Lady Mary Wortley Montagu remarked that
the English are, more than any other nation,
infatuated by the prospect of universal medicine,
and after noticing the constant succession of
cures applicable for all cases and circumstances,
she says, in 1748: "I find that tar-water has
succeeded to Ward's drops, and it is possible
some other form of quackery has by this time
taken place of that." Although the nineteenth
century has not the advantage of the Elixir of
Life, or Bishop Berkeley's tar-water, or
Perkins's tractors, still old age is guaranteed to all
comers, through the efficacy of certain
wonderful pills. By their agency longevity shall be
the privilege of all who are wise enough to invest
one shilling and three-halfpence from time to
time. One advertiser, with a laudable aspiration
after science, enunciates a humoral pathology,
specially his own; and as, according to him, all
diseases originate in the blood, so the blood is only
to be purified by perseverance in swallowing the
Nos. 1 and 2 varieties of pills, the combined and
judicious administration of which will produce
immunity from all bodily ailments. Another
professor discards every fanciful hypothesis. He
entrenches himself behind countless cases of cure,
and assuring the world that "the student of Nature
knows how simple are her ways," recommends his
pills and ointment as positive remedies for all
external and internal complaints, asserting that by
them "disease is conquered and art triumphant."

But by far the most agreeable advertisement
which meets the eye is "no more pills, or any
other medicine," fifty thousand cures of all
manner of diseases "without medicine,
inconvenience, or expense," and effected solely by the
use of some peculiar kind of food.

Rubbers and shampooers have frequently
risen to considerable notoriety, and then as
suddenly disappeared. The motto adopted
by the practitioners of Kinesipathy (as they
have been called), has usually been to rub and
pinch the body after a peculiar fashion, supposed
to be known only to themselves, and in this
way an universal remedy was promised for all
diseases, medical and surgical. The rubbing
system has always possessed the advantage of
being an active method of cure, in contradistinction
to the expectant plan, which quietly
waits for recovery by the efforts of Nature,
interfering only to remove hindrances out of her way,
or to aid her powers when insufficient. Most
men and women when they are ill, prefer a form
of treatment which has the appearance of activity
and exertion, to any method which
necessitates their quietly waiting. Medical men are
well acquainted with this peculiar mental
constitution in the majority of patients, and know
from constant experience, that often when good
nursing would do all that is required, medical
treatment of some form must be adopted, simply
to satisfy this craving for active help.

One of these Kinesipaths invented the amusing
theory that "synovia" was the cause of all bodily
ailments, and that the appropriate cure was his
special kind of rubbing. Now, this "synovia,"
which is the harmless fluid lubricating the
joints, and which consists of albumen, oil, and
water, was supposed to take an erratic journey
into some neighbouring organ, where its
presence was resented, and thus arose manifestations
of disease. It is reported that a poor lady
who had been stricken with dimness of vision,
and who applied to this rubber for relief, was
informed that the wicked synovia had taken up
its quarters in the organ of vision, and must be
driven out by skilful and oft-repeated rubbing.
After submitting to this treatment for a
prolonged period without benefit, an intelligent
oculist was consulted, who, to the lady's
astonishment, speedily restored her impaired sight
by prescribing for dyspepsia. One ignorant
Kinesipath was caught in the act of shampooing
a poor man's back who had returned from
India much emaciated, with the avowed purpose
of rubbing down the "knobs" on his back: the
so-called "knobs" being the spines of the vertebra
unusually prominent from general wasting.

The history was published, some few years ago,
in the Quarterly Review, of a young man who,
having been brought up as a journeyman cooper,
was instructed by his mother in the art of
shampooing. He was wise enough to turn his
accomplishment to account, and, having made one
or two reputed cures, they were noised abroad,
and caused him to be talked of at every dinner-
table. It was believed that he had made a
prodigious discovery in the healing art—that
shampooing, performed according to his method,
was a remedy for all disorders. All forms of
diseases were submitted to the same treatment;
not alone patients with stiff joints or weakened
limbs, which might have been benefited by the
practice, but sufferers with diseases of the spine
and hip-joint, of the lungs and liver, patients
with the worst diseases, and patients with no
disease whatever. The greater the demand
for the services of the practitioner, the larger
became the fee necessary to ensure his best
attention; and it is supposed, that for one
or two years at least, his receipts were as
much as £6000 annually. Matters went on
thus for three or four years, when the delusion
ceased about as suddenly as it had leaped into
vigour, and the shampooer found himself
deprived of his vocation.

Of the irregular practitioners who devote
themselves to special departments of practice,
the "bone-setters" have always been a
numerous fraternity. One or more is usually to be
found in every manufacturing town, but their
vocation flourishes more particularly in the
mining districts. The inhabitants of those
localities practically express their conviction that
"bone-setting" is an art quite beyond the usual
qualifications of an educated surgeon. Attendance
on lectures, and walking hospitals, may
qualify a medical man for performing an
amputation or curing a colic, but the art of mending
broken limbs is not so learned, and a man whose
ancestors have been bone-setters and
blacksmiths, or bone-setters and curriers, for several
generations, is far more to be depended upon.

Among the specialists, the so-called "cancer