Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/229

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INDIAN MEDICINE.
225

types and forms, that are constantly changing yet never become extinct, but as if by transmigration, when the cheat disappears in one instance, it immediately shows itself in another, and there is always a sufficiency in variety and profusion to satisfy the tastes and appetites of all classes. The learned and the ignorant, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, all have it brought to their very doors, and served up and seasoned to their liking, and were we to judge by the greediness with which these precious morsels are devoured, one might readily conclude that, of a truth, "there is as much pleasure in being cheated as to cheat."

In the history of the world there are moral and social, as well as geological epochs. We live in the mercenary period, and quackery grows and flourishes now as mushrooms and ferns did in the carboniferous period. What is to be the next superabundant strata which shall swallow up the present towering stalks of moral ferns, we have no means of knowing; but let us hope that when that time does come, no out-croppings of present quackery shall remain visible. It is