Page:The humbugs of the world - An account of humbugs, delusions, impositions, quackeries, deceits and deceivers generally, in all ages (IA humbugsworld00barnrich).djvu/246



It is understood it is practically out of the question to see the reverend brother. Perhaps he is so modest and shy that he will not encounter the clamorous gratitude which would obstruct his progress through the streets, from the millions saved by his consumptive remedy. It is a pity that the reverend man cannot enjoy the still more complete seclusion by which the state of New York testifies its appreciation of unobtrusive and retiring virtues like his, in the salubrious and quiet town of Sing Sing.

A quack in an inland city, who calls himself E. Andrews, M. D., prints a “semi-occasional” document in the form of a periodical, of which a copy is lying before me. It is an awful hodgepodge of perfect nonsense and vulgar rascality. He calls it “The Good Samaritan and Domestic Physician,” and this number is called “volume twenty.” Only think what a great man we have among us unless the Doctor himself is mistaken. He says: “I will here state that I have been favored by nature and Providence in gaining access to stores of information that has fell to the lot of but very few persons heretofore, during the past history of mankind.” Evidently these “stores” were so vast that the great doctor’s brain was stuffed too full to have room left for English Grammar. Shortly, the Doctor thus bursts forth again with some views having their own merits, but not such as concern the healing art very directly: “The automaton powers of machinery”—there’s a new style of machinery, you observe—“must be made to, instead of as now, against mankind; the Land of all nations must be made to Actual Settiers in