Dear Charles,—Your rebuke is not merited. I am far
from attributing “all to deliberate imposture.” In regard,
for instance, to certain systems of medicine, as we must call
them, I believe that sometimes practitioners are deceived as
well as patients.

Cures are not unfrequently the result of accidents, the
doctor being as much surprised as any one else; and then it

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

is, that cunning and dishonest persons avail themselves of
such accidents, to laud what they term a system matured
after many years of hard study, and tested by innumerable
experiments! Soon they obtain disciples, who, duped themselves
by the surpassing effrontery of the originator, or rather
machinator, buy the books and set to work applying the
rules to the killing or curing of other simpletons.

A very large proportion of diseases are imaginary, arising
wholly from derangement of the nervous system. These
diseases are of course healed, or cease to be imagined, from
very different and even opposite causes; and, of course,
they seem to be cured often by seeming medicines, or a prescription
that administers—nothing.

Confidence towards a physician is highly important in
the cure of many real diseases; but in regard to imaginary
complaints, not only is confidence in the physician and his
remedy important, but it is very often the only thing that
cures. In such cases, then, the physician, regular or irregular,
true or false, must administer, not a dose of medicine,
but a dose of—confidence. And that dose, whether taken in
pill or potion, or reduced to a powder, effects the cure.

Now, Charles, scarce any form of quackery exists, that
will not, again and again a thousand times, light on patients
with seeming, that is, imaginary complaints: and, beyond
all doubt, when such patients have full confidence in the
proposed remedy, a quack nostrum (if otherwise harmless)
will cure as well as any other medicine; and any remedy is
just as efficacious as nothing. I speak not now of the permanent
injury often done, when men, by tampering with
quack potions, and pills, and the like, exchange a seeming
disorder for a real one; nor of the constant failure of such
remedies when they meet with real and especially violent
diseases: but my wish is to convince you that the quacks
and quackeries you allude to, owe, in great part, their popularity
to the cause just named.

It is a gross error, if one supposes that regular, and
learned, and honest physicians go always by inflexible rule,
and ever administer the same drugs. Such a man is intimately
acquainted with the history of imaginary diseases,
and even treats them as imaginary: that is, he seems to give
medicines, because that semblance is necessary, but he gives

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nothing. He treats seeming diseases as seeming ones, and
real disorders as real; and in this consists one important distinction
between the true medical man and the panaceist
and every other quack.

Charles, I have on divers occasions quacked a little
myself—but alas! my disease was too real, and would not
stay cured—it was toothache! For you must know, your
reverence, that I once had “the worm taken out,” and that
by an old lady in the South, who had learned the art from
the Indians, or some other savages. But ah me! that hateful
maggot, by some contrivance, crawled back into the
grinder; and so tooth and worm had to be wrenched out together,
and that so effectually that neither one nor the other
has ever since reappeared! On the old lady's book, however,
among 'squires innumerable, with a smart chance of ladies,
and a clever sprinkle of generals and other magnates, is recorded
an humbler name, as one cured of the toothache by
the extraction of the worm!

In a similar way are obtained myriads of certificates.
And rarely does one ever erase or recall a name. Indeed,
I do happen to know, also, that certificates are given for the
cure of one disease, when the person had been healed of another:
for certain vile rascals threaten to expose licentious
men, if such give not, for instance, a certificate in favor of
“Doctor François' corn-plaster and shin-oil,” when neither
plaister nor oil had been “exhibited” or applied, but the
man of pleasure had used “a specific without mercury.”

Is it right, your reverence, for the cloth to lend their
name in approbation of any mere nostrums? Pray, what do
clergymen know about such matters more than we plebeians!
And is it not more than possible—is it not certain—that innumerable
plasters, and oils, and other greases, and pills,
potions, lozenges, and so forth, gain a very undeserved notoriety,
and a very injurious use, merely from clerical influence?
It is something like an impertinence, that learned
and regular parsons should not confine themselves ad “consilii
medicinam,” for the morals of the community—in other
words, mind their homilies, and allow learned and regular
doctors to take care of our bodies.

For my part, as age advances, the more my organ of
anti-quackitiveness enlarges; and hence I have settled down

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to a fixed resolution to be killed or cured secundum artem.
If others choose to be quacked off the stage, the laws of our
state do not forbid: but assuming that the regulars themselves
cure only by accident, our sages have let loose upon
us a horde of irregulars to aid in the butchery; believing
that when all the patients are killed, the medical art will
end, and, therefore, that such desirable consummation will
be more speedily brought on by throwing down all barriers.

