46

TRITON OF THE MINNOWS.

You have, doubtlessly, heard of one HERBERT MAYO, Esq. senior surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital: a gentleman of some considerable renown in the medical profession, and the author of several works both of a popular and technical character. In an evil hour he was seized with rheumatism, and in a still more unlucky hour he tried to cure it with drugs. For years he had tried them sought and took advice in all quarters: until, crippled by the complaint and the remedies, the practice of his profession became impossible to him. He was not fool enough to be frightened at the "mad-dog" cry, nor vulgar enough to regard the sneers at the "Austrian peasant." To water-cure he went for relief; and the latest accounts from himself, are to the effect that he is rapidly recovering health, and will be able in November to re-enter upon his professional duties.

Thus you see, doctor, that, great a man as you are, all the members of the medical profession do not agree with you. In fact, you are only "a Triton of the minnows:" the small-fry, the sprats (the best of all manures, to fatten prejudice and feed conceit,) are your appropriate worshippers. I wish you joy of them: long may you reign over

OPPOSITION-SPLASH.

47

them! Your subjects are numerous, if they be not enlightened: therefore if manufacturing (of physic) distress presses on them-and there are many signs of such a coming event,-look well to their allegiance. With them you are (once a year at least) a little somebody: without them, that hyperborean horror-nobody!

But spite of your vituperation of me, it is funny enough to see how wary you are necessitated to be in that of the Water-cure itself. You talk at it, but do not grapple with it. You make a preliminary flourish about quackery, but cannot bring yourself to call the Water-cure by the name. For this there are "reasons twain ;" and, lest your modesty should forbid you to publish them, I will.

The first one is to be found in the fact that, though, as I just now told you, "a Triton of the minnows," you are conscious enough of your intrinsic importance to follow in the wake of greater fishes. In this country the Leviathan of medical periodical literature, the Edinburgh Journal, pronounced a half favourable opinion on the Watercure, and you were well aware how very laughable it would be for you to attempt an oppositionsplash to the huge monster. This is the more

48

A CASE OF TOTAL IGNORANCE.

probable as, in the concluding paragraph of your paper, you seek to appear very deeply read in the history of water; whereas, by a reference to the Journal in question, (July 1842,) the authors whose names you quote will be found to be those mentioned by said Leviathan. And as very few of the "minnows" read it, you are no doubt considered a very "learned Theban " by them. The antithetical jingle, too, about "true and new," and "new and true," is "mighty ancient and fish-like," and was used with regard to this very Water-cure, some months ago, by an obscure penny-a-liner of the Lancet. This par parenthèse.

The second reason for your forbearance, I am bound to confess it, does honour to your prudence. You do not cut it up, because you have not got possession of the body of it: in a word, you know nothing about it. You know neither the principle of its employment nor the details of its application; nor, with the peculiar framework of mind you exhibit, are you likely to know them. There is a want of largeness in your mind which will ever forbid you from looking beyond the petty circle of persons and things of which a long continued routine has made you fancy yourself the master. Your faculties run in a groove, incapable of striking

WHAT QUACKERY IS NOT.

49

out into new paths of knowledge: or if new things are actually placed in your groove, you attempt to push them aside or slur them over, rather than stop to investigate them. Possibly you may pick up now and then a new drug preparation, but this is still the groove; for you see nothing but drugs, you smell nothing but drugs, you taste nothing but drugs, you handle nothing but drugs; all external, all internal sense in you is embraced, imbued, and circumfused by drugs. All your cry is drugs! drugs! drugs!

As regards your preliminary "words, words, words," about quackery, I must, in the first place, refer you to my definition of what quackery is, in the letter press which precedes this letter, and forms a portion of this volume.

In the next place, I will endeavour to make you comprehend what quackery is not. It is not a system of practice in which an individual uses an agent that is known to, and accessible by, all the community; an agent not described in abbreviated signs, the scribblers of which are themselves rarely able to spell in their correct fulness; an agent which does not relieve for the moment, and thus invite the sufferer to a renewal of the causes of his suffering. It is not a system which rejects the

E

50

THE

"HERO" AGAIN.

craft of medical art, apportioning the artists in such fashion that each section shall be bound to the other in the mutual onslaught on the common sense and cash of the community,-some physicians and surgeon-apothecaries, to wit, "crying caw me, caw thee," to each other, whilst they pluck the wool off the sheep on whose unhappy back they alight. It is not a system which forbids a man to throw dust in the eyes of a patient by giving him a dose of school jargon to account for the mischief produced by a dose of physic with a scholastic name. Finally, it is not a system which repudiates Mystery, which tears the cloak off Ignorance, which laughs in the face of grandiloquent Assumption, and, by facts and arguments built upon them, lays bare the hideousness of Falsehood. Quackery does none of these things; and, failing in them, but ENACTING MYSTERY, PRACTISING CRAFT, DEALING IN JARGON, CLOTHED IN IGNORANCE, bloated with IMPUDENCE, and steeped in MISREPRESENTATION, it is to be found, in the plenitude of its attributes, in the peculiar system of which you pretend to be the "Hero.”

In the last place, doctor, let me advise you to practise a little humility, and not hug yourself in the belief that what you insinuate to be quackery must of necessity appear so to others, and for ever