The Project Gutenberg eBook ofQuacks and Grafters

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofQuacks and GraftersThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Quacks and GraftersAuthor: AnonymousAuthor of introduction, etc.: George StrohbachRelease date: February 21, 2012 [eBook #38929]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttp://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUACKS AND GRAFTERS ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Quacks and GraftersAuthor: AnonymousAuthor of introduction, etc.: George StrohbachRelease date: February 21, 2012 [eBook #38929]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttp://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive.)

Title: Quacks and Grafters

Author: AnonymousAuthor of introduction, etc.: George Strohbach

Author: Anonymous

Author of introduction, etc.: George Strohbach

Release date: February 21, 2012 [eBook #38929]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttp://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUACKS AND GRAFTERS ***

QUACKS andGRAFTERSByEX-OSTEOPATHBEING AN EXPOSÉ OF THE STATE OFTHERAPEUTICS AT THE PRESENT TIME,WITH SOME REASONS WHY SUCHGRAFTERS FLOURISH, AND SUG-GESTIONS TO REMEDY THEDEPLORABLE MUDDLEPublished in the Year 1908 byThe Cincinnati Medical Book CompanyCincinnati Ohio

ByEX-OSTEOPATH

BEING AN EXPOSÉ OF THE STATE OFTHERAPEUTICS AT THE PRESENT TIME,WITH SOME REASONS WHY SUCHGRAFTERS FLOURISH, AND SUG-GESTIONS TO REMEDY THEDEPLORABLE MUDDLE

Published in the Year 1908 byThe Cincinnati Medical Book CompanyCincinnati Ohio

Copyrighted, 1908,By The Cincinnati Medical Book Co.

The Lancet-Clinic Press,Cincinnati, Ohio.

To theGREAT AMERICAN PUBLICis DedicatedThis Book, With EveryConfidence in its Proverbial Common Sense andDiscrimination, and With the Hope ofHaving Added a Mite Toward Greaterand Better Things in theArt of Aesculapius.

There has been but one other period in the history of medicine when so many systems of the healing art were in vogue. In the seventeenth century, during the Reform Period, following the many epoch-making discoveries, as the blood and lymph circulation; when alchemy was abandoned and chemistry became a science; when Galileo regenerated physics, and zoology and botany were largely extended; when Newton enunciated the laws of gravitation; when cinchona bark, the great febrifuge, was introduced into Europe, and the cell doctrine was founded by Hooke, Malpighi and Grew, the old Hippocratic, Galenic and Arabic systems of medicine were undermined. In that transition period, when the medical profession was trying to adjust its practice with the many new theories, its authoritative voice was lost, and in the struggle for something tangible, innumerable new systems sprang up.

Four systems stood out most prominently—the pietistically colored Paracelsism of Von Helmont, with its sal, sulphur and mercury; the chemical system of Sylvius and Willis, with its acid and alkali theory of cause and cure of disease; the iatro-chemical system, with its fermentation theory; and the iatro-physical system, which contended that health was dependent upon proper adjustment of physical and mechanical arrangements of the body. The old humoral theoryof Galen had its adherents, influencing all of the newer systems. And suggestive therapeutics was rampant in most grotesque and fanciful forms. Witchcraft, superstition and cabalism were fostered even at the various European courts. As Roswell Park says in his History of Medicine: “With delightful satire Harvey divided the physicians of the day into six classes—the Ferrea, Asinaria, Jesuitica, Aquaria, Laniaria and Stercoraria—according as their favorite systems of treatment were the administration of iron, asses’ milk, cinchona, mineral water, venesection or purgatives.”

That history repeats itself is a truism well illustrated in medicine to-day. The new cellular pathology, founded by Virchow and Cohnheim and elaborated by innumerable men since; the discovery of parasitism and the germ theory by Davaine, Pasteur and Koch; antisepsis by Lister; the introduction of anesthesia by Morton, Simpson and Koller; the application of more exact methods in diagnosis by Skoda and others, and many other innovations and discoveries have revolutionized medicine in the nineteenth century. The transition period of to-day is very analogous to that of the seventeenth century.

