remark was ever made than that of the great American showman, when he said, "The American people love to be humbugged;" and this applies more strongly to medicine than to any other avocation.

The impostor in medicine, like the impostor in other professions and in business, is well aware of the credulity of human nature, and is prepared to take advantage of the situation. Surround almost any idea with mystery, dress it in pseudo-scientific garb, associate it with the names of former great men, and there will always be a certain number of people who will break their necks in eagerness to worship at the shrine of this new divinity. That the belief in charms and amulets still exists is shown by the fact that many children wear little bags filled with asafetida as a preventive against measles and scarlet fever. Necklaces of amber beads are used to protect the wearer from the contagion of whooping cough. Buckeyes are carried in the pockets as a means of protection against certain diseases. Red strings worn around the legs, Irish potatoes carried in the pocket, and horseshoe nails bent into a circle and worn upon the finger, are, in the estimation of many people, a sure cure for rheumatism. The newly-shed skin of a snake is frequently worn in the crown of the hat by country men as a preventive and cure for headache.

Electricity has for many years been a prosperous snare for the unwary. As every physician knows, there are certain remedial virtues in electric appliances when used by scientifie hands; but to place the method above others as a cure for all diseases is to remove it from the field of legitimate medicine into the domain of quackery; yet we have our electric belts composed of one or more metals soldered together, and retailing, according to the depth of the delusion, from one to twenty dollars. People who have used them will tell you that they have felt the electric current tingling through their bodies. I have no doubt they have felt something, as it is so very easy to smear the surface of the belt with a little tincture of capsicum or some other agent that will irritate the skin. Another so-called electrical device that has been before the public for quite awhile, consists of a fancy little electric belt, armed with a metallic button, to which is attached a single conducting cord; suspended from the outer end of the cord is a nickel-plated plug of brass which is placed in a cup of water. By following the directions and fastening the belt around the wrist, all you have to do is to complete the electrical circuit, through the imagination, and the apparatus will cure you while you sleep.

Quite recently I have had two illustrations of the above methods of treating disease occurring in my own practice, that are equally as good, and besides are very economical. While in attendance upon a case of acute rheumatism my attention was drawn to certain black objects which my patient held in each hand. I made inquiry, and ascertained that they were pieces of electric-light carbon; I also discovered that he had two more pieces, one attached to each foot. He assured me that this method of generating an electric current had been recommended by a friend, and that since he had been using them he had felt considerably better. The sight of that poor sick man, solemnly holding pieces of cast-off electric-light carbon in each hand, while two more equally impotent pieces rested in loving proximity to his nether extremities, was a little too much for my equanimity; and after assuring him that I was glad to have learned this new principle I beat as hasty a retreat as possible, wondering what kind of people lived in the moon. The second case is that of a lady who had sewed electric-light carbons in the sleeves of her dress to relieve a similar trouble.

The use of water as a remedial agent has had its day; and while there may yet be a few who believe in its specific virtues, hydropathy can hardly be recognized as a distinct school. The belief of the public, a short time ago, in the wonderful curative properties of condurango as a specific for cancer, which was shared to some extent by the profession, affords another instance of the ease with which people may be induced to place faith in worthless drugs.

Perhaps a better illustration of how certain methods of treating disease become popular would be that of the craze for blue glass, which was claimed to possess specific influence over morbid processes. People afflicted with real or imaginary diseases sunned themselves in little houses made of blue glass, and many believe themselves to have been cured.

It is interesting to observe the movements of the public in its changing opinions concerning the virtues of quack medicines. Formerly it was claimed that the knowledge of the value of these nostrums had been obtained by travel in distant countries, or from the empirical practices of primitive and little-known people—such as our Indians. To-day the artifices of the advertiser of panaceas have assumed a different guise, and he now endeavors to palm off his concoctions upon claims based upon the application of scientific principles. Years ago

people were eagerly swallowing the "hygean pills," which were recommended to cure all diseases. These had their day, and were succeeded by "Brandreth's globules." The names of the countless specifics that preceded and followed it would be folly to attempt to enumerate; glance over the columns of our secular papers and you will find hosts of advertisements of reputed remedies with marvelous accounts of their workings, until it seems an absolute certainty that all the poor diseased mortal has to do is to invest a few dollars and be saved. These muchvaunted catholicons shed their effulgent glory over the earth for a time, enriching their promotors, and gradually fade away to disappear forever, leaving behind a record of unfilled promises, and numberless victims ready, like a drowning man, to grasp at the next floating straw. The sufferer is not left long to grope in darkness, for before the passing specific has shed its last flickering ray the medical horizon becomes illuminated with a far more brilliant orb, supported by a more cunningly arranged group of symptoms; common to many diseases, and accompanied by a longer list of reputed cures, to which are appended the names of ministers, lawyers, and other prominent men, spread out something after the fashion of the tail of a comet. Bewildered and uninformed, and with hope falsely inspired, he snatches at this next chance and spends perhaps his last savings, only to realize too late, when he awakens in a hospital under proper medical attention, a repetition of the old story of valuable time lost in a vain search for health, and that ignorance has again paid the wages which avarice exacts of credulity.

