QUACKS AND QUACKERY.
"Notre credulite fait toute leur science." VOLTAIRE.
WE do not proceed to the examination of the case of Mr. Sr. JOHN LONG, and his numerous noble, worshipful, and respectable patients, with the most remote wish to prejudice Mr. LONG in the eyes of the jury before which he must soon make his appearance. Their judgment has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of Mr. LONG'S system. All that they have to inquire is, whether he himself honestly believed in it, and, in the case of Miss CASHIN, applied it with due precaution and in good faith. They sit to try a legal and a moral question; we are about to investigate one of abstract reason. applied it with due precaution and in good faith. They sit to try a legal and a moral question; we are about to investigate one of abstract reason.
We call Mr. LONG'S mode of cure a system, for want of a better name. The word system means properly a regular arrangement of the various parts of a definite whole : in Mr. LONG'S system there is no regularity, and its parts have no mutual connexion. The assumption on which it rests is, that there is in the human frame, when in a disordered state, a certain peccant humour, which must be got rid of ere the patient can be made well. Now we do not, and it is impossible that we should deny, the existence of this peccant humour; for of the fearful and wonderful covering with which God has endowed us, "we know but little, and must guess the rest." The hypothesis may be true ; and so may theirs who would trace all the evils of humanity to heavenly influences, and forbid us to bleed or swallow rhubarb except on certain days of the moon. The peccant humour and the lunar influence are good enough as hypotheses ; but they ought not, in the absence of all proof, and in the face of all proof, to be acted on as facts. If Mr. LONG had promulgated the doctrine of peccant humour, and at the same time set about the removing or mitigating what he denomi- nated its symptoms, by means between which and their cure or mitigation there was some obvious analogy, we should not have attempted to disturb him in his conceit. A Frenchman, about the period of the invention of the microscope, put forth a theory of disease founded on the discovery of animalculi, to which that invention led. His theory was, that all disease proceeded from a state of warfare between various tribes of those small deer; and that, by consequence, all cure must depend on maintaining a pro- per balance of power among them. The pugnacious animalculi of the Frenchman had some support from observation. He only as- sumed the fact of their warfare and its consequences ; but Mr. LONG not only takes for granted that all diseases are the results of a peccant humour, but he takes for granted the existence of the peccant humour itself—he assumes both the cause and the effect. But were we ever so much disposed to grant the peccant humour and its connexion with disease, it would by no means follow that there was but one way of expelling the one and healing the other. It may be that the same cause which exhibits itself in one instance by acidity in the stomach, displays its working in another by a flaw in the enamel of a tooth ; but it by no means follows that we are to swallow carbonate of magnesia for the toothache, or pull a tooth to cure the heartburn. Now Mr. LONG, besides having only one cause of disease, has but one means of cure. If you have a headache, "rub your back ;" if you have a toothache, "rub your back ;" if you have an ulcer below your ear, if your eyes be inflamed, your complexion muddy, your hip-joint dislocated, "rub your back with my liniment, and your business is done.' It matters not how you are rubbed, or by whom you are rubbed; only use the liniment, and breathe the gases, and you are safe. There is something extremely captivating in this unity of treat- .ment ; and it is ingeniously connected with the unity of the enemy Which it is meant to dislodge. There is one rubbing, one peccant humour, and we may add one Mr. ST. Joux Low', Mr. LONG'S patients are, however, many ; and this constitutes the most re- markable feature in his case. We shake the head gravely at the countryman who fancies that he has an infallible recipe for his ague in a bit of paper scrawled over with villanous rhymes, and enclosed in the bowl of a tobacco-pipe; and we hurry our daugh ters, our sons, ourselves, (we do not insist on the case of wives, because there may be other reasons for placing them in the doe tor's hands than a desire to have them cured), to Harley Street, expecting the cure of the most opposite diseases from the appli- cation of a liniment betwixt the shoulders or elsewhere, by the fair hands of IVIis ALICE DYKE, servant of all work to Mr. Sr. JOHN LONG.
If there be any such thing as certainty under the sky, a man may surely make up his mind to the conclusion that a hole in the tooth and an imposthume in the lungs ask for different modes of treatment; that a muddy complexion and an ulcer in the thigh do not spring from the same cause or require the same medicine ; that gout in the band and dislocation of the hip-joint are not identical and to be reduced by the same means. In the second place, without having recourse, in the remotest de- gree, to doubtful theorizing, the most simple and. unobservant may perceive a certain connexion between his diet and his ailings. Whoever has drunk a few glasses too much, whether of "humble port or imperial tokay," must have been sensible of a certain feebleness of the tongue, an enlarged capacity of vision, a hatred of perpendicularity, an extraordinary inclination to slumber, fol- lowed on awaking by a desire of cold liquids very powerfully de- veloped. These are symptoms with which most men are con- versant ; and the conclusion that a sound stomach is necessary to sound health is in consequence not more generally made, than that proper diet is necessary to a sound stomach. It may be expected to strike any one who so reasons, that, granting the liniment of Mr. Long to be as powerful in eliciting peccant humour as he de- scribes it to be, still a little attention to diet will be required, be- cause otherwise he may be putting in humour before as fast as he takes it out behind, and so the patient may go on to doomsday in one continued process of filling and drawing off. Now Mr. LONG has not only one cure for every ailment, but he accompanies that cure by no restriction or regulation as to meat or drink. Mr. PRENDERGAST has a strong desire for a glass of claret—very natural in a member of the Lower House, and equally natural in one who, like many other members of Parliament, is troubled with an affection of the head : "take a, bottle," says Mr. LONG. Miss CASHIN vomits perpetually, and has no desire for any thing liquid or solid : "take a tumbler of port," says Mr. LONG. Had Miss CASHIN been of the stronger sex, the prescrip- tion would have run—" take a bottle of port.- How then does it happen, that any one who is convinced that different diseases ask different remedies or that remedies, to be efficient, must be ac- companied by regulated diet, is induced to visit Mr. ST. Joarr LONG? We answer, that none such do visit him. The high and noble names of his patients, his lords, his baronets, and his mem- bers of Parliament, must not blind us to the plain obvious fact, that, touching disease and its cures, the whole of them are quite as ignorant as is the clown who looks for a cure of his tertian from a spell hidden in a tobacco-pipe bowl. To this ignorance there is but one cure—it must be enlightened. It will not be removed. by an attack on Mr. LONG, at the bar of Reason or of the Old Bailey. If he were put down to- morrow, other peccant-humour mongers would rise, other lini- ments would be invented, and other sponges handled by other ALICE DYKES. Notre credulite fait toute leur science, as VOLTAIRE says, in the words of our motto. The real peccant humour—the ignorance of the public on matters medical—must be removed, be- fore quacks, honest or dishonest, can be got rid of. We once thought of recommending this subject to the Diffusion of Know- ledge people—advising them to instruct the public, through the medium of one of their little books, touching the anatomy of the human body, the history and symptoms of disease, and the nature and effects of remedies. On second thoughts, we feel inclined to attempt the task ourselves ; not, however, -limiting our remarks to medical imposture, for there are many who equally deserve the name of quacks in other professions, whom it equally imports the public to expose and to put down. And assuredly the newspapers are not blameless.
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