." A writer in "Notes and Queries,"[203:2] remarked that the
word _quacke_, in the foregoing extract, probably signified a disease
rather than a charlatan, and possibly the mysterious affection known as
"the poofs," from which good Queen Bess suffered one cold winter. This
_quacke_ appears to have been a novelty and therefore fashionable,
affected by the tenderlings of that era, "as the proper thing to have."
The quack-doctor, continues the writer above mentioned, must have been a
fashionable style of man, not meddling much with the poor, and familiar
with boudoirs, curing the new disease with new and wondrous remedies.

May not the word _quacke_, asks Stylites, another enquirer, as above
used, mean _quake_ or ague? For an ague-doctor must have had much
employment, and if successful, great renown, in those days of fens,
marshes and undrained ground.

In an anniversary discourse delivered before the New York Academy of
Medicine, November 7, 1855, Dr. John Watson remarked that the numbers
and pretensions of the illegitimate sons of Esculapius were as great in
ancient as in modern times. And they were quite as wont to receive the
patronage of the upper classes. The Emperor Nero thus favored the shrewd
Lydian practitioner, Thessalus, who maintained that all learning was
without value.

And if we may believe the statements of Pliny and Galen, the Roman
quacks equalled, if they did not exceed, in ignorance and arrogance,
the vast horde of handicraftsmen, bone-setters, herniotomists,
lithotomists, abortionists, and poison-venders, who overran Southern
Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

The inhabitants of ancient Chaldea, in common with many primitive
peoples of later times, cherished the belief that all diseases were
caused by demons. Medicine was merely a branch of Magic, and the chief
healing agents were exorcisms, incantations, and enchanted beverages.
There were, properly speaking, no physicians. Sometimes, wrote Francois
Lenormant, in "Chaldean Magic," disease was regarded as an effect of the
wickedness of different demons, and sometimes it appears to have been
considered as the work of a distinct malevolent being, who exercised his
power upon man.

According to the old Shamanic belief, which was the primeval religion of
all mankind, every physical ailment is caused by a little devil which
enters the body and can be expelled therefrom only by means of magic.

Abundant traces of this doctrine, says Charles Godfrey L