Quacks and Grafters Part 7

Sure Shot Rheumatism Cure--Regular Pract.i.tioner's Discomfiture--Medicines Alone Failed to Cure Rheumatism--Osteopathy Relieves Rheumatic and Neuralgic Pains--"Move Things"--"Pop" Stray Cervical Vertebrae--Find Something Wrong and Put it Right--Terrible Neck-Wrenching, Bone-Twisting Ordeal.

A discussion of graft in connection with doctoring would not be complete if nothing were said about the traveling medicine faker. Every summer our towns are visited by smooth-tongued frauds who give free shows on the streets. They harangue the people by the hour with borrowed spiels, full of big medical terms, and usually full of abuse of regular pract.i.tioners, which local physicians must note with humiliation is too often received by people without resentment and often with applause.

Only last summer I was standing by while one of these grafters was making his spiel, and gathering dollars by the pocketful for a "sure shot"

rheumatism cure. His was a _sure_ cure, doubly guaranteed; no cure, money all refunded (if you could get it). A physician standing near laughed rather a mirthless laugh, and remarked that Barnum was right when he said, "The American people like to be humbugged." When the medical man left, a man who had just become the happy possessor of enough of the wonderful herb to make a quart of the rheumatism router, remarked: "He couldn't be a worse humbug than that old duffer. He doctored me for six weeks, and told me all the time that his medicine would cure me in a few days. I got worse all the time until I went to Dr. ----, who told me to use a sack of hot bran mash on my back, and I was able to get around in two days."

In this man's remarks there is an explanation of the reason the crowd laughed when they heard the quack abusing the regular pract.i.tioner, and of the reason the people handed their hard-earned dollars to the grafter at the rate of forty in ten minutes, by actual count. If all doctors were honest and told the people what all authorities have agreed upon about rheumatism, _i. e._, that internal medication does it little good, and the main reliance must be on external application, traveling and patent medicine fakers who make a specialty of rheumatism cure would be "put out of business," and there would be eliminated one source of much loss of faith in medicine.

I learned by experience as an Osteopath that many people lose faith in medicine and in the honesty of physicians because of the failure of medicine to cure rheumatism where the physician had promised a cure.

Patients afflicted with other diseases get well anyway, or the s.e.xton puts them where they cannot tell people of the physician's failure to cure them. The rheumatic patient lives on, and talks on of "Doc's" failure to stop his rheumatic pains. All doctors know that rheumatism is the universal disease of our fickle climate. If it were not for rheumatic pains, and neuralgic pains that often come from nerves irritated by contracted muscles, the Osteopath in the average country town would get more lonesome than he does. People who are otherwise skeptical concerning the merits of Osteopathy will admit that it seems rational treatment for rheumatism.

Yet this is a disease that Osteopathy of the specific-adjustment, bone-setting, nerve-inhibiting brand has little beneficial effect upon.

All the Osteopathic treatments I ever gave or saw given in cases of rheumatism that really did any good, were long, laborious ma.s.sages. The medical man who as "professor" in an Osteopathic college said, "When the Osteopath with his _vast_ knowledge of anatomy gets hold of a case of torticollis he inhibits the nerves and cures it in five minutes," was talking driveling rot.

I have seen some of the best Osteopaths treat wry-neck, and the work they did was to knead and stretch and pull, which by starting circulation and working out soreness, gradually relieved the patient. A hot application, by expanding tissues and stimulating circulation, would have had the same effect, perhaps more slowly manifested.

To call any Osteopathic treatment ma.s.sage is always resented as an insult by the guardians of the science. What is the Osteopath doing, who rolls and twists and pulls and kneads for a full hour, if he isn't giving a ma.s.sage treatment? Of course, it sounds more dignified, and perhaps helps to "preserve the purity of Osteopathy as a separate system," to call it "reducing subluxations," "correcting lesions," "inhibiting and stimulating" nerves. The treatment also acts better as a placebo to call it by these names.

As students we were taught that all Osteopathic movements were primarily to adjust something. Some of us worried for fear we wouldn't know when the adjusting was complete. We were told that all the movements we were taught to make were potent to "move things," so we worried again for fear we might move something in the wrong direction. We were a.s.sured, however, that since the tendency was always toward the normal, all we had to do was to agitate, stir things up a bit, and the thing out of place would find its place. How _specific_! How scientific!