Suggestive therapeutics has its advocates in the Emmanuel movement, Lourdes water, Christian Science, New Thought, faith cure and psycho-therapy. The uric acid theory is a curious survival of the old chemical system. The iatro-chemical system is the prototype of Metchnikoff’s theory of longevity. And, strange to relate, despite the claims of wonderfuldiscovery by A. T. Still and D. D. Palmer, the iatro-physical system of the seventeenth century was more complete as a guide to healing than is Osteopathy and Chiropractics to-day. Verily, there is nothing novel under the solar rays.

That graft in surgery and shystering in internal medicine exists no one in the medical profession denies. It has come so insidiously that the profession itself was taken unawares. However, that sweeping denunciation of the entire profession should follow is unwarranted. Every other profession and calling has its black sheep, and it is the duty of the leaders in each to eliminate them. Elimination, however, cannot come entirely from within. The public has its share of responsibility and duty to perform, and the sooner this is realized, the better for all concerned.

To aid in the work of obtaining better things in therapeutics, the establishment and extension of a national bureau or department of health is imperative. Any effort along this line will hasten the day of rational healing. Preventive medicine will then gradually supplant the present haphazard system of palliation and cure.

And education is the watchword of the day!

G. Strohbach, M.D.

Cincinnati, Ohio, 1908.

Though written in a satirical vein, this book is intended as a warning to the medical profession and the public alike. And, while amusing, the wealth of information and comment on certain abuses in the healing art should lead to serious consideration. This book is published without bias or prejudice toward any school of medicine or system of therapeutics as such. But that quackery and graft are rampant among those who pose as healers has become so apparent that we believe every influence to expose and weed out the pretenders is timely.

The author is an Osteopath who abandoned the practice of Osteopathy after a few years’ earnest endeavor, convinced of the untenable position of those professing the practice of this art. He returned to the more congenial profession of teaching. For obvious reasons he publishes this book under anom de plume. He is abundantly fortified with facts to substantiate his criticism.

That his effort may be of some service in clarifying the situation and lead to better therapeutics in the near future, is the sincere hope of

The Publishers.

CONTENTS.

Quacks and Grafters

By EX-OSTEOPATH

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.

The Augean Stables of Therapeutics—The Remedy—Reason for Absence of Dignified Literary Style—Diploma Mills—“All but Holy”—Dr. Geo. H. Simmons’ Opinion—American Medical Association Not Tyrannical—Therapeutics of To-day a Deplorable Muddle.

In writingthis booklet I do not pose as a Hercules come to cleanse the Augean stables of therapeutics. No power but that of a public conscience awakened to the prevalence of quackery and grafting in connection with doctoring can clear away the accumulated filth.

Like Marc Antony, I claim neither wit, wisdom nor eloquence; but as a plain, blunt man I shall “speak right on of the things I do know” about quacks and grafters. In writing of Osteopathy I claim the right to speak as “one having authority,” for I have been on the “inside.” As to grafting in connection with the practice of medicine I take the viewpoint of a layman, who for years has carefully read the medical literature of the popular press, and of late years a number of representative professional journals, in an effort to get an intelligent conception of the theory and practice of therapeutics.

I have not tried to write in a professional style. I have been reading professional literature steadily for some time, and need a rest from the dignified ponderosity of some of the stuff I had to flounder through.

I have just read an exposition of the beautiful and rational simplicity of Osteopathy. This exposition is found in a so-called great American encyclopedia that has been put into our schools as an authoritative source of knowledge for the making of intelligent citizens of our children. It is written by a man whose name, like that of the scholar James Whitcomb Riley describes, is “set plumb at the dash-board of the whole indurin’ alphabet,” so many are his scholarly degrees.

How impressive it is to look through an Osteopathic journal, and see exhaustive (and exhausting) dissertations under mighty names followed by such proof of profound wisdom as, A.M., M.S., D.O., or A.B., A.M., M.D., D.O. Who could believe that a man with all the wisdom testified to by such an array of degrees (no doubt there were more, but the modesty that goes with great learning forbade their display) could be imposed upon by a fad or fake? Or would espouse and proclaim anything that was not born of truth, and filled with blessing and benefaction for mankind?

