The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-11-08
A QUACK'S PARADISE
New York 0verrun with Queer
Medicine Men
AND NOT A FEW MEDICINE WOMEN
Stage stOries-A Famous Club-The Horse Car
Money Trap-Literary Teas and
the People They Gather.


New YORK, Nov. ., 1891. II Special cor
respondence of THE SUNDAY HERALD. i
The lawmakers of New York have from
time to time been at great pains to devise
statutes designed to protect the people
from doctors of questionable kind. but at
this day the city on Manhattan Island is
populous with quacks. Medical mounte-
banks crowd each other in the rush for
patronage New York is a paradise for
them. The well-regulated orthodox quack
who is dissatisfied with New York as a
field for operation is simply beyond hope
of pleasing.
There was a time when the quack was
an all-around practitioner. He was a DR..
CurealL who could turn his dexterous hand
TO anything-coughs, colds, cramps,
bunions and liver complaints were all one
TO him. But now the quack is a
specialist" Relieved of the strain on his
ingenuity imposed by the diversity of cases
once brought forward by his victims, he
now centres all his wiles on one form of
human misery, and becomes more artistic
humbug.
The quack specialist is everywhere If he
Is cheap affair he is down on the East Side
below Grand street, where he is likely to be
little in the hero line, but often dazzles
with new tangled agencies. If he is a
higher priced guack he is above Madison
square, perhaps in brownstone house,
with nlckle-plated sign of staggering
dimensions. His patients include the poor
est and the richest. He hoodwinks the So
cent patient from the tenement and the $50
patient from the park region. He is called
doctor Probably he has diploma of
some kind. But he is a quack
The New York newspapers TEEN with
medical advertisements. Portraits of
quickly relieved sufferers adorn these con-
tdential announcements. But these adver-
tisements, while they seem TO represent al
most every species of human suffering &C
tually reveal but small proportion of the
successful quack centres. Some OF the ad-
Vertising quacks dispense high priced coun-
sci in gilded parlors, into which visitors are
ushered by menials in livery. But the loft
lest quaCks are above the advertising COL
umn, They are enthroned IN sumptuous
sanctuarles, the entrance to which is calcu-
lated to smite the patient with awe. The
real giants of the medical profession sur
round themselves with no frippery The
quack undertakes TO dazzle. And his sue
cess is extraordinary.
"
age If he doesn't understand anything else
Like Barnurn, he believes that the public
wants TO be fooled; and be obliges the pub
lie. He fools the public to the top of its
bent. In patent medicines it is notorious
that anything Will sell If you advertise it
enough. In practical quackery it is equal
~ notorious that anything will go if you
charge enough for it and surround it with
sufficient buncomb. The Faith Curists
could afford to strike q partnership with
the quack. who is really curing by faith,
only that the quack usually has the advant-
age of having luck and the devil with him.
STREET CAR MONEY TRAPS.
Street car fioorings are probably the old
est existing form of money traps. They
are most ingeniously devised. The strips
OF wood by which the super-fooring is
made are placed at precisely that distance
apart which admits the passage of dropped
money and permits contemplation of the
dropped money from above but which pre-
vents the entrance OF anything wider than
the little finger. You put in your little fin
ger, but the little finger cannot charm the
money and it stays where it is.
If the conductor is a blackguard-and he
sometimes ls-he will watch a WON an
struggle to get ont piece of silver from
between the infuriatlng strips without
Offering 10 get the money for her If she
ture the silver at the end Of the route.
The thing to do, naturally is to lift a
section of the flooring. But this is often
extremely difficult. People are not willing
To climb on the seats or otherwise get
themselves out of the way. There is al
ways some body who grudges the effort to
move obstruoting legs. This embarasses
the person who has lost the money whether
or not he or she is lifting the section of the
flooring The crusty middle aged party
damns the company in softly audible
murmur. and the young lady with the
poodle scowls powdered scowl.
Yesterday CHANGED upon a plan for
remedying the whole difficulty. l do not
mean the substitution of a reasonable
species of flooring. You can't expect revo-
lutlons like that from a street railroad
company. The plan was sugges ted by an
incident to this effect:
A man dropped a 10-cent piece l saw
him LOOK down at it for moment. l ex-
pected him to dive for it with his fingers.
or delude himself with penknife, or try
lifting the floor. But he slipped his right
hand into his left hand top waistcoat pocket
and drew out slender pair of tweezers.
With these he quickly lifted the coin from
Its nesting place between the strips of
wood.
Probably the man was printer, or a lew
elier or an artisan of some sort who hsbitu.
ally used tweezers. But whats the mat
ter with the suggestion offered by his
equipment and his conducts
STAGE STORIES.
Society always delights itself in stories
about people of the stage Even q pretty
bad story will Ego" if il is about one OF
those people whom the sensational illus
trated papers "footlight favorites."
Somebody was telling me the other day
h1,,% sNfI QokI
Brooklyn. The dashing Hilliard was play-
ing romantic part in his romantic way.
The attention the house was directed to
O scene in which Bob fondles the heroine
preparatory to fulfllment of his contrac,
TO kiss the heroine at q certain moment.
Things were getting Interesting, and Bob.
In the midst OF profound hush that was
only broken by the murmuring of the
lovers, was approaching the crisis, when a
childish treble from the billiard box was
distinctly heard saying, Papa Papa
Don'tt''
AT an afternoon tea the other day a GER
tain man was introduced to a certain
woman. The man had been given to under
stand that she was an actress, but he didn't
catch her name. 1t was one of those mis-
cellaneouS afternoon teas at which IL is
impossible 10 say whom you may meet. and
the man became very curious 20 know who
The charming creature was who so soon
mastered his attention
Being candid, not to say waggish man.
he had no hesitation in asking at the end of
Z few minutes, 81 beg your pardon. but
viii you not tell me your nane?''
Helen French, said the young woman.
Yes, " said the man, "but-what is it in
English!"
a FAMOUS CLUB.
No club is so surely doomed to centem-
DOrary ODScurlty as q Club in which pau,e
paper men form considerable element
Hhis is why the Tan6arlnin nl,,h .L...-L