Great Medical Science Had Quacks As Foundation

1916

German Science, So Famous Today, Is Credited With Exceedingly Modest Beginning

German medical science is world-famed and has proved a godsend to mankind. Yet the science may be said to have been founded by the quacks of former centuries, for while quackery has always flourished in all countries, Germany was long the leader in turning out practitioners of this dubious profession.

They were often men of imagination akin to genius, and they traveled all over Europe. A majority of the celebrated quacks of England were Germans, and their methods of advertising their "cures" were very similar to those of the "Indian medicine men" who still flourish in the rural districts of America.

"Having studied over Galen, Hypocrates, Albumazer, and Paracelsus, I am now become the Esculapius of the age," modestly announced one medieval quack, according to an early play, "having been educated at twelve kingdoms and been counselor to the counselors of several monarchs. By the earnest prayers of several lords, earls, dukes and honorable personages I have been at last prevailed upon to oblige the world with the notice: That all persons, young and old, blind or lame, deaf, or dumb, curable or incurable, may know where to repair for cure in all cephalalgias, paralytic paroxysms, palpitations of the pericardium, empyemas, syncopes and nasieties, arising either from a plethory or a cachochymy, veryiginous vapors, hydrocephalous exacerbation, odontalgic or podagrical inflammations and the entire legion of tethnerous distempers.

"This is nature's palladium, health's magazine, and it works seven manner of ways, as nature requires, for it scorns to be confined to any particular mode of operation."

Yet from those quacks arose the mighty army of German scientists whose researches have been the marvel and the benefaction of the whole world.