Scholarly degrees should be accepted as proof of wisdom, but after reading such expositions as that in the cyclopedia, or some of those in the journals, one sometimes wonders if all the above degrees might not be condensed into the one—D.F.

As for dignified style in discussing the subjectbefore me, I believe my readers will agree that dignity fits such subjects about as appropriately as a ten-dollar silk hat fits a ten-cent corn doctor, or a hod-carrier converted into a first-class Osteopath.

While speaking of dignity, I want to commend an utterance of the editor of theJournal of the American Medical Association, made in a recent issue of that journal. It was in reply to a correspondent who had “jumped onto” the editor of a popular magazine because in exposing graft and quackery he had necessarily implicated a certain brand of medical practitioners. The man who criticised the editor of the popular magazine impresses a layman as one of that class of physicians that has done so much to destroy the respect and confidence of intelligent students of social conditions for medical men as a class, and in the efficacy of their therapeutic agencies. Although the committee appointed by the great society, of which he is presumably a member, reported that more than half of the medical colleges in this country are utterly unfit by equipment to turn out properly qualified physicians; that a large per cent of these unworthy schools are little better than diploma mills conducted for revenue only, and in spite of the incompetency and shystering that reputable physicians, in self-defense and in duty to the public must expose, this man proclaims that the medical profession is “all but holy” in its care for the souls and minds as well as the bodies of the people. With all respect for the devoted gentlemen among physicians we ask, Is it any wonder that the intelligent laity smile at such gush?And this man goes on to say that “99 per cent. of the practicing physicians of the country belong to this genuine class.”

Members of the American Medical Association may think that such discussions are for the profession, and should be kept “in the family.” Perhaps they should, and no doubt it would be much better for the profession if many of the things said by leading medical men never reached the thinking public. But the fact remains that the contradictory and inconsistent things said do reach the public, and usually in garbled and distorted form. The better and safer way is, if possible, to see to it that there is no cause to say such things, or if criticisms must be made let physicians be fair and frank with the people, and treat the public as a party deeply concerned in all therapeutic discussions and investigations. And here applies the utterance of the editor of theJournal of the American Medical Associationthat I wanted to commend:

“The time has passed when we can wrap ourselves in a cloak of professional dignity and assume an attitude of infallibility toward the public. The more intelligent of the laity have opinions on medical subjects, oftenbizarre, it must be admitted, but frequently well grounded, and a fair discussion of such opinions can result only in a greater measure of confidence in and respect for the medical profession.”

Such honest, fair-minded declarations, together with expressions of similar import from scores of brainy physicians and surgeons in active practice, arethe anchors that hold the medical ship from being dashed to wreckage upon the rocks of public opinion by the currents, cross-currents and counter-currents of the turbid stream of therapeutics.

The people have strongly suspected graft in surgery, many of them know it, and nearly all have been taught by journals of the new schools that such grafting is a characteristic of medical schools, and is asserted to be condoned and encouraged by the profession as a whole. How refreshing, then, to hear a representative surgeon of the American Medical Association say:

“The moral standards set for professional men are going to be higher in the future, and with the limelight of public opinion turned on the medical and surgical grafter, the evil will cease to exist.”

Contrast such frankness with the gush of the writer who, in the same organ, said 99 per cent. of the medical men were “all but holy” soul guardians, and judge which is most likely to inspire confidence in the intelligent laity.

Right here I want to say that since I have been studying through a cartload of miscellaneous medical journals, I have changed my opinion of the American Medical Association. It is a matter of little consequence to medical men, of course, what my individual opinion may be. It may, however, be of some consequence and interest to them to know that the opinion of multitudes are being formed by the same distortingagencies that formed the opinion I held until I studied copies of theJournal of the American Medical Associationin comparison with the “riff-raff, rag-tag and bob-tail” of the representative organs of the myriad cults, isms, fads and fancies that “swarm like half-formed insects on the banks of the Nile.”