The public in its deportment toward secret remedies has been aptly compared to a child that amuses itself with a bubble, and when that bubble is destroyed occupies itself in producing another, and so on to the end-if that end should ever come-so many are the bubbles of quackery.

Of the many so-called systems of healing which are in use at present and which, like the above methods, do not require scientific knowledge as a prerequisite, and among whose votaries are found many intelligent and fairly educated people, I shall briefly refer to a few of the most prominent:

That system in which morbid conditions of all descriptions are regarded as the result of an abnormal state of the mind. Disease is relieved by the influence of the mind of the healer over the mind of the patient.

Another practice is based upon the supposed advice rendered by the departed spirits of the dead through the agency of a third party, called the medium. The supposition that man is possessed of a power or force which can be projected from the body of the healer upon that of the patient represents the yet prevalent belief in the powers of mesmerism.

Chief among these fallacies is one known by the euphemistic title of "Christian Science." This is based upon the doctrine of immaterialism, according to which there is no material or solid substance extant; disease therefore exists only in the mind. This dogma is founded on Asiatic philosophy, and is contrary to the teachings of Christianity and repugnant to the intelligence of thoughtful men. It is neither Christianity nor science.

The above methods-like the royal touch and others of that class— appeal to the supernatural; and the reputed cures are easily explained by the statment that the patients were either not very sick and would have gotten well anyhow through vis medicatrix naturæ, or that, laboring under the influence of temporary excitement, they imagined themselves better, soon to relapse into their former condition.

The latest candidate for honors in the realm of quackery is known as Osteopathy. Mind, motion, and matter constitute the great trinity of this pretended science. It is worse than Christian Science, Mesmerism, or Faith Cure, as it does not even lay claim to the single virtue which they possess, that is, the appeal to the imagination as a factor in the alleviation of human suffering.

According to this fabrication the various organs of the body are subservient to the brain, which constitutes a sort of human drug store, from which it is proposed to draw all necessary medicines, by manipulation of bone, muscle, and nerve, and thereby relieve disease. The disciples of this lofty science regard the use of drugs as criminal, are taught very little anatomy, physiology, or chemistry, and yet the demand is made of legislatures, that this excrescence of the nineteenth century shall receive recognition as a distinct art of healing without complying with the law regulating the practice of medicine.

The uncertainty of the causes of disease in the past has been largely responsible for the promulgation of these vague and superstitious ideas among all classes of people. Ever since the age of Hippocrates, when medicine first began to be placed upon a rational basis, the truths which it embodies have had to contend with obstacles of every description. For centuries, hampered by religious beliefs, plunged

into the darkness of the middle ages, ridiculed by impostors inside and outside of the professional ranks, it has met and overcome them all, and taken firmer root among the rotten debris of dead and forgotten systems.

Fed by the wholesome pabulum of science, it stands to-day, shorn of its mysticism and devoid of its mummery, an elegant monument to the powers of the human intellect. The comparatively recent demonstration of the principles of bacteriology has removed the cause of many diseases from idle speculation to actual knowledge. It is now known that about one hundred and fifty varieties of bacteria produce disease; and while it is true that comparatively few affect the human race, sufficient facts concerning the etiology of consumption, anthrax, lock-jaw, diphtheria, etc., have accumulated to warrant the assertion that bacteriological investigation will eventually reveal the cause of every disease. Science admits hypothesis only so long as it affords the best explanation of observed phenomena; should another theory be advanced that contains a better argument, it may entirely supplant the older one, or both may find supporters; and opinion as to the true explanation of certain events may thereby be divided. Whenever a theory admits of actual demonstration it becomes at once a truth, and must be ultimately accepted by every one.

The bacterial theory of disease was for many years purely a matter of conjecture, and as such it received the support of many scientific men, while others regarded it as entirely visionary. Owing to the recent introduction of instrumeuts of precision as aids in physical research, and to improve technique, it has complied with all of the rigid requirements of science; and, verified by competent observers all over the civilized world, it now constitutes one of the greatest fundamental truths in medicine. While the demonstration of these essential principles has always served to guide the professional mind in the right direction, it has ever opened up new fields that serve for a time the purposes of the charlatan, and the present instance is no exception.

The universal acceptance of the germ theory of disease has naturally led to increased interest in the study of chemistry; and, inspired with the hope of discovering the remedy, every known chemical has been tried in prosecution of this idea.

As usual, the empiric appears at the front; and it is to this gentleman, in his new clothes, that I wish to direct particular attention. In the past few years a great many substances possessing more or less