But, Charles, it will be found that well-educated physicians,
like all well-educated persons that make a profession a
science, as well as an art, are necessarily and of choice,
open, and honorable, and philosophic in their course. Every
thing with such, is the result of study, and is tested by experiment;
and such have no arcana, or mysteries. They
do, indeed, often fail, and are mistaken; but have they
ever said failure and error are impossible? Now, the arrogant
pretension of quackery should certainly be, with educated
clergymen, the very reason for despising its pretension.

Some physicians of my acquaintance have met cases in
their practice, where a reputation for specifics, or for a specific
practice, could easily have been established, and hundreds
of dollars been extorted, where the ordinary fee has
been almost refused. For one other important distinction between
science and quackery is, that the latter has an eye
solely to money; the former does regard honor also, and, at
least, the esprit du corps.

A portly citizen here became nervous some years ago;
and one evening, being in company with the widow Snively,
he complained of his symptoms; on which, the matron, by
way of condolence, replied: “Aye, Mr. Biggins! that's
just the way poor Snively felt after he was taken with the
dropsy!” Instantly Mr. Biggins hurried home, and huddling
into bed, summoned the doctor; upon whose speedy arrival
he exclaimed, “Oh! doctor, I've got the dropsy—look here—
I'm swelled!” Our man of pills fortunately knew his patient's
nerves, and calmly replied, “Well, it does look something
like it, to be sure; but here, this powder will set all
right, and by to-morrow at this time the swelling will vanish,”
and then he administered a Dover powder: and next day Mr.
Biggins called in person, at the doctor's office, to let him know
that the dropsy had gone, and that he felt the swelling had
subsided.

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What a chance this to have obtained an affidavit before
some justice of the peace, a solemn testimony in favor of
“The unparalleled North American Hydragogue, discovered
after five and twenty years' unwearied study of Doctor Jonathan
Eastman!” and now offered to the afflicted as the only
remedy for draining waters from the body and—money from
the pocket.

A case of hernia lately occurred, in which a warm application
was important: but no credit was given to the suggestion,
till a by-stander affirmed that the best cure was to
make a poultice by boiling together two pounds of pork, one
and a half of beef, four beets, and half a dozen small turnips,
and then applying said poultice as warm as could be endured.
This was done; but the good result was attributed to the
jumble and not to the heat! and in that settlement the natural
doctor is valued more than the regular. Here, too, a
patent could have been obtained for “The Wonderful
Emolient-Medicated-Cataplasm!” But the natural doctor,
in this case, had no wish to quack on a large scale—and so
his plaister may enrich another.

This is the steam-age, metaphysically as well as physically;
and folks will go by the steam, even if we burst ever
so many boilers per diem. We have a distaste, too, for
what we understand, and demand in medicine what we demand
in all other things—quackery.

I shall conclude this long letter by an account given me
lately, by a medical friend, corroborative of my remark, that
regular physicians, if dishonest, could often avail themselves
of accidents to obtain credit for a specific practice or a specific
medicine; and that where, strictly speaking, nothing had
been done or given.

My friend, one morning, was hastily summoned to attend
a gentleman several miles from Kaleidaville, with an earnest
request not to delay a moment. Of course he set out instanter;
but scarce had he got a quarter of a mile when he
was met by a second messenger, and before he could reach
the patient's house he encountered a third, who stated that
Mr. Wilton was in imminent danger.

On entering the gentleman's chamber, the doctor found
the patient in bed, and in great alarm, as if from visibly
impending death.

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

“Why, Mr. Wilton,” asked the physician, “what is the
matter?”

“Doctor,” was the reply, “I am just returned from
New-York, from the yellow fever—and I have taken it. I
know the symptoms well—(the gentleman had once himself
practised medicine)—and I wish you to arrest the progress
of the disease before it gets too strong a hold.”

My friend, after making his observations and feeling his
pulse, replied,

“Mr. Wilton, there is positively nothing the matter with
you: here is some mistake—”

“No, sir,” interrupted the patient, “I am not mistaken.
This morning I was apparently as well as usual; but, while
shaving, I perceived, all at once, my whole face and hands to
be as yellow as saffron—and that is the beginning of the fever.'

The doctor now stepped to the toilet near a window,
where the shaving apparatus lay, and instantly found his
own face and hands dyed a saffron color! “How so?” you
ask, “had he caught the fever from Mr. Wilton?”

Not exactly, Charles, but he had caught it from a beauteous
soft mellow light reflected from the changing leaves of
a delightful autumn morning—which was giving all things
in that quarter of the apartment a somewhat jaundiced hue!