As portrayed by the numerous new school journals I receive, the American Medical Association is a tyrannical monster, conceived in greed and bigotry, born of selfishness and arrogance, cradled in iniquity and general cussedness, improved by man-slaughter, forced upon the people at the point of the bayonet and maintained by ignorance and superstition. Most magazines representing various “drugless” therapies, I found, spoke of the American Medical Association in about the same way. And not only these, but a number of so-called regular medical journals, as well as independent journals and booklets circulated to boost some individual, all added their modicum of vituperation.

When you consider that thousands of Osteopaths (yes, there are several thousand of them in the field treating the people) are buying some one of the various Osteopathic journals by the hundreds every month and distributing them gratis to the people until the whole country is literally saturated, and that other cults are almost as busy disseminating their literature, do you wonder that the people are getting biased notions of the medical profession in general and the American Medical Association in particular? While my faith in the integrity and efficacy of the “newschool” remained intact and at a fanatical pitch, my sympathy was with the “independent” journals. The doctrine of “therapeutic liberty” seemed a fair one, and one that was only American. After studying both sides, and comparing the journals, I have commenced to wonder if the man who preaches universal liberty so strenuously is not, in most cases, only working forindividual license.

I wrote a paper some time ago, out of which this booklet has grown, and sent it to the editor of theJournal of the American Medical Association. He was kind enough to say it was full of “severe truth” that should be published to the laity. In that paper I diagnosed the therapeutic situation of to-day as a “deplorable muddle,” and I am glad to have my diagnosis confirmed by a prominent writer in theJournalof the Association. He says:

“Therapeutics to-day cannot be called a science, it can only be called a confusion. With a dozen dissenting opinions as to the most essential and efficacious therapeutic agents inside the school, and a horde of new school pretenders outside, each with his own little system that he heralds as the best andonlyright way, and all these separated in everything but their attack on the regulars, there certainly is a ‘turbidity of therapeutics!’”

And this therapeutic stream is the one that flows for the “healing of nations!” Should not its waters be pure and uncontaminated, so that the invalid who thirsts for health may drink with confidence in their healing virtues?

If the stream shows turbid to the physician, how must it appear to his patient as he stands upon the shore and sees conflicting currents boil and swirl in fierce contention, forming eddies that are continually stranding poor devils on the drifts of discarded remedies, while streams of murky waters (new schools) pour in from every side and add their filth. To the patient it becomes “confusion, worse confounded.”

GRAFT AND FAILUREPHOBIA.

The Commercial Spirit—Commercialism in Medicine—Stock Company Medical Colleges—Graft in Medicines, Drugs and Nostrums—Encyclopedia Graft—“Get-Rich-Quick” Propositions—Paradoxes in Character of Shysters—Money Madness—Professional Failurephobia—The Fortunate Few and the Unfortunate Many—A Cause of Quackery—The Grafter’s Herald—The World’s Standard—Solitary Confinement—The Prisoner’s Dream—Working up a Cough—Situation Appalling Among St. Louis Physicians—A Moral Pointed.

Thischapter is not written because I possess a hammer that must be used. My liver is sound, and I have a pretty good job. Neither palpation nor “osculation” (as one of our bright Osteopathic students once said in giving means used in physical diagnosis) reveals any “lesion” in my domestic affairs.

However, it doesn’t take the jaundiced eye of a pessimist to see the graft that abounds to-day. The grafter is abroad in the land like a wolf seeking whom he may devour, and the sheep-skin (sometimes a diploma) that once disguised his wolfish character has become so tattered by much use that it now deceives only the most foolish sheep. Once a sheep-skin of patriotism disguised the politician, and people fancied that a public office was a public trust. The revelationsof the last few years have taught us that too often a public office is but a public steal.

The commercial spirit dominates the age. Nothing is too sacred for its defiling hands to touch. The church does not escape. Preachers accuse each other of following their Lord for the loaves and fishes. Lawyers accuse each other of taking fees from both sides. Leading physicians unhesitatingly say that commercialism is the bane of the medical profession. They say hundreds are rushing into medicine because they have heard of the large earnings of a few fortunate city physicians, and think they are going into something that will bring them plenty of “easy money.” Stock company medical colleges have been organized by men whose main object was to get a share of the money these hosts of would-be doctors had to spend. Even the new systems of therapeutics such as Osteopathy, that have boomed themselves into a kind of popularity, have their schools that, to believe what some of them say of each other, are dominated by the rankest commercialism, being, in fact, nothing but Osteopathic diploma mills.

