takes a mean
advantage of their credulity, though probably in most cases unaware of
the vicious psychological processes, which render many his willing
dupes.

It has been aptly remarked that the public is ever more ready to believe
pleasing fictions, than disagreeable verities. _Populus vult decipi_,
trite saying though it be, is as true to-day as at any time in the
past. If it were not so, quackery could not thrive. Gladly the people
"honors pay to those who on their understandings most impose." Apropos
of the methods of charlatans, is the story of a certain Scotch farmer,
whose success in selling his cattle at high prices aroused the curiosity
of his neighbors. One day, when fuddled with drink, after much coaxing,
he revealed the secret by saying: "On going to sell my beasties, I first
finds a fool, and then I shoves 'em on to him."[232:1]

Dr. William Osler, in his "Aequanimitas and Other Addresses" (1904),
remarked that "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers"; and in matters
medical the ordinary citizen of to-day has not one whit more sense than
the Romans of old, whom the witty Greek writer Lucian scourged for a
credulity which made them fall easy victims to the quacks of the second
century. Man has an inborn craving for medicine. Heroic dosing for
several generations has given his tissues a thirst for drugs; and now
that the pharmacists have cloaked even the most nauseous remedies, the
temptation is to use physic on every occasion.

Dudley F. Sicher, in the "Popular Science Monthly," September, 1905,
comments on the enormous development of quackery, which has been more
than commensurate with the growth of medical science and the advance of
western civilization, in recent years. According to this authority, the
number of resident quacks in Berlin, Germany, has increased sixteen-fold
since 1874. And in New York City, there are approximately twenty
thousand, against six thousand regular practitioners. "Given on the one
hand the limitations of scientific medicine, the dread of disease, and
the power of auto-suggestion, and on the other hand, depraved humanity,
hard-driven in the struggle for existence, and you have the essential
parts, which, with a few minor pieces, make up the quackery
machine. . . . Psycho-therapeutics and knowledge of human nature make up
the quack's entire outfit." The popular distrust of legitimate Medicine
facilitates a recourse to the alleged marvellous specifics and panaceas,
so extensively