Читать книгу Pharmacologia - John Ayrton Paris - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Although it is nearly allied to Superstition, yet it differs very widely from it. Credulity is an unbounded belief in what is possible, although destitute of proof and perhaps of probability; but Superstition is a belief in what is wholly repugnant to the laws of the physical and moral world. Thus, if we believe that an inert plant possesses any remedial power, we are credulous; but if we were to fancy that, by carrying it about with us, we should become invulnerable, we should in that case be superstitious. Credulity is a far greater source of error than Superstition; for the latter must be always more limited in its influence, and can exist only, to any considerable extent, in the most ignorant portion of society; whereas the former diffuses itself through the minds of all classes, by which the rank and dignity of science are degraded, its valuable labours confounded with the vain pretensions of empiricism, and ignorance is enabled to claim for itself the prescriptive right of delivering oracles, amidst all the triumphs of truth, and the progress of philosophy. This is very lamentable; and yet, if it were even possible to remove the film that thus obscures the public discernment, I question whether the adoption of such a plan would not be outvoted by the majority of our own profession. In Chili, says Zimmerman, the physicians blow around the beds of their patients to drive away diseases; and as the people in that country believe that physic consists wholly in this wind, their doctors would take it very ill of any person who should attempt to make the method of cure more difficult—they think they know enough, when they know how to blow.

But this mental imbecility is not characteristic of any age or country. England has, indeed, by a late continental writer,^[33] been accused of possessing a larger share of credulity than its neighbours, and it has been emphatically called “The Paradise of Quacks,” but with as little truth as candour. If we refer to the works of Ætius, written more than 1300 years ago, we shall discover the existence of a similar infirmity with regard to physic. This author has collected a multitude of receipts, particularly those that had been celebrated, or used as Nostrums,^[34] many of which he mentions with no other view than to expose their folly, and to inform us at what an extravagant price they were purchased. We accordingly learn from him that the collyrium of Danaus was sold at Constantinople for 120 numismata, and the cholical antidote of Nicostratus for two talents; in short, we shall find an unbounded credulity with respect to the powers of inert medicines, from the elixir and alkahest of Paracelsus and Van-Helmont, to the tar water of bishop Berkeley, the metallic tractors of Perkins, the animal magnetism of Miss Prescott, and may I not add, with equal justice, to the nitro-muriatic acid bath of Dr. Scott? The description of Thessalus, the Roman empiric in the reign of Nero, as drawn by Galen, applies with equal fidelity and force to the medical Charlatan of the present day; and, if we examine the writings of Scribonius Largus, we shall obtain ample evidence that the same ungenerous selfishness of keeping medicines secret, prevailed in ancient no less than in modern times; while we have only to read the sacred orations of Aristides to be satisfied, that the flagrant conduct of the Asclepiades, from which he so severely suffered,^[35] was the very prototype of the cruel and remorseless frauds, so wickedly practised by the unprincipled Quack Doctors and advertising “Medical Boards,” of our own times: and I challenge the apologist of ancient purity to produce a more glaring instance of empirical effrontery and success, in the annals of the nineteenth century, than that of the sacred impostor described in the Alexander of Lucian, who established himself in the deserted temple of Esculapius, and entrapped in his snares some of the most eminent of the Roman senators.