Not alone has graft pervaded the schools whose business it is supposed to be to make capable physicians. The graft that has been uncovered lately in connection with the preparation and sale of medicines, drugs and nostrums is almost incredible when we think of the danger to health and human life involved. The same brand of ghouls who tamper with and juggle medicines for gain, do not hesitate to adulterate and poison food. With their inferior, filthy and“preserved” milk they slaughter the innocents to make a paltry profit. The story Sinclair wrote of the nauseating horrors of slaughter-houses was enough to drive us all to the ranks of vegetarians forever.

Only recently I chanced to learn that even in the business of publishing there is a little world of graft peculiar to itself. I was told by a responsible book man that the encyclopedia containing a learned (?) exposition of the science of Osteopathy is the product of grafters, who took old material and worked in a little new matter, such as the exposition of Osteopathy, to make their work appear up to date to the casual observer. Then, to make the graft worse, for a consideration, it was alleged, a popular publisher let his name be used, and thus thousands were caught who bought the work relying on the reputation of the publisher, who, it appears, had nothing whatever to do with the encyclopedia.

Physicians, school teachers and preachers, all supposedly poor financiers, know about the swarms of grafters who hound them with “get-rich-quick” propositions into which they want them to put their scant surplus of salary or income as they get it. A physician told me he would have been $2,000 better off if a year or two before he had been a subscriber to a certain medical journal that poses as a sort of “watch dog” of the physician’s treasury.

Pessimistic as this review may seem, there is yet room for optimism, and, paradoxical as it may sound, men are not always as bad as their business. I know of a lawyer who in his profession has the reputationof being the worst shyster that ever argued a case. No scheme is too dishonest for his use if it will win his case. Yet this man outside of his profession, in his home, and in his society, is as fine a gentleman as you would wish to meet—a model husband and father, a kind and obliging neighbor, a generous supporter of all that is for the upbuilding and bettering of society. Strong case, do you say? I believe our country is full of such cases. And I believe the medical profession has thousands of just such men, men whose instincts are for nobility of character and whose moral ideals are high, but whose business standards are groveling.

They live a sort of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” life, and why? Are they not to blame? And are they not to be classed as scoundrels? Yes—and no. These men are diseased. Their contact with the world has inoculated them with the world’s contagion. What is this disease? The diagnosis has been considered simple. So simple that the world has called it commercialism, or money madness, and treated the disease according to this diagnosis without studying it further. May it not be true that, for many cases at least, the diagnosis is wrong? Do men choose the strenuous, money-grabbing life because they really love it, or love the money? I believe thousands of men in professional life to-day, who are known as dollar-chasers, really long for a more simple life, but the disease they have has robbed them of the power to choose “that better part.” And that disease is not money madness, butfailurephobia.

The fear of failing, or of being called a failure,dominates the professional world as no other power could. It claims thousands of poor fellows who were brought up to the active, worth-while life of the farm or of a trade, and chains them to a miserable, sham, death-in-life sort of existence, that they come to loathe, but dare not leave because of their disease, failurephobia.

Success is the world’s standard. Succeed in your business or profession, by honest means if you can, butsucceed! At least, keep up the appearance of succeeding, and you may keep your place in society. It may be known that your business is poor, and that you go to your office and sit in solitude day in and day out, and that you starve and skimp at home, but so long as you keep up theshow, you are a “professional man!” What mighty courage it takes to acknowledge what everybody else knows, andquit! A writer in a medical journal told of a young physician in Boston who put an ad. in a daily paper asking for a job in which a strong man could use the strength a manly man ought to be proud of, to earn an honest living. If men only had the courage, I wonder how many such ads. would appear in the columns of our papers!

