Revelations of quacks and quackery / a series of letters by 'Detector'.

  • Courtenay, Francis Burdett, 1811-1886.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Revelations of quacks and quackery / a series of letters by 'Detector'. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    pence. Hundreds upon hundreds of our population are plundered and poisoned by these medical pests of society. Yea, plunder is supplemented by murder, whole families are destroyed, insanity is engendered, and the victims of these vile knaves are driven head- long to destruction and an early grave. This is a very terrible picture of the evil wrought through the abuse of the advertise- ment columns of the lay press, but, speaking from personal obser- vation, we are sure it is not at all overdrawn. It is commonly supposed that the quacks aim at duping youQg men only ; such, however, is not the case, as we have known instances where young women have been victimised by them, and their lives rendered miserable. A short time ago we were consulted on behalf of a young lady residing at Oxford. She was pretty, clever, and accomplished, and was engaged to be married—in fact, the wedding day had been fixed. At the last moment, however, much to the surprise of her friends, she broke off the engagement without any adequate reason, gave up all her ordinary pursuits, shunned society, and appeared thoroughly brol^en in body and mind. For some time the cause of the alteration in her conduct was unaccountable, but, by chance, one day a quack book which treats on the marriage state and the relation of women thereto (which is regularly ad- vertised in the Oxford newspapers) was found in her possession. There was the cause of all the misery and unhappiness. Anxious to know what the relations and duties of marriage really were, she had answered one of the advertisements, and received a dis- gusting book in which she read that an affection (leucorrhoea) from which she suffered to a slight extent was a bar to marriage. Without taking any friend into her confidence, she thought it her duty to break off the engagement; and so great has been her mental anguish at being, as she believed, incapacitated for marriage, that it is doubtful whether she will ever recover her former health and buoyancy of spirits. Probably there are many such cases, but the details of them seldom penetrate beyond the family circle, and even here are only vaguely understood. Is it not, then, the bounden duty of every honest citizen to do all in his power to frustrate the nefarious pro- ceedings of these knavish quacks ; and since publicity is the means by which they gain a market for their pernicious works, if that