; this is called
"the return to nature." Again, patients are cured by being buried in hot
mud or in hot sand. I have seen a salt-water cure, where patients were
made to remain in the ocean ten hours a day. The plain water cure has
thousands of followers, with hospitals and infirmaries, where the
patient is bathed, soaked, filled, washed, and plunged in water and
charged a high amount.

Then there is the vegetarian cure, no meat being eaten; and there are
the meat eaters, who use no vegetables. There are over fifty thousand
_masseurs_ and osteopaths in the country, who cure by baths and
rubbing. You may have a bath of milk, water, electricity, or alcohol, or
a bath of any description under the sun, which is guaranteed to cure any
and all ailments. Perhaps the most extraordinary curists are the color
doctors. They have rooms filled with blue and other colors, in whose
rays the patient victim or the victim patient sits, "like Patience on a
monument." I could not begin to give you an enumeration of the various
kinds of electric cures; they are legion. But the most amazing class
comprises the patent-medicine men, who are usually not doctors at all,
but buy from some one a "cure" and then advertise it, spending in one
instance which I investigated one million dollars a year. Every
advantageous wall, stone, or cliff in America will be posted. You see
the name at every turn, and the gullible Americans bite, chew, and
swallow.

It is not overstating facts when I say that three-fifths of the people
buy some of these patent nostrums, which the real medical men denounce,
showing that the masses of the people are densely ignorant, the victims
of any faker who may shout his wares loud enough. In China such a thing
would be impossible; the block would stop the practise; but, my dear
----, the Americans assure me China is a thousand years behind the
times, for which let us be devoutly thankful! I have not enumerated a
tenth of the kinds of doctors who prey upon these unfortunate people.
There are companies of them, who guarantee to cure anything, and
skilfully mulct the sick of their last penny. There are retreats for the
unfortunate, farms for deserted infants, and homes for unfortunate
women carried on by villains of both sexes. There are traveling doctors
who go from town to town, who cure "while you wait," and give a circus
while talking and selling their cure; and in nine cases out of ten the
nostrum is an alcoholic drink disgui