Chapter 7 - Page 2

who cures by spirits. The spirit doctor cures in the same way. The palmist professes to point out how to avoid the ills of life. Magnetic healers have hundreds of victims in every city. Their advertisements in the journals of all sorts are of countless kinds. Some cure at short hand, some miles distant from the patient. They are equaled in numbers by the hypnotists, or hypnotic doctors, who profess to throw their patients into a trance and cure them by suggestion. I heard of one cure in which the guileless American is made to lie in an open grave; this is called "the return to nature." Again, patients are cured by being buried in hot mud or in hot sand. I have seen a salt-water cure, where patients were made to remain in the ocean ten hours a day. The plain water cure has thousands of followers, with hospitals and infirmaries, where the patient is bathed, soaked, filled, washed, and plunged in water and charged a high amount.

Then there is the vegetarian cure, no meat being eaten; and there are the meat eaters, who use no vegetables. There are over fifty thousand masseurs and osteopaths in the country, who cure by baths and rubbing. You may have a bath of milk, water, electricity, or alcohol, or a bath of any description under the sun, which is guaranteed to cure any and all ailments. Perhaps the most extraordinary curists are the color doctors. They have rooms filled with blue and other colors, in whose rays the patient victim or the victim patient sits, "like Patience on a monument." I could not begin to give you an enumeration of the various kinds of electric cures; they are legion. But the most amazing class comprises the patent-medicine men, who are usually not doctors at all, but buy from some one a "cure" and then advertise it, spending in one instance which I investigated one million dollars a year. Every advantageous wall, stone, or cliff in America will be posted. You see the name at every turn, and the gullible Americans bite, chew, and swallow.

It is not overstating facts when I say that three-fifths of the people buy some of these patent nostrums, which the real medical men denounce, showing that the masses of the people are densely ignorant, the victims of any faker who may shout his wares loud enough. In China such a thing would be impossible; the block would stop the practise; but, my dear ----, the Americans assure me China is a thousand years behind the times, for which let us be devoutly thankful! I have not enumerated a tenth of the kinds of doctors who prey upon these unfortunate people. There are companies of them, who guarantee to cure anything, and skilfully mulct the sick of their last penny. There are retreats for the unfortunate, farms for deserted infants, and homes for unfortunate women carried on by villains of both sexes. There are traveling doctors who go from town to town, who cure "while you wait," and give a circus while talking and selling their