Quackery Unmasked/Chapter XIV
CHAPTER XIV.
EXTRACTS FROM THE ENCYCLOPŒDIA BRITANNICA AND LONDON MEDICAL CIRCULAR.
Most kinds of quackery are wont to boast of their success abroad. We are continually told that Homœopathy is patronized to a great extent in Europe. That such is not the case, has already been shown by statistical reports. The following extract is taken from the Encyclopœdia Britannica, which all must acknowledge is high authority.
Of late years a class of practitioners has arisen, which, in so far as it is constituted of persons 'duly qualified' may be designated sectarian; nevertheless, it is made up for the most part of charlatans. It comprises those who, whether duly qualified or not, practise medicine upon the basis of some exclusive dogma or principle, or with reference to some exclusive remedial agent. Legitimate medicine is catholic and eclectic; it has neither exclusive dogmas nor creeds; it requires its members to seek knowledge from every available source, and apply it in every available mode as may be demanded by the circumstances of the practitioner or the patient; the object of the exercise of the art being the relief or cure of the patient as promptly, safely, and pleasantly as possible, without any formal restriction as to the means or mode. This sectarian class therefore separates itself from the catholic profession by following professedly an exclusive method. Of the followers of Hahnemann (designating themselves homœopathists), there are reported to be three hundred in the United Kingdom. (See Homœopathy.) Of the followers of Priessnitz (the hydropathists) and of Mesmer (the Mesmerists), the numbers are much less. Indeed, the latter are not unfrequently homœopathists also.
"The 'quack doctors' are a motley body, comprising every kind of specialty—worm doctors, water-casters, bone-setters, astrologers, herbalists, 'wise men,' and 'witch-finders' (who prove to be occasionally, as of old, professed poisoners and procurers of abortion), curers of syphilis and diseases of sexual organs (with hardly an exception a group of scoundrels), the 'falling sickness,' &c. In this class may also be found venders of secret remedies in connection with some absurd hypothesis, as Coffin's herbs, or Morison's pills; or itinerant practitioners of Homœopathy, Mesmerism, &c. The ranks of the quacks are also swelled by outcasts from the legitimate profession: men who are excommunicated either because of their vices or of their follies, and who have been morally punished by a de facto deprivation of professional intercourse with their brethren. In the third class of amateurs and others are comprised country clergymen, ladies having a taste for medicine, persons in private station with a smattering of knowledge, but especially the retailers and compounders of drugs, and professed nurses. Those who, when young, have abandoned or neglected the study of medicine as a profession, and have been led to follow other pursuits, are particularly apt to take up the irregular practice of it in after life."
We believe there is no public hospital in the world where Homœopathy is employed or allowed. In Paris, Hahnemann's adopted city, there are twenty-six public hospitals, having in all about eighteen thousand beds, and the London hospitals are supposed to contain at least twenty-five thousand, whilst Vienna has the largest number of free beds of any single hospital in the world; but not a single bed in all these, or anywhere that we know of in any public hospital, is given to Homœopathy.
The following is from the "Medical Circular" of July 29, 1857:—
"The Decillionths of Homœopathy.—Mr. Wharton, an able professor of mathematics and astronomy, has had the kindness to answer the difficult questions proposed below. His address is 7 Elm Terrace, Queen's Elm, Fulham Road.
"Q.—If homœopathists give, as they profess to do, the decillionth of a grain of medicine, for a dose, and which decillionth can only be obtained by dissolving the grain of medicine in a decillion drops of some liquid—say alcohol—how long would the grain of medicine last, if the population of the world were a thousand millions, and if there were a thousand millions of such worlds, and if each inhabitant lived for a thousand years, and if they each took a dose per second during their whole existence?
"And what must be the dimensions of the vessel that would just hold the decillion drops of alcohol?
"A.—The number of generations, each subsisting a thousand years, that the grain of medicine would supply with the homœopathic dose to each individual per second, each generation consisting of the 1,000,000,000 inhabitants of the 1,000,000,000 worlds is 31,687,535,943,382,425,811,012,156,738,474; and the whole number of years the grain of medicine would last the inhabitants of those worlds is 31,687,535,943,382,425,811,012,156,738,474 x 1000, equal to thirty-one thousand six hundred and eighty-seven quintillions, five hundred and thirty-five thousand nine hundred and forty-three quadrillions, three hundred and eighty-two thousand four hundred and twenty-five trillions, eight hundred and eleven thousand and twelve billions, one hundred and fifty-six thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight millions, four hundred and seventy-four thousand years!!!
"The time it would take the trillion inhabitants of the thousand millions worlds, each counting 500 years per minute, without intermission, to count the number of years the medicine would last, is 120,494,090 years.
"The vessel that would just hold the decillion drops of alcohol must have its length, breadth, and depth, each 229,995,079,096,540 miles long.
"Light travelling 192,500 miles in a second, would require 378 years to travel the length of one of the sides of the cubical vessel that would just hold the decillion homœopathic doses of medicine.
"The spherical space which contains the solar system would hold only a very small part of the decillion drops.
"The length of the major axis of Neptune's orbit, and consequently the diameter of the sphere, is 5,706,893,200 miles, which light would travel over in eight and a quarter hours.
"If the spherical space which bounds the solar system, vast as it is, was increased so as to have its diameter 40,300 times greater, it would be equal in length to a side of the cubical vessel, but would not, of course, hold the decillion drops; for if the sphere was put into the vessel, it would touch it only at five points, or six if covered, and the angular spaces would be empty."