al._

The bold and unblushing assertion of the empiric, of a
never-failing remedy, constantly reiterated, inspires
confidence in the invalid, and not unfrequently tends by its
operation on the mind, to assist in the eradication of
disorder.
THOS. J. PETTIGREW, F.R.S.

The word _quack_, meaning a charlatan, is an abbreviation of
_quack-salver_. To quack is to utter a harsh, croaking sound, like a
duck; and hence secondarily, to talk noisily and to make vain and loud
pretensions.[202:1] And a salver is one who undertakes to perform cures
by the application of ointments or cerates. Hence the term quack-salver
was commonly used in the seventeenth century, signifying an ignorant
person, who was wont to extol the curative virtues of his salves. Now we
see, said Francis Bacon, in "The Advancement of Learning,"[202:2] the
weakness and credulity of men. For they will often prefer a mountebank
or witch before a learned physician. And therefore the poets were
clear-sighted in discerning this extreme folly, when they made
Esculapius and Circe brother and sister. For in all times, in the
opinion of the multitude, witches, old women and impostors have had a
competition with physicians.

According to one authority, the term _quack_ is derived from an ancient
Saxon word, signifying small, slender and trifling, and hence was
applied to shallow and frivolous itinerant peddlers, who foisted upon a
credulous community such wares as penny-plasters, balsam of liquorice
for coughs, snuffs for headaches, and infallible eye-lotions.[203:1]

It has also been maintained that quack is a corruption of _quake_, and
that quack-doctors were so called because, in marshy districts, patients
affected with intermittent fever, sometimes vulgarly known as the
_quakes_, were wont to be treated by ignorant persons, who professed to
charm away the disease, and hence were styled _quake-doctors_.

In William Harrison's "Description of the Island of Britain," occurs the
following curious passage: "Now we have many chimneys, and yet our
tenderlings complain of reumes, catarres and poses; then had we none but
reredores, and our heads did never ake. For, as the smoke in those days
was supposed to be a sufficient hardening for the timber of the house,
so it was reputed a far better medicine to keep the good man and his
family from the _quacke_ or pose, wherewith as then very few were
acquainted