The vogue of quackery / Arthur William Meyer.

  • Arthur William Meyer
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The vogue of quackery / Arthur William Meyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lative measures in medicine arose from this laissez faire political views, and that these were determined largely by his religious beliefs. It was the old no¬ tion that nature if but left alone, will work things out for the best of all. In a brief manuscript submitted to a society of which he was a member in 1755, Smith stated: “Projectors disturb nature in the course of her operations in human affairs; and it requires no more than to let her alone and give her fair play in the pursuit of her ends that she may establish her own designs.” Dugald Stewart, in his account of the life and writings of Smith, says that it was Smith’s belief that “the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men” disturb the order of nature; and he quotes him as approvingly saying that a French writer in a eulogy on the administration of Colbert, said that it was Colbert’s belief that human affairs should be left “to arrange themselves at pleasure under the operation of the prejudices and the selfish interest of individuals. If these run counter to each other, he gives no anxiety about the consequences, he insists that the results cannot be judged of until after a century or two shall have elapsed. If his contemporaries, in consequence of the disorder into which he has thrown public affairs, are scrupulous about submitting quietly to the ex¬ periment, he accuses them of impatience. They alone, not he, are to blame for what they have suf¬ fered ; and the principle continues to be inculcated with the same zeal and confidence as before.” This doctrine permits the crafty and strong to freely exploit the trusting and defenseless. It is the rule of the jungle. Brute creation knows no worse, and even aborigines have risen above it in some respects. Did the burden of quackery fall only upon those who patronize it the situation would not be so grievous, but under modern conditions the crass folly of the ignorant becomes the unjust bur-
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