Nostrums and quackery : articles on the nostrum evil and quackery reprinted from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Date:
[1911]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nostrums and quackery : articles on the nostrum evil and quackery reprinted from the Journal of the American Medical Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    76/522 (page 72)
    CONSUMPTION CURES It is probable that in no other organic disease does the psychic element play the impoitant part that it does in consumption. No other sick people are so easily in- fluenced for better or worse as those who suffer from pulmonary tuberculosis. How great a factor the mental one is was strikingly shown by the experiments of Albert Mathieip the French physician. Mathieu gave his tuberculous patients to understand that a wonderful cuie for tul)erculosis had been discovered in the shape of a serum to which he gave the name N^ntiphymose.’^ To these patients he gave injections of what they supposed to be this hypothetical serum^ but what actually was a small quantity of a solution of common salt, and care- fullv noted their condition. A remarkable change was seen; the appetite improved, the temperature diminished, tlie cough, expectoration and night-sweats were. miti gated and the patients began to gain in weight. With the discontinuance of the injections the old symptoms returned. Mathieu’s experiment was merely a scientific proof of a fact that is familiar to every physician who has treated ])hthisical patients. Any change in treatment, or in the individual giving the treatment, results in a temporary improvement of the patient. It is this curious psycho- logic fact that makes the tuberculous patient a pitifully easy victim of those unconscionable villains who adver- tise to cure consumption. The speciously worded adver- tisement, the exaggerated -claims, the favorable testi- monials—all conspire to convince the consumptive that here at last is the long-hoped-for “cure.^^ Hence the profitableness of this most despicable branch of quack- ery. In the following pages a few of the almost innumer- able ^Tonsumption-cure’’ fakes are described and the methods of their exploiters detailed. As the viciousness and cruelty of this form of fraud is borne on one, it seems unbelievable that a civilized community should