Page:Quacks and Grafters.djvu/67

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FAITH CURE AND GRAFT IN SURGERY.


do they so rapidly get and retain so large a following among intelligent people? The answer is not hard to find. The quacks of these fad schools get their cures, as every intelligent doctor of the old schools knows, in the same way and upon the same principle that is so important a factor in medical practice, i. e., faith cure—the psychic effect of the thing done, whether it be the giving of a dose of medicine, a Christian Science pow-wow, the laying on of hands, the "removal of a lesion" by an Osteopath, the "adjustment" of the spine by a Chiropractor, or what not.

The principles of mind or faith cure are legitimately used by the honest physician. Suggestive therapeutics is being systematically studied by many who want to use it with honesty and intelligence. They realize fully that abuse of this principle figures largely in the maintenance of the shysters in their own school, and it is the very foundation of all new schools and healing fads. The people must be made to know this, or fads will continue to flourish.

The honest physician would be glad to have the people know more than this. He would be glad to have them know enough about symptoms of diseases to have some idea when they really need the help of a physician. For he knows that if the people knew this much all quacks would be speedily put out of business.

I wonder how many doctors know that observing people are beginning to suspect that many physicians regulate the number of calls they make on a patient by motives other than the condition of the

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