Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/280

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276
QUACKERY UNMASKED.

to the wet sheet or shower bath of Priessnitz. or point them to some hydropathic pool.

Clergymen and religious newspapers sometimes recommend nostrums. The Rev. Mr. A, or the Rev. Mr. B. affixes his signature to a glowing recommendation of some worthless nostrum, and advises everybody to use it. Whether the article in question is what he recommends it to be or not, he does not and cannot know. Of this, educated physicians alone can judge, and to them exclusively the matter should be left. It is idle to suppose that some vagrant ignoramus has learnt something that no educated physician knows. Such things do not happen in our day—every such pretension is false, and every such preparation worthless. It may be said that an ignorant peasant might pick up a diamond of the first water; but if he should, neither the peasant nor any one else would know its value, until it had been examined by a competent lapidary—and if upon examination such lapidary should pronounce some supposed gem to be nothing but a worthless quartz pebble, no prudent man would be willing to give his gold for it. Nor should