with it.
Moreover he should invariably diagnose an affection with celerity; and
rather than betray ignorance of the seat of a disorder, it were better,
says this writer, to assign it at once to the pancreas or pineal gland.
A lady once asked her apothecary, an ignorant fellow, regarding the
composition of castor oil, and seemed quite content with his reply, that
it was extracted from the beaver. Another patient asked her physician
how long she was likely to be ill, and was told that it depended largely
on the duration of the disease. A certain doctor, probably a quack,
acquired some notoriety by always prescribing the _left_ leg of a boiled
fowl. Reiteration of the superior nutritive qualities of that member,
and positive assertions of the comparative worthlessness of the right
leg, doubtless impressed the patients' minds in a salutary manner.

A writer in "Putnam's Magazine," August, 1909, commends the so-called
Emmanuel Movement as capable of benefiting many, in all stations of
life. He says further that the wicked and the charlatan may enter upon
the practice of psycho-therapy, but in a majority of cases, the
sub-conscious mind, upon which the healer works, will reject the evil
suggestion of the practitioner who strives to use his powers for malign
purposes. That is the almost unanimous verdict of the psychological
experts. If the old proverb be true, "_In vino veritas_," so in the
hypnotic state the real bent of the normal mind and personality is more
ready to follow the good and reject the bad suggestion, than in the
normal, conscious state. Instinctive morality comes to the aid of the
genuine psycho-therapist, and refuses its cooeperation to the
counterfeit.

In the United States, the door yawns wider for the admission of
charlatans than in any other country. The demand for panaceas and for
the services of those who pretend to cure by unusual methods, is not
limited to persons who are wanting in intelligence, or to those who are
weakened and discouraged by exhausting diseases. So long as the love of
the marvellous exists, there will be a certain demand for quackery, and
the supply will not be wanting.[236:1]

Probably in no region of the world does there exist a more attractive
field for medical pretenders, than the thickly settled foreign
settlements of the city of New York. Here they may thrive and fatten, as
they ply their nefarious trade, doubtless slyly laughing the while, on
account of the simplicity of