We were told that when in the midst of our "agitation" we heard something "pop," we could be sure the thing out of place had gone back. When a student had so mastered the great bone-setting science as to be able to "pop" stray cervical vertebrae he was looked upon with envy by the fellows who had not joined the a.s.sociation for protection against suits for malpractice, and did not know just how much of an owl they could make of a man and not break his neck.

The fellow who lacked clairvoyant powers to locate straying things, and could not always find the "missing link" of the spine, could go through the prescribed motions just the same. If he could do it with sufficient facial contortions to indicate supreme physical exertion, and at the same time preserve the look of serious gravity and professional importance of a quack medical doctor giving _particular_ directions for the dosing of the placebo he is leaving, he might manage to make a sound vertebra "pop."

This, with his big show of doing something, has its effect on the patient's mind anyway.

We were taught that Osteopathy was applied common sense, that it was all reasonable and rational, and simply meant "finding something wrong and putting it right." Some of us thought it only fair to tell our patients what we were trying to do, and what we did it for. There is where we made our big mistake. To say we were relaxing muscles, or trying to lift and tone up a rickety chest wall, or straighten a warped spine, was altogether too simple. It was like telling a man that you were going to give him a dose of oil for the bellyache when he wanted an operation for appendicitis. It was too common, and some would go to an Osteopath who could find vertebra and ribs and hips displaced, something that would make the community "sit up and take notice." If one has to be sick, why not have something worth while?

Where Osteopathy has always been so administered that people have the idea that it means to find things out of place and put them back, it is a gentleman's job, professional, scientific and genteel. Men have been known to give twenty to forty treatments a day at two dollars per treatment. In many communities, however, the adjustment idea has so degenerated that to give an Osteopathic treatment is no job for a high collar on a hot day. To strip a hard-muscled, two-hundred-pound laborer down to a perspiration-soaked and scented unders.h.i.+rt, and manipulate him for an hour while he has every one of his five hundred work-hardened muscles rigidly set to protect himself from the terrible neck-wrenching, bone-twisting ordeal he has been told an Osteopathic treatment would subject him to--I say when you have tried that sort of a thing for an hour you will conclude that an Osteopathic treatment is no job for a kid-gloved dandy nor for a lily-fingered lady, as it has been so glowingly pictured.

I know the brethren will say that true Osteopathy does not give an hour's shotgun treatment, but finds the lesion, corrects it, collects its two dollars, and quits until "day after to-morrow," when it "corrects" and _collects_ again as long as there is anything to co--llect!

I practiced for three years in a town where people made their first acquaintance with Osteopathy through the treatments of a man who afterwards held the position of demonstrator of Osteopathic "movements"

and "manipulations" in one of the largest and boastedly superior schools of Osteopathy. The people certainly should have received correct ideas of Osteopathy from him. He was followed in the town by a bright young fellow from "Pap's" school, where the genuine "lesion," blown-in-the-bottle brand of Osteopathy has always been taught. This fellow was such an excellent Osteopath that he made enough money in two years to enable him to quit Osteopathy forever. This he did, using the money he had gathered as an Osteopath to take him through a medical college.

I followed these two s.h.i.+ning lights who I supposed had established Osteopathy on a correct basis. I started in to give specific treatments as I had been taught to do; that is, to hunt for the lesion, correct it if I found it, and quit, even if I had not been more than fifteen or twenty minutes at it. I found that in many cases my patients were not satisfied.

I did not know just what was the matter at first, and lost some desirable patients (lost their patronage, I mean--they were not in much danger of dying when they came to me). I was soon enlightened, however, by some more outspoken than the rest. They said I did not "treat as long as that other doctor," and when I had done what I thought was indicated at times a patient would say, "You didn't give me that neck-twisting movement," or that "leg-pulling treatment." No matter what I thought was indicated, I had to give all the movements each time that had ever been given before.

A physician who has had to dose out something he knew would do no good, just to satisfy the patient and keep him from sending for another doctor who he feared might give something worse, can appreciate the violence done a fellow's conscience as he administers those wonderfully curative movements. He cannot, however, appreciate the emotions that come from the strenuous exertion over a sweaty body in a close room on a July day.

