Quacks and grafters / by Ex-osteopath; being an exposé of the state of therapeutics at the present time, with some reasons why such grafters flourish, and suggestions to remedy the deplorable muddle.

Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Quacks and grafters / by Ex-osteopath; being an exposé of the state of therapeutics at the present time, with some reasons why such grafters flourish, and suggestions to remedy the deplorable muddle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    was secured I do not know; but intelligent people ought to know that cases of tapeworm are not so common that eight people out of every ten have one, as this grafter positively asserted. An acquaintance once traveled with one of these tapeworm specialists to furnish the song and dance performances that ,are so attractive to the class of people who furnish the ready victims for grafters. This is how the game was worked. The specialist would pick out an emaciated, credulous individual from his crowd, and tell him that he bore the unmis- takable marks of being the prey of a terrible tape- worm. If he couldn't sell him a bottle of his worm eradicator, he would give him a bottle, telling him to take it according to directions and report to him at his hotel or tent the next day. The man would report that no dead or dying worm had been sighted. This was when Dr. Grafter got in his expert work. The man was told that if he had taken the medicine as di- rected the worm was dead beyond a doubt, but some- times the fangs were fastened so firmly to the walls of the intestines, in their death agony, that they would not come away until he had injected a certain prepara- tion that always produced the goods. The man was taken into a darkened room for privacy ( ?), the injection given, and the defunct worm always came away. At least a worm was always found in the evacuated material, and how was the de- luded one to know that it was in the vessel or matter injected? Of course, the patient felt wondrous re- lief, and was glad to stand up that night and testify [120]