Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-08-06
aancaster fntelllgenrer.
'R1DAY EVENING, AUGUST 8, 1880.
Quacks.

Doctor Tanner has done what the doc
tors positively said he could not do; a
thing which is not surprising in itself,
for no one can have failed to observe that
physicians are anything but infallible.
even when they are most positive. This
is but another illustration of the fact that
they know very little about the body that
they can be sure of. One would think,
considering how often their favorite
theories are upset and that comes to
pass which they have declared could not
possibly happen, that doctors would have
learned to be careful to assert nothing
and deny nothing. And great many
of the older ones are thus cautious and
are rs close as clam about the ailments
of their patients. 1t is the only way to
retain their respect, though it is very
aggravating to have your physician slip
through your fingers like All eel, when
you undertake to pin him down to
Il definite statement rs to the nature,
causes and consequences of your illness.
lie knows that he don't know. He
has an opinion, but experience has
told him to distrust his opinions.
A doctor has to be naturally prudent,
and TO he well up in years beside, before
he can thus refrain from airing his
knowledge before his patients. Every
man is naturally assailed with vehe-
ment desire TO tell all he knows every
time he gets Il chance to make an iE-
preston on somebody else. And SO, when
Dr. Tanner declared he could do without
food fos forty days, all the impetuous
doctors who theoretically knew tina:
he could not, fastened to SO declare,
and until Lately were cOck-sure
that their theories would hold water.
At the head of this tribe appeared Doc
tor Hammond, u man who got to the
head of the medical bureau of the army
during the war through the impression
he created of his immense knowledge
and capacity. And who was shortly put
out by the discovery that he was Il fraud.
His talent for impressing people with
his greatness was such that he has since
attained Il front rank in his profession in
New York, where it is so easy for hold
pretcnsion to succeed in any avOcatiOn.
In the practice of medicine it is partic-
ularly easy for Il man who knows very lit
tie about the art to create the belief that
le is its master and to flourish according
ly. There is no profession that is SO in
tested with quacks, and they are not all
outside the pale of the &" regular" practi-
TONERS. There is as much humbug,
ignorance and imbecility among the
:" regular" members of the profession,
who practice under the rules which for
bid them to advertise themselves and
their drugs, as there is among the class
who use the newspapers freely to pro-
claim the infalliability of themselves
and their nostrums. Doctors can adver-
tise themselves in many ways without
falling foul of the rules, and Drs. Ham,
mond of New York and Wier Mitchell,
of Philadelphia, and all that class of pre-
tentious specialists who are forever
thrusting themselves before the public to
display their knowledge and who so often
get caught exhibiting, instead their igno-
rance, are no better than our old LancaS-
ter friend, DIR. Hartman, who, after an
essay ut the practice of medicine
in the regular way, went into
the business of selling patent brides
and patent medicines, and who now
blooms i'm Pittsburgh rs Il miraculous
curcr of all the ills of the body, his skill
testified to by the most startling testi-
monials, showing how he cured people
whose flesh had all fallen from their
bodies and who for years had been un-
successfully treated by other doctors.
DR.. Hartman boasts himself in the
newspapers and pays their publishers
for it. We naturally therefore prefer his
way of advertising to the methods select
ed by the fellows among the regulars"
who are looking us actively after the
main chance and ;ls industriOusly hunt
ing up ways Of making the people be
lieve they are Il great deal more knowing
and more mighty than they are. Here,
in Lancaster, we may be entitled to feel
a degree of city pride in the quacks
who boldly advertise their medicines
avowedly to put money i'm their purses.
The most distinguished of them were
born and bred here. DIR. IIOstetter CO.
pied Dr. Green's receipt for a pleasant
and healthful tonic bitters, and went out
to Pittsburgh, where glass was cheap, to
bottle and sell it /; and the doctor is now
the richest man in the state and Il good
citizen, and we are proud of him
accordingly, though he did fail in the
drygOods business here before he became
a sdoctor.'' Then there was Ben Misf-
Ter, who conceived the Mishler's Bitters,
and got to he successful as a doctor,
with that infallible specific us his sole
armament, after he had failed at every
thing else. And now comes DIR. Hart
man with his great medicines, Peruna
and {" ManOiin," to put flesh on fleshless
bones in Pittsburgh and shed lustre on
his birthplace while putting ducats in
his pocket at the lively rate of twenty
five thousand a year.
When regular physicians, claiming to
stand at the head of their profession, de-
clare, in this age of the world that man
cannot live forty days without food, and
that man does live, they demonstrate
that thay tlO know SO little, of the hOdv