Incidentally, this difference in the physical exertion necessary to get the same results has determined a good many to quit Osteopathy and take up medicine. A young man who had almost completed a course in Osteopathy told me he was going to study medicine when he had finished Osteopathy, as he had found that giving "treatments was too d----d hard work."

CHAPTER XI.

TAPEWORMS AND GALLSTONES.

Plug-hatted Faker--Frequency of Tapeworms--Some Tricks Exposed--How the Defunct Worm was Pa.s.sed--Rubber Near-Worm--New Gallstone Cure--Relation to Osteopathy--Perfect, Self-Oiling, "Autotherapeutic"

Machine--Touch the b.u.t.ton--The Truth About the Consumption and Insanity Cures.

There is another trump card the traveling medical grafter plays, which wins about as well as the guaranteed rheumatism cure, namely, the tapeworm fraud. Last summer I heard a plug-hatted faker delivering a lecture to a street crowd, in which he said that every mother's son or daughter of them who didn't have the rosy cheek, the sparkling eye and buoyancy of youth might be sure that a tapeworm of monstrous size was, "like a worm in the bud," feeding on their "damask cheeks." To prove his a.s.sertion and lend terror to his tale, he held aloft a gla.s.s jar containing one of the monsters that had been driven from its feast on the vitals of its victim by his never-failing remedy. The person, "saved from a living death,"

stood at the "doctor's" side to corroborate the story, while his voluptuous wife was kept busy handing out the magical remedy and "pursing the ducats" given in return.

How about the worm exhibited? How this one was secured I do not know; but intelligent people ought to know that cases of tapeworm are not so common that eight people out of every ten have one, as this grafter positively a.s.serted.

An acquaintance once traveled with one of these tapeworm specialists to furnish the song and dance performances that are so attractive to the cla.s.s of people who furnish the ready victims for grafters. This is how the game was worked. The "specialist" would pick out an emaciated, credulous individual from his crowd, and tell him that he bore the unmistakable marks of being the prey of a terrible tapeworm. If he couldn't sell him a bottle of his worm eradicator, he would give him a bottle, telling him to take it according to directions and report to him at his hotel or tent the next day. The man would report that no dead or dying worm had been sighted. This was when Dr. Grafter got in his expert work. The man was told that if he had taken the medicine as directed the worm was dead beyond a doubt, but sometimes the "fangs" were fastened so firmly to the walls of the intestines, in their death agony, that they would not come away until he had injected a certain preparation that _always_ "produced the goods."

The man was taken into a darkened room for privacy (?), the injection given, and the defunct worm always came away. At least a worm was always found in the evacuated material, and how was the deluded one to know that it was in the vessel or matter injected? Of course, the patient felt wondrous relief, and was glad to stand up that night and testify that Dr.

Grafter was an angel of mercy sent to deliver him from the awful fate of living where "the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched."

I was told recently of a new tapeworm graft that makes the old one look crude and unscientific. This one actually brings a tapeworm from the intestines in _every_ case, whether the person had one before the magic remedy was given or not. The graft is to have a near-worm manufactured of delicate rubber and compressed into a capsule. The patient swallows the capsule supposed to contain the worm destroyer. The rubber worm is not digested, and a strong physic soon produces it, to the great relief of the "patient" and the greater glory and profit of the shyster. What a wonderful age of invention and scientific discoveries!

Another journal tells of a new gallstone cure that never fails to cause the stones to be pa.s.sed even if they are big as walnuts. The graft in this is that the medicine consists of paraffine dissolved in colored oil. The paraffine does not digest, but collects in colored b.a.l.l.s, which are pa.s.sed by handfuls and are excellent imitations of the real things.

How about tapeworms, gallstones and Osteopathy, do you ask?

We heard about tapeworms and gallstones when we were in Osteopathic college.

The one thing that was ground into us early and thoroughly was that Osteopathy was a complete system. No matter what any other system had done, we were to remember that Osteopathy could do that thing more surely and more scientifically.

Students soon learned that they were never to ask, "_Can_ we treat this?"

