Primitive psycho-therapy and quakery.

  • Lawrence, Robert Means, 1847-1953.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Primitive psycho-therapy and quakery. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    herds, conjurors, old women, sieve-makers and water- peddlers. Apothecaries were permitted to sell drugs to alchemists, bath-servants and ignorant quacks, while dabsters, calf-doctors, rag-pickers, magicians, witches, crystallomancers, sooth-sayers and other mancipia [pur- chased slaves] of the Devil, were allowed to practice Medicine. 1 At this same period, we are told, the mass of the Eng- lish people were extraordinarily credulous. And this fact was true, not only of the densely ignorant class, but also of the more intelligent and better educated middle class, who were ready to believe everything that appeared in print.2 Hence was afforded an ideal field for the ex- ercise of the wily charlatan's activities. And the glow- ing advertisements of quack remedies appealed strongly to the popular fancy. A London surgeon, Dr. P. Coltheart, writing in 1727, asserted that English practitioners of that time were the peers of any in Europe. He complained, however, of the multitude of ignorant quacks, who were allowed a free hand in the practice of their pretended art, to the detriment of the community. The spectacle of such a gallant array of charlatans, recruited from the ranks of illiterate tramps and va- grants, the very scum of society, yet thriving by rea- 1 Job. Hermann Baas, History of Medicine, p. 771. 1 Social England, vol. v. p. 66.