delusion was doomed to a speedy refutation in his own person, for he died at the age of 48 with his immortalizing elixir by his side. Before his death, many tasted, believed, and drank of it—not to live forever, but to die like fools.
All experience shows that mankind are ever more ready to believe pleasant falsehoods than disagreeable truths. Quackery takes advantage of this proclivity, and therefore caters for the universal appetite. A perfect quack is a most obsequious sycophant — his medicines are always exactly what the patient wants. They are never disagreeable, are perfectly safe in all cases, and always certain to cure. These are what every sick man wants, and therefore strives with all his might to believe, and often does come to believe against the strongest evidence and clearest reason. The ancient quacks pretended to cure their patients by the use of charms and spells, and the modern quacks pretend to cure theirs by means often equally ridiculous and equally worthless; and in each instance the intellectual and not the physical organs have been operated upon; and whenever any positive benefit has