Yes, that was the secret. And the knowledge of that
secret could have been turned, by a quack or a dishonest
man, in several ways, to his own advantage. The mistake
of the patient, however, was soon corrected; yet so powerfully
had his imagination been wrought upon, that it was
necessary for the physician to divert his attention by a long
ride together, and several hours of conversation.

Doubtless, Charles, the humbugaths would wrinkle up
the nasal appendage at all such stories and incidents, with
an “oh—ah!”—but I am not easily nozzled out of a deep-seated
conviction that all usually comprised under the head
of nostrum, mesmerism, and quackery in general, may be
traced to trickery; or to a selfish cunning taking advantage
of accident and the wonderful readiness men every where
show to aid imposture. You and I may lack skill or opportunity
to detect the trick or the accident—but that one or
the other, or both exist, is, to me at least, certain.

LETTER IX.

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

Dear Charles,—You are a very modest man in offering
me a recipe for a multum in parvo letter, as if my consilii
medicina might have been condensed, and so saved double
postage. Why, sir, that expense and the breadth of the
plaister, being thus spread over two sheets, will of themselves
effect your cure: and I had an eye to that when the
blister was sent.

But what a blister of both sorts does that sentence in
your last demand?—that I “obstinately refuse to join the
anti-gallows society!” And, does your reverence really
believe, I have no good reasons for withholding my name
and influence, from the “Murderers' and Assassins' Friends
Society?” Have you joined, Charles, and are you sincere
in wondering at me? The mania has invaded your order, I
see, judging from the smart sprinkle of reverends prefixed to
the names of the officers; and all the grand rascals with
black hearts and bloody hands are soon to have “the benefit
of clergy.”

You are right enough in supposing that I have not read
all the “papers and pamphlets;” but not quite so near the
mark, in thinking the perusal must of necessity change my
opinions. Wise men do, indeed, change their opinions—
but wise men, I presume, do sometimes adhere to their old
friends: and to the latter class we belong. Somehow being
fully confident that common sense, common humanity, natural
instinct, the sense of justice, the good of society, and an
old fashioned book called the Bible, are all in favor of the
death penalty, my logic infers that the contrary opinion is
trickery or error. I stand and say come to me; for I cannot
come to you. Not that I am “unwilling to have my
opinion overthrown;” but, that if my foothold be not now
on rock, it never can be: and so I am not willing to waste
time with “the unanswerable arguments.”

Think not, Charles, that quackery is confined to philosophy
and medicine; it is found in morals, and education, and
religion. And a distinct mark of humbug is the vox populi,
in manifest opposition to the vox Dei. In many moral questions
the agitator excites popular clamor in order to conceal
his false principles, to promote his selfish ends, and even

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

to cover his hostility to revealed truth. Majority is his logic;
and with that he votes in his quackery.

And pray, reverend sir, in what consist the wondrous
moral excellence and refinement of our age over all ages
past and future? Why are we too good and elegant to
have the gallows? Granting all that is claimed for our
superiority in such matters, does supreme excellence in
fine arts, poetry, music, painting, statuary, dancing, dressing,—
for these two and other similar things are reduced
to rules and taught and practised as arts—does supreme
excellence here seem inconsistent with a bad heart, with
bad morals, or with open irreligion and even atheistical
thoughts and practices?

Is the worldly-mindedness generated, and kept ever at
fever-heat, by an endless round of amusement and refreshment—
concert rooms—operas—play-houses—museums—
bowling greens—and oyster cellars, where they hang up indecent
paintings, and retail “thunder and light!” by the gill,
in little glass goblets—and all the et ceteras of “Five Points,”
both vulgar and polite—is all this, and the like, proof of
transcendent moral excellence and extreme sensitiveness?
And this refinement is shocked by the gallows! And yet,
Charles, does such refinement never open a plain way to
the gallows? Some eyes are keen enough to discern,
amidst all the flowers and elegence of such a society, the
hideous forms of vindictive malice and revengeful hate, and
brutal lust, and all-grasping avarice, and godless idolatry;
and this, though all are bowing with blandest courtesy, and
moving with matchless grace, and smiling with witching
faces and speaking honied words. And where there are
these, there will even be murder!

