Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/905

Rh roots, was extraordinarily popular for a few years, and then lost his constituents one by one. Every region has had some great man of this sort. The Zouave Jacob was all the fashion in Paris under the empire, and his office was never without patients from morning till evening. A Moorish doctor of Frais Vallen, Algeria, was consulted with almost incredible faith by his countrymen and by Europeans, and gave, with his limited list of remedies—a few herbs, purgatives, and extract of cresses—some really philosophical advice, and manifested fine qualities of intelligence. Not long ago a practitioner of these arts took rooms in the best hotel in Havre and advertised by every channel the wonderful merits of the dynamotherapeutic institute. All diseases were cured by the application of plates. The innocents flocked to him, but when they found that they were hoaxed the joker had gone.

Besides these false doctors and surgeons without diplomas, like the bone-setters, there is a whole class of amateur doctors, such as met Gonelle, ready to give advice, some in pure philanthropy, others less disinterested. The members of the French Academy of Medicine have an hour or two of fun every year at the reading of the report on secret remedies. An ingenious schemer fancies he has some potent remedy and sends the receipt to the academy; or, perhaps, it gets there indirectly. I will not venture to assert that the formula may not be indorsed sometimes—recommendations are so cheap. Among these authors of cures are illiterate persons, shepherds, furriers, country ministers, teachers, and nurses. Here, for instance, is a previously unknown recipe taken from an old notebook; here is a remedy brought down from father to son, the