passing by," the quack said, "do you suppose are sensible persons?" "Six or seven," said the doctor. "I will give you ten of them for your clients, the rest are mine." This is not complimentary to four fifths of the human race.
I believe that we can explain how even educated and intelligent people can place credence in the virtue of strange remedies and the knowledge of absolute ignoramuses. Medicine is not, as is commonly said, the art of healing; it is the art of usually mitigating and sometimes healing. There are too many incurable diseases, or those which become so with age, by fatigues of all sorts, or by excess, for a doctor to be able to pretend to do anything but soothe and reduce the pains. A patient afflicted with such troubles can not bring himself to believe that he is condemned without remedy; and he will at any price try the possible and the impossible in the hope of finding a cure. The impotency of medicine as against his trouble induces the unhappy man to cast himself in time into the hands of any quack who can insinuate himself into his confidence. "My remedy is infallible," the quack will tell him; "try it." The spirit grows weak and gives way under the suffering that tortures and yields not; the animal, we might say, resumes its rights; and the patient abandons himself to one who will promise a wonderful cure without reserve. Then there have been wonderful cures. At the time when little was known or knowledge was imperfect about nervous affections, so curious, various, and manifold in their manifestations, what seemed like resurrections, almost miracles, sometimes took place. Such facts are satisfactorily explained now, but they were formerly astonishing and surprising. The crowd hurrahed as over a prodigy, and gave absolute confidence to it. It could not be otherwise. Whatever may happen, there will always be credulous people and always men disposed to deceive them.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La Nature.