That indicated skepticism, which was intolerable in the atmosphere of optimistic faith that surrounded the freshman and soph.o.m.ore cla.s.ses especially. The question was to be put, "_How_ do we treat this?" In the treatment of worms the question was, "How do we treat worms?" That was easy. Had not nature made a machine, perfect in all its parts, self-oiling, "autotherapeutic," and all that? And would nature allow it to choke up or slip a cog just because a little thing like a worm got tangled in its gearing? Not much. Nature knew that worms would intrude, and had provided her own vermifuge. The cause of worms is insufficient bile, and behold, all the Osteopath had to do when he wished to serve notice on the aforesaid worms to vacate the premises was to touch the b.u.t.ton controlling the stop-c.o.c.k to the bile-duct, and they left. It was so simple and easy we wondered how the world could have been so long finding it out.

Osteopathy was complete. That was the proposition on which we were to stand. If anything had to be removed, or brought back, or put in place, all that was necessary was to open the floodgates, release the pent-up forces of nature, and the thing was done!

What a happy condition, to have _perfect_ faith! I remember a report came to our school of an Osteopathic physician who read a paper before a convention of his brethren, in which he recorded marvelous cures performed in cases of tuberculosis. The paper was startling, even revolutionary, yet it was not too much for our faith. We were almost indignant at some who ventured to suggest that curing consumption by manipulation might be claiming too much. These wonderful cures were performed in a town which I afterward visited. I could find no one who knew of a single case that had been cured. There were those who knew of cases of tuberculosis he had treated, that had gone as most other bad cases of that disease go.

There was another world-startling case. It is one of the main cases, from all that I can learn, upon which all the bold claims of Osteopathy as an insanity cure are based. I remember an article under scare headlines big enough for a b.l.o.o.d.y murder, flared out in the local paper. It was yet more wonderfully heralded in the papers at the county seat. The metropolitan dailies caught up the echo, which reverberated through Canada and was finally heard across the seas! Osteopathic journals took it up and made much of it. Those in school read it with eager satisfaction, and plunged into their studies with fiercer enthusiasm. Many who had been "almost persuaded" were induced by it to "cross the Rubicon," and take up the study of this wonderful new science that could take a raving maniac, condemned to a mad house by medical men, and with a few scientific twists of the neck cause raging insanity to give place to gentle sleep that should wake in sanity and health.

Was it any wonder that students flocked to schools that professed to teach how common plodding mortals could work such miracles? Was it strange that anxious friends brought dear ones, over whom the black cloud of insanity cast its shadows, hundreds of miles to be treated by this man? Or to the Osteopathic colleges, from which, in all cases of which I ever knew, they returned sadly disappointed?

The report of that wonderful cure caused many intelligent laymen (and even Dr. Pratt) to indulge a hope that insanity might be only a disturbance of the blood supply to the brain caused by pressure from distorted "neck bones," or other lesions, and that Osteopaths were to empty our overcrowded madhouses. Where is that hope now? What was its foundation? I was told by an intimate friend of this great Osteopath that all these startling reports we had supposed were published as news the papers were glad to get because of their important truths, were but shrewd advertising. I afterward talked with the man, and his friends who were at the bedside when the miracle was performed, and while they believed that there had been good done by the treatment, it was all so tame and commonplace at home compared with its fame abroad that I have wondered ever since if anything much was really done after all.

THE MORAL TO THE TALE.

Honesty--Plain Dealing--Education.

But I must close. I could multiply incidents, but it would grow monotonous. I believe I have told enough that is disgusting to the intelligent laity and medical men, and enough that is humiliating to the capable, honest Osteopath, who practices his "new science" as standing for all that is good in physio-therapy.

I hope I have told, or recalled, something that will help physicians to see that the way to clear up the turbidity existing in therapeutics to-day is by open, honest dealing with the laity, and by a campaign of education that shall impart to them enough of the scientific principles of medicine so that they may know when they are being imposed upon by quacks and grafters. I am encouraged to believe I am on the right track. After I had written this booklet I read, in a report of the convention of the American Medical a.s.sociation held in Chicago, that one of the leaders of the a.s.sociation told his brethren that the most important work before them as physicians was to conduct a campaign of education for the ma.s.ses. It must be done not only to protect the people, but as well to protect the honest physician.

There is another fact that faces the medical profession, and I believe I have called attention to conditions that prove it. That is, that the hope of the profession of "doctoring" being placed on an honest rational basis lies in a broader and more thorough education of the physician. A broad, liberal general education to begin with, then all that can be known about medicine and surgery. Is that enough? No. Then all that there is in physio-therapy, under whatsoever name, that promises to aid in curing or preventing disease.