An old schoolmate, who is a lawyer in a Western city, told me that of the more than two hundred lawyers of that city, twenty had practically all the law business, and of that twenty a half dozen got the big cases in which there was most money. It is largely so in every city and town. And what applies to the lawyer applies to the physician, though perhaps not to so great an extent. And while the fortunate few getmost of the practice, and make most of the money, what are the unfortunate many doing? Holding on, starving, skimping, keeping up appearances, and, while young, hoping against hope for better days. But when hope long deferred has made the soul sick, and hope itself dies, what then? Keep up appearances, you are a professional man. You can’t be a quitter. It would be humorous, were it not so pathetic, to see the old doctor who has dragged along for years, barely eking out a living, put on the silk hat of his more ambitious days and wear it with dignity along with his shiny threadbare trousers and short coat, making a desperate spurt to keep up with the dashing young fellow just out of school.

Failurephobia!Among professional men what a terrible disease it is! I have known it to drive a young man, who might have been happy and useful as a farmer or mechanic, into a suicide’s grave. Such cases are not uncommon. Who are the M.D.s whose pictures and glaring ads. appear in those 15-cent papers published in Augusta, Me., and in many daily and even religious papers? Are they men who took to graft and disgraced their profession because they loved that kind of life, and the stigma it brings? Not in many cases. Most of them perhaps come from the ranks of ambitious fellows who lost out in the strife for legitimate practice, but who would not acknowledge failure, so launched into quackery, and becamenotoriousif they could not become noted.

Strange as it may seem, the fact that a professional man is a notorious grafter abroad does notnecessarily deprive him of social standing at home. I have in mind a man whose smug face appears in connection with a page of loud and lurid literature in almost every 15-centGrafters Heraldfrom Maine to California; yet this man at home was pointed to with pride as an eminently successful man. He wore his silk hat to church, and the church of which he was a valued member was proud of the distinction he gave it. A Western city has an industry to which it “points with pride,” and the pictures of the huge plant appear conspicuously placed in illustrated boom editions of the city’s enterprising papers. This octopus reaches out its slimy tentacles to every corner of the United States, feeling for poor wretches smitten by disease, real or fancied. When once it gets hold of them it spews its inky fluids around them until they “cough up” their hard-earned dollars that go to perpetuate this “pride of the West.”

The most popular themes of the preacher, lecturer and magazine writer to-day are Honesty, Anti-graft, Tainted Money, True Success, etc. You have heard and read them all, and have been thrilled with the stirring words “An honest man is the noblest work of God.” The preacher and the people think they are sincere, and go home congratulating themselves that they are capable of entertaining such sentiment. When we observe their social lives we are led to wonder how much of that noble sentiment is only cant after all.

The World’s Standard.The world will say that goodness is the only thing worth while,But the man who’s been successful is the man who gets the smile.If the “good” man is a failure, a fellow who is down,He’s a fellow “up against it,” and gets nothing but a frown.The fellow who is frosted is the fellow who is down,No matter how he came there, how honest he has been,They find him just the same when being there’s a sin.A man is scarce insulted if you tell him he is bad,To tell him he is tricky will never make him mad;If you say that he’s a schemer the world will say he’s smart,But say that he’s a failure if you want to break his heart.If you want to be “respected” and “pointed to with pride,”“Air” yourselves in “autos” when you go to take a ride;No matter how you get them, with the world that “cuts no ice,”Your neighbors know you have them and know they’re new and nice.The preacher in the pulpit will tell you, with a sigh,That rich men go with Dives when they come at last to die;And men who’ve been like Lazarus, failures here on earth,Will find their home in Heaven where the angels know their worth.But the preacher goes with Dives when the dinner hour comes;He prefers a groaning table to grabbing after crumbs.Yes; he’ll take Dives’ “tainted money” just to lighten up his load.Enough to let him travel in the little camel road.

That may sound like the wail of a pessimistic knocker, but every observing man knows it’s mostly truth. The successful man is the man who gets the world’s smile, and he gets the smile with little regard to the methods employed to achieve his “success.”

This deplorable social condition is largely responsible for the multitudinous forms of graft that exist to-day. To “cut any ice” in “society” you must be somebody or keep up the appearance of being somebody. Even if the world knows you are going mainly on pretensions, it will “wink the other eye” and give you the place your pretensions claim. Most of the folk who make up “society” are slow to engage in stone slinging, for they are wise enough to consider the material of which their own domiciles are constructed.

