are called homeopathic, which means that they give small doses of
the more powerful medicines. Then there are those who practise in both
schools. Indeed, in no other field does ignorance, superstition,
credulity, and lack of real education display itself as among the
American doctors or healers. I believe I could fill a volume by the mere
enumeration of the diabolical and absurd nostrums offered by knaves to
heal men who profess to hold in ridicule the Chinese doctors. I mention
but a few, and when I tell you, as a truth beyond cavil, that the most
extraordinary of these healers, the most impossible, have the largest
following, you can see what I mean by the credulity of the people as a
whole. Christian Science doctors have a following of tens of thousands.
They combine so-called science with religion; leave their God to cure
them at long or short range through the medium of so-called agents. The
head of this faction is an ignorant but clever woman, who has turned the
heads of perhaps thirty-three and a third per cent of the American women
whom she has come in contact with.

Then come the faith curists, who rely upon faith alone. You simply are
to _think_ you will get well. Of course, many die from neglect. As an
illustration of the credulity of the average American, a Christian
Science healer was once treating a sick woman from a distant town, and
finally the patient died. When the bill was presented the husband said,
"You have charged for treatment two weeks after my wife died." It was a
fact that the healer had been treating the woman after she was buried,
the husband having failed to give notice of the death. One would have
expected the "healer" to be thrown into confusion, but far from it; she
merely replied, "I thought I noticed a vacancy."

Next come the musical curists, who listen to thrills of sound, a big
organ being the doctor. Then there is the psychometric doctor, who cures
by spirits. The spirit doctor cures in the same way. The palmist
professes to point out how to avoid the ills of life. Magnetic healers
have hundreds of victims in every city. Their advertisements in the
journals of all sorts are of countless kinds. Some cure at short hand,
some miles distant from the patient. They are equaled in numbers by the
hypnotists, or hypnotic doctors, who profess to throw their patients
into a trance and cure them by suggestion. I heard of one cure in which
the guileless American is made to lie in an open grave