Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/236

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232
QUACKERY UNMASKED.

work. They can administer emetics and cathartics, or give decillionth attenuations of anything desired; and if thought best, they can apply the wet sheet, or give lobelia.

What if, when I give my watch to the goldsmith to be cleaned, he should ask me by what system I wish to have it treated—if I will have the dirt washed out with cold water, or warm water; or shall it be shook out, or blown out, or steamed out; or shall he lay it upon its back and wait until its own gravity brings it out? What would be thought of such an eclectic goldsmith?

All the varieties of quackery appear to be running a race, and each one pretends to be ahead of every other. Eclectics talk of nothing so much as progress. If we may believe them, all their means are the very newest of the new—they are rushing onward with the speed of a locomotive, and are outstripping and overturning all other systems. They sail over Homœopathy, and Chrono-Thermalism, which they consider as sunken hulks whose standing masts only serve to indicate the rocks or shoals upon which they have stranded. The established medical schools