a.
Chief among these was the tincture of opium, to which he gave its
present name of laudanum, a contraction of _laudandum_, something to be
praised.

The eccentric German alchemist and philosopher, Henry Cornelius Agrippa
(1486-1535), described a prosperous charlatan of his day as "clad in
brave apparel, and having on his fingers showy rings, glittering with
precious stones; a fellow who had gotten fame on account of his travels
in far countries, and by reason of his obstinate manner of vaunting with
stiff lies the merits of his nostrums. Such an one had continually in
his mouth many barbarous and uncouth words."

Towards the close of the sixteenth century, France was invaded by a
horde of mountebanks in showy and fantastic garb, who went from one town
to another, loudly and with brazen effrontery proclaiming in the
market-places their ability to cure every kind of ailment. And the
people, then as now easily duped, lent willing ears to these wily
pretenders, and bought freely of their marvellous pills and
pellets.[219:1]

The prevalence of quackery in England is shown by a preamble to a
statute of Henry VIII, as follows: "Forasmuch as the science and cunning
of Physic and Surgery are daily, within this Realm, exercised by a great
number of ignorant persons, of whom the greater part have no insight in
the same, nor in any other kind of learning. Some also ken no letters on
the book; so far forth that common artificers, as smiths, weavers and
women, boldly and accustomably take upon them great cures, in which they
partly use scorcery and witchcraft, and partly apply such remedies to
the disease as being very noxious and nothing meet; to the high
displeasure of God, great infamy to the Faculty, and the grievous damage
and destruction of divers of the King's people, most especially of them
that cannot discern the cunning from the uncunning."

Probably Dr. Gilbert Skeene, of Aberdeen, Scotland, had in mind such
pretenders, when he wrote, in a treatise on the Plague, published in
1568, that "Medicineirs[219:2] are mair studious of their ain helthe nor
of the common weilthe."

A statute of the thirty-fourth year of Henry VIII (1543) contains the
statement that although the majority of the members of the craft of
chirurgeons had small cunning, yet they would accept large sums of
money, and do little therefor; by reason whereof their patients suffered
from neglect.

At about this period, many were the marvellous remedie