ous condition. Glibly the quack discourses on the consequences of
neglecting the terrible symptoms, and the great difficulty of combating
them. He is told that he will be liable to spinal disease, softening of
the brain, or insanity. Sometimes a collection of plates, containing
hideous representations of dreadful eruption, and sores covering all
parts of the body, are submitted to the patient's horrified inspection.
Frightened by the hideous pictures before him, and at the same time
soothed and charmed by the high-flown encomiums which the quack
pronounces on his particular "non-mercurial mode of treatment," the
patient becomes anxious to submit himself to the process. The quack is
equally ready to take the case in hand, and the only stumbling-block
likely to be in the way, may be the patients' inability to pay the large
fee demanded. When the victim, however, is manifestly pecunious, the
remedy employed in the treatment is correspondingly expensive. In some
cases "a preparation of gold" has been used, and the patient has been
instructed that it would be absolutely necessary for him to remain in
bed for the six weeks during which he would have to take the remedies,
and that he must have a nurse to sit up with him at night, in order to
wake him and give him the medicines regularly!

We presume no intelligent person need be told that the pretensions as to
the "golden" and other "secret and valuable medicines" which these
quacks boast themselves to possess, are absolutely without foundation.
They no more possess such remedies than they possess any legitimate
right to the names and medical titles which they too frequently assume.

In cases of indiscretion, the quack treatment is always with
mercury--notwithstanding denials. Sometimes serious mercurial poisoning
results, and not unfrequently, through the charlatan's ignorance of
proper treatment in complicated diseases, irreparable injury ensues.

The quack advertisements and pamphlets are the source of incalculable
evils to youths between the ages of seventeen and thirty. They are
impelled by fear to visit the quack's den, where they are "played" as
long as practicable. Sometimes exciting drugs, like cantharides, are
given in the medicine, and thus intensify the evil. The quack, of
course, ascribes the result to the patient's alarming condition, who is
growing worse, in spite of his medicines, and who can only be cured by
more powerful and costly drugs. Sometimes a seeming