To make an application of all this, let us not be too hard on the quack and the shyster. He is largely a product of our social system. Society has placed temptations before him to get money, and he must keep up the appearances of success at any cost of honesty and independent manhood. The poor professional man who is a victim of that fearful disease, failurephobia, in his weakness has become a slave to public opinion. He is made to “tread the mill” daily in the monotonous round to and from his office where he is serving a life sentence of solitary confinement, while his wife sews or makes lace or gives music lessons to support the family.

I say solitary confinement advisedly, for now a professional man is even denied the solid comfort ofthe old-time village doctor or lawyer who could sit with his cronies and fellow-loafers in the shade of the tavern elm, or around the grocer’s stove, and maintain his professional standing (or rather sitting). In the large towns and cities that will not do to-day. If the professional man is not busy, he mustseembusy. A physician changed his office to get a south front, as he felt hemusthave sunshine, and he dared not do like Dr. Jones, get it loafing on the streets. Not that a doctor would not enjoy spending some of his long, lonely hours talking with his friends in the glorious sunshine, but it would not do. People would say: “Doctor Blank must not get much to do now. I see him loafing on the street like old Doc Jones. I guess Doctor Newcomer has made a ‘has been’ of him, too.”

I know a young lawyer who sat in his office for two long years without a single case. Yet every day he passed through the street with the brisk walk of one in a hurry to get back to pressing business. He was so busy (?) that he had to read the paper as he walked to save time to—wait!

Did you ever sit in the office with one of these prisoners and watch him looking out of his window upon prosperous farmers as they untied fine teams and drove away in comfortable carriages? Did you know how to translate that look in his eye, and the sad abstraction of manner into which he momentarily sank, in spite of his creed, which taught him to always seem prosperous and contented? The translation was not hard. His mind was following that farmer outof town and along the green lanes, bordered by meadows and clover bloom, and on down the road through the cool twilight of the quiet summer evening, to where the ribbon of dark green forest, whose cool cadence had called to him so often, changed to groves of whispering trees that bordered the winding stream that spoke of the swimming holes and fishing pools of his boyhood. And on up the road again, across the fertile prairie lands, until he turns in at the gate of an orchard-embowered home. And do you think the picture is less attractive to this exile because it has not the stately front and the glistening paint of the smart house in town? Not at all. The smart house with glistening paint is the one he must aspire to in town, but his ideal home is that snug farmhouse to which his fancy has followed the prosperous farmer.

That picture is not altogether a product of poetic fancy. We get glimpses of such pictures in confidential talks with lawyers and doctors in almost every town. These poor fellows may fret and sigh for change, “and spend their lives for naught,” but the hunger never leaves them. Not long ago a professional man who has spent twenty-five years of his life imprisoned in an office, most of the time just waiting, spoke to me of his longing to “get out.” His longing had become almost a madness. He forgot the creed, to always appear prosperous, and spoke in bitterness of his life of sham. He said he was like the general of the old rhyme who “marched up the hill and—marched down again.” He went up to his office and—went home again, day in and day out,year in and year out, and for what? Butfailurephobiaheld him there, and he is there yet.

What schemes such unfortunates sometimes concoct to escape their fate! I was told of a physician who was “working up a cough,” to have an excuse to go west “for his health.” How often we hear or read of some bright doctor or lawyer who had a “growing” practice and a “bright future” before him, having to change his occupation on account of his health failing!

This is not an overdrawn picture. I believe old and observing professional men will bear me out in it. Statistics of the conditions in the professions are unobtainable, but I feel sure would only corroborate my statement. In a recent medical journal was an article by a St. Louis physician, which said the situation among medical men of that city was “appalling.” Of the 1,100 doctors there, dozens of them were living on ten-cent lunches at the saloons, and with shiny clothes and unkempt persons were holding on in despair, waiting for something better, or sinking out of sight of the profession in hopeless defeat.

This is a discouraging outlook, but it is time some such pictures were held up before the multitude of young people of both sexes who are entering medical and other schools, aspiring to professional life. And it is time for society to recognize some of the responsibility for graft that rests on it, for setting standards that cause commercialism to dominate the age.

WHY QUACKS FLOURISH.

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