True, this society will not call the fiend by his right
name, and they will sanction his deeds and palliate his crimes;
yea, they will so laud his honor, and his bravery, and his
manly spirit, and so soften his rage into a morbid and unfortunate
state of “insane affections,” and they will so represent
his provocations, and the superhuman force of the temptation
and the potency of the circumstances, that the world
shall say, “Alas, poor wretch! let him not die for that!—
how could he help it?” And then the fashionable and the
rectified humanity of the times will exclaim, with

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unutterable scorn in word and action, and with ineffable self-complacency
for its own virtuous self, “What! strangle the gentleman
for that!!”

And because men now all “hasten to be rich,” and are
“lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God,” will they necessarily,
when hanging is abrogated, and the fear of man as
well as the fear of God is removed, will such men immediately
“cease to do evil and learn to do well,” and will they
not “fall into many foolish and hurtful lusts, and bite and
devour one another?” “Whence come wars and fightings?”

Come, sir, how will you prevent crime?

“Construct suitable jails and imprison the unfortunate
criminals for life,” you reply.

And why not add—tax the widow and orphan to maintain
the murderer of the husband and father? To this you
say, and with most devout eyes turned to the clear sky,
“Well, that would teach men to return good for evil! They
ought not to be tempted and encouraged to foster a spirit of
revenge!”

What a moving picture does Christianity, thus ennobled
and refined by moonshine, present, as the Rectification stands;
the hands meekly crossed on its philanthropic, milky bosom;
its face, in humble pride, sweetly turned with a complacent
smile of a mouth puckered at the corners, and its eyes
calling up a look under the graceful curvature of brows
ready for a daguerreotype!

But, Charles, suppose a governor should pardon the unfortunate,
or that the poor deluded criminal should murder
his keeper or a fellow-prisoner?

“To be sure,” you reply, “but these are extreme cases;
and after the new era commences, governors will doubtless
be immoveable by any argument addressed to his pity, or
ambition, or covetousness, or—infidelity; jailers, too, will be
incorruptible, and criminals so pervaded with the sense of
gratitude as to render such fears as the objection hints wholly
needless.”

But what if an unfortunate criminal should, in a new fit
of insane affection—for how can a man prevent insanity—
what if he should kill his jailer or a fellow-prisoner? You
would perhaps say, “Put him straightway into two dungeons.”

Your folks, the anti-hangers, often speak of Draco;

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

whom, after all, they seem to imitate in sentiment. He
deemed the smallest crime worthy of death, and for the
greatest had no higher punishment; and your senators,
deeming perpetual and solitary confinement the highest possible
punishment for one deliberate or insane murder, have
none other for any additional repetitions of “the fault,” or
crime. And why should a wretch care how many murders
he committed when one murder sentences him to a punishment,
severer than which would not await a dozen? He
would say, as the philosopher in Lucian said to Tantalus,
“Why should I fear any other doom? there is but one imprisonment.”

One of your papers sent to me affirms “that executions
in private argue shame in the public mind!” and infers that
the rational sentiment is thus shown against the punishment
of death itself.

Are all things men conceal therefore shameful? And
ought such things ever to be abandoned and avoided? May
not some things be inconvenient and unbecoming in one
place that are in all points suitable for another? Corns (in
pedes) are not cut in public; is it a shame, and hence a sin,
to eradicate them in private? Pleasantries wise men freely
indulge when together; which innocent recreation is ceased
from when a fool approaches. Why? Because in the one
case good arises; in the other, injury.

All deliberative bodies—political, legislative, ecclesiastical—
sit at times with closed doors, and yet no person believes
their secret councils necessarily traitorous or immoral.
Animals designed for the shambles bleed not in public, because,
in addition to inconvenience, danger would arise,
doubtless, to morals; but is it wicked to slaughter such animals
in private? A Grahamite can here find a powerful
reason, in the principles of the anti-hangers, for considering
our carnivorous tendency shameful and wicked.

Many good reasons exist in favor of private executions,
without inferring or saying “governments are ashamed of the
death penalty.”

Admit, reverend friend, for argument's sake, that punishment
is, as the Murderers' and Assassins' Friend Society
affirm, to reform the criminals; then, pray what time is considered
necessary to reform the said gentry—the criminals I

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mean? How and when shall we be satisfied that the reformation
is complete, so that the unfortunates might be let
out with safety to our pockets and throats?

Will a whole lifetime in solitary confinement be too short
a period? Where then is the boasted efficacy of the remedy?
Will a less period than a whole life be sufficient? Then
why confine a man after he is reformed—if that be the sole
end of the penalty? Would not that be cruelty? Would
it not be tantamount to punishing an innocent person?
What! keep a poor unfortunate cut-throat in fetters and
dungeon after he has become as worthy a citizen as before
his misfortune! and when to make amends he is ready even
to marry the poor widow of the murdered man and to take
charge of the fatherless little ones! Shocking inhumanity!
savage barbarism!—and we in the nineteenth century!
Well enough for the dark ages of Moses and the ignorance
of early Christendom—but for these times of canals and rail-roads
and magnetic telegraphs!!

