherapeutic,\" and all that? And would nature allow it to\nchoke up or slip a cog just because a little thing like a worm got tangled\nin its gearing? Not much. Nature knew that worms would intrude, and had\nprovided her own vermifuge. The cause of worms is insufficient bile, and\nbehold, all the Osteopath had to do when he wished to serve notice on the\naforesaid worms to vacate the premises was to touch the button controlling\nthe stop-cock to the bile-duct, and they left. It was so simple and easy\nwe wondered how the world could have been so long finding it out.\n\nOsteopathy was complete. That was the proposition on which we were to\nstand. If anything had to be removed, or brought back, or put in place,\nall that was necessary was to open the floodgates, release the pent-up\nforces of nature, and the thing was done!\n\nWhat a happy condition, to have _perfect_ faith! I remember a report came\nto our school of an Osteopathic physician who read a paper before a\nconvention of his brethren, in which he recorded marvelous cures performed\nin cases of tuberculosis. The paper was startling, even revolutionary, yet\nit was not too much for our faith. We were almost indignant at some who\nventured to suggest that curing consumption by manipulation might be\nclaiming too much. These wonderful cures were performed in a town which I\nafterward visited. I could find no one who knew of a single case that had\nbeen cured. There were those who knew of cases of tuberculosis he had\ntreated, that had gone as most other bad cases of that disease go.\n\nThere was another world-startling case. It is one of the main cases, from\nall that I can learn, upon which all the bold claims of Osteopathy as an\ninsanity cure are based. I remember an article under scare headlines big\nenough for a bloody murder, flared out in the local paper. It was yet more\nwonderfully heralded in the papers at the county seat. The metropolitan\ndailies caught up the echo, which reverberated through Canada and was\nfinally heard across the seas! Osteopathic journals took it up and made\nmuch of it. Those in school read it with eager satisfaction, and plunged\ninto their studies with fiercer enthusiasm. Many who had been \"almost\npersuaded\" were induced by it to \"cross the Rubicon,\" and take up the\nstudy of this wonderful new science that could take a raving maniac,\ncondemned to a mad house by medical men, and with a few scientific twists\nof the neck cause raging insanity to give place to gentle sleep that\nshould wake in sanity and health.\n\nWas it any wonder that students flocked to schools that professed to teach\nhow common plodding mortals could work such miracles? Was it strange that\nanxious friends brought dear ones, over whom the black cloud of insanity\ncast its shadows, hundreds of miles to be treated by this man? Or to the\nOsteopathic colleges, from which, in all cases of which I ever knew, they\nreturned sadly disappointed?\n\nThe report of that wonderful cure caused many intelligent laymen (and even\nDr. Pratt) to indulge a hope that insanity might be only a disturbance of\nthe blood supply to the brain caused by pressure from distorted \"neck\nbones,\" or other lesions, and that Osteopaths were to empty our\novercrowded madhouses. Where is that hope now? What was its foundation? I\nwas told by an intimate friend of this great Osteopath that all these\nstartling reports we had supposed were published as news the papers were\nglad to get because of their important truths, were but shrewd\nadvertising. I afterward talked with the man, and his friends who were at\nthe bedside when the miracle was performed, and while they believed that\nthere had been good done by the treatment, it was all so tame and\ncommonplace at home compared with its fame abroad that I have wondered\never since if anything much was really done after all.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MORAL TO THE TALE.\n\nHonesty--Plain Dealing--Education.\n\n\nBut I must close. I could multiply incidents, but it would grow\nmonotonous. I believe I have told enough that is disgusting to the\nintelligent laity and medical men, and enough that is humiliating to the\ncapable, honest Osteopath, who practices his \"new science\" as standing for\nall that is good in physio-therapy.\n\nI hope I have told, or recalled, something that will help physicians to\nsee that the way to clear up the turbidity existing in therapeutics to-day\nis by open, honest dealing with the laity, and by a campaign of education\nthat shall impart to them enough of the scientific principles of medicine\nso that they may know when they are being imposed upon by quacks and\ngrafters. I am encouraged to believe I am on the right track. After I had\nwritten this booklet I read, in a report of the convention of the American\nMedical Association held in Chicago, that one of the leaders of the\nAssociation told his brethren that the most important work before them as\nphysicians was to conduct a campaign of education for the masses. It must\nbe done not only to protect the people, but as well to protect the honest\nphysician.\n\nThere is another fact that faces the medical profession, and I believe I\nhave called attention to conditions that prove it. That is, that the hope\nof the profession of \"doctoring\" being placed on an honest rational basis\nlies in a broader and more thorough education of the physician. A broad,\nliberal general education to begin with, then all that can be known about\nmedicine and surgery. Is that enough? No. Then all that there is in\nphysio-therapy, under whatsoever name, that promises to aid in curing or\npreventing disease.\n\nIf this humble production aids but a little in any of this great work,\nthen my object in writing will have been achieved.","title":"Quacks and Grafters","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":27956}