Oh! yes, Charles, you deem all this just like Carlton,—
but, Sir, will no modern philanthropist full of the milk of
human kindness and running over till his chin calls out for
bibs, will none such ever construct a jail-delivery system on
something like the above argument; and deeming his pet
jail-birds sufficiently reformed, determine to send them with
bran new wings, forth-flying again upon society? Are there
not persons now ready to agitate, and petition, and lecture,
and print, and to stuff mail-bags with very sapient twaddle;
and all to prove that it would be cruelty to keep a murderer
confined if it were perfectly certain he was reformed and
would never murder again? Would not such men practice
with meck governors and patriotic legislatures to pardon,
years before the end of life, whenever it seemed certain that
murderers had reformed? “Law,” it may be replied,
“would forbid pardon.” How long would that law stand
unrepealed, or how soon be disregarded in an age just coming
even more enlightened and humane than our own?

I despair not of seeing phrenological science so improved,
that the time necessary to reform criminals may be known
a priori, or rather a capite, and sentence and treatment of
murderers of insane sensibility or affection be according to
the dicta of philosophers. Even now, judges and jurors are

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addressed and cautioned to decide on such philosophic evidence;
and facts and testimony yield to the developments, or
are explained, and diluted, and warped, to suit the organs.
Perhaps no direct attempts are here made, but the indirect
are not wanting; and the secret persuasion of judges and
jurors seems wrought by the kind of marks and tokens that
belong to phrenology, if not to mesmerism. At all events,
we shall have then—forgive the pun—as now, capital punishments.

I can and do with you, dear Charles, weep over those
unhappy men, who, perchance, may have been condemned
and executed wrongfully: for it seems possible, and is
doubtless true, that here and there an innocent man has perished
on the scaffold. But mistake, or even wilful advantage
taken of a good law, ought not surely to overturn all law.
Or if it overturn one, why not another? The mere error or
warping of the rule does not prove that the rule itself is
wrong. The risk men run of enduring evil or injustice, or
of losing life wrongfully, in a civilized state, is immeasurably
less than in the savage or barbarous state; and none
but an extraordinary simpleton, or most obstinate anti-gallows
advocate, would venture to say he would prefer savageism
or barbarism to a condition in which what they term legal
murder, is occasionally done on an innocent man; nor
can such prove that the occasional error or injustice is, per
se, argument for the injustice of the law itself in putting to
death the truly guilty.

Far from me to reflect on the character of some innocent
victims to a needful law, now in their bloody graves; but
yet is it most undeniable, that many, who to the last, deny
their guilt, are men of most base character, and have ever
been bosom companions of the utterly vile and abandoned;
and having by their own act destroyed the force of presumption
in their favor arising from a good and virtuous life and
proper companionship, they owe their death to their own
folly, rather than the mistake of the law. Nor is it going
too far to believe, that some such companions of thieves and
murderers, if guiltless of the one act, may have been accessory
to others, and would be, if life were spared, accessory
again.

One of the papers you forwarded to me, whilst it

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ferociously advocates the anti-hang doctrine, doth actually praise
military companies!—praises trained butchers of the human
species! Nay, said paper advocates firing on mobs!—kills
by wholesale to prevent murder! Yea, it goes for the “whole
Oregon!” When your editor reconciles his inconsistencies,
we will pay attention to his other “conclusive arguments.”

I do not know who your sapient traveller was that knew
by spying a gallows in the distance that he was approaching
a civilized land, and was so shocked that he did not go back
to the barbarians! but I do know he was either a veritable
ninny himself, or the fiction of some ninny story teller. If
the traveller preferred savage life, where murder is done by
wholesale, and the avenger of blood ever lives, why was he
coming back to civilization, where he knew the gallows
must of necessity meet his eye? I will answer for him:
that very gallows assured him that justice and protection
reigned; that a whole community were pledged for his
safety; and so, with a most puerile slander on a wholesome
law, he willingly came snugly under its guardianship.

I know this letter will cost double postage, Charles, but
that will be a proper punishment for your inclining an ear
to our modern New Lights. It will not be very surprising
if you become even an advocate, if not a member, of the
Moral Suasion Society. If you do, Charles, I will positively
lick you; I have a rod in soak.