Charlatan. See also the article Charlatanry, for the general definition of this word. We are going to treat it here according to its particular sense in Medicine.

In our language, as well as in English, today’s usage confuses empiric and charlatan .

It is this type of men, who without having any studies or principles, and without having taken degrees in any university, practice Medicine and Surgery, under the pretext of secrets which they possess, and which they apply to everything.

One must completely distinguish these people from Physicians whose empiricism is enlightened. Medicine based on real experiences is very respectable; that of the charlatan is worthy only of contempt.

False empirics are chameleons who assume a thousand different forms. The majority are crude and poorly skilled, they only trap the masses. Others are more shrewd, become attached to the greats and seduce them.

Since men have lived in society, there have been charlatans and dupes.

We easily believe that for which we hope. The desire to live is a passion so natural and so strong it is not surprising that those who in health have little or no faith in the skillfulness of an empiric with secrets, appeal nonetheless to this false Physician in grave and serious illnesses, the same as those who are drowning cling to the smallest branch. They persuade themselves of having received aid, each time that skilled men did not have the effrontery to promise them a certainty.

Hippocrates did not always cure, not surely. He was even mistaken sometimes and the ingenuous admission that he did his all makes his name as respectable as his successors. By contrast those who inherited practical medicine from their fathers, and to whom experience is due to inheritance, always assure with an oath that they will cure the sick. You will recognize them by these comments of Plautus:

“Nothing is easier than to get him out of trouble: he will recover; it is I who gives you my word of honor.”

Although insolence and babbling are an infinite resource, some internal arrangement of the sick which prepares success is still necessary in charlatanry: but the hope of a prompt health on one side and the hope of a good amount of money on the other, forms a link and certain correspondence.

Also charlatanry is itself very old. Glance through medical history since the Egyptians and Hebrews and you will see only imposters, who taking advantage of weakness and credulity, boasted of curing the most inveterate diseases with their amulets, charms, divinations and specifics.

The Greeks and Romans were in their turn flooded by charlatans of all sorts. Aristophanes praised a certain Eudamus who sold rings [to protect] against the bite of venomous creatures.

We call òχλαγωγοì , or simply agyrtae , [1] from the word άγεíρειν , to put together , those who by their speeches assemble people around them; circulators , [2] circuitores , [3] circumforanei , [4] those who roam the world, and who mount the stage, in order to obtain the sale of their remedies; cellularii medici , [5] those who sit in their shops, waiting for the catchment. It was the craft of one Chariton, [6] from whom Galien [7] drew some descriptions of drugs: it was the one of a Clodius of Ancona, who was still a poisoner, and that Cicero called pharmacopola circumforaneus . [8] Although the word pharmacopola  [9] applied among the ancients to all those in general who sold drugs without having prepared them; it was given nevertheless in particular to those that we designate today by the title of conjurer. [10]

Our conjurers, our Eudamus, our Charitons, our Clodius, do not differ from the ancients in character; it is the same genius which governs them, the same spirit which dominates them, the same goal to which they strive; that of earning money, and fooling the public, and always with some sachets, divine skins, skull caps against apoplexy, hemiplegia, epilepsy, etc.

Here are some of the features of charlatans who were the most fashionable in France at the end of the last century. We are indebted to Mr. Dionis for having preserved them for us; the knowledge is not as irrelevant to humanity as we would have imagined it at first glance.

The marquis Caretto, one of these daring adventurers, of a free and familiar character, who happen themselves to protest that in their art is all the skill which lacks in others, and who are believed on their word, penetrating the rabble, reaching just to the ear of the prince, and obtaining favor and pensions. He had a specific that he was selling for two louis [11] per drop; by what means could a remedy so expensive not be excellent? This man made advances towards the marshal of Luxembourg, stopped him from being bled during an epidemic pleurodynia of which he died. This accident censured the charlatan , but the great Captain was dead.

Two Capuchin friars succeeded the Italian adventurer; they published that they brought from a foreign country secrets unknown to other men. They were provided accommodation in the Louvre; they were given 1500 pounds [sterling] per year. All of Paris rushed to them; they distributed a lot of remedies which did not heal anyone; they were abandoned and they threw themselves into the order of Cluny. The one, who was called Father Rousseau , became a martyr of charlatanry, and preferred to die rather than to allow himself to be bled. The other, who was known under the name of Father Aignan , did not keep to himself a remedy against smallpox, but this remedy was infallible. Two people of high quality made use of it: one was the duke of Roquelare, who recovered, because his smallpox was of a good quality; the other, the prince of Epinoi, died of it.

There was one [charlatan] for urines; he was called the doctor of oxen . He was established in Seignelai, town in the county of Auxerre: he claimed to know all kinds of diseases by the inspection of urines; an easy, hackneyed charlatanry of any country. He passed during some period for an oracle; but he was badly trained, he was mistaken so many times that the urines forgot the path to Seignelai.

The priest Guiton, Cordelier, [12] had read the preparation of some drugs in a Chemistry book. He obtained from his superiors the freedom to sell them, and to keep the profits, on condition of providing them for free to those of the monastery who were in need of them. The prince of Isinghien and several other people tested his remedies but with such a poor success that the new chemist lost his credibility.

An apothecary from the county of Avignon put himself in the ranks with a pastille, such that there was no longer a disease which would not yield to its virtue. This wonderful remedy, which was nothing but a bit of sugar blended with arsenic, produced the most fatal effects. This charlatan was so stupid, that taking for a thousand pastilles, a thousand of grains of arsenic, that he mixed, without any precaution, with as much sugar as needed to form a thousand pastilles, the allocation of arsenic was not at all accurate; so that there was a pastille loaded with very little arsenic, and another with two grains or more of this mineral.

Brother Angel, Capuchin of the monastery of suburb of Saint Jacques, was an apprentice apothecary; all the science consisted in the composition of a vegetable salt and a syrup that he called mesenteric , and that he gave to everyone, attributing to this syrup the capacity to purge specifically the humors that it must evacuate. He was, they say, a good man who believed it in good faith. Madame Dauphine, who was unwell, used some of his salt and syrup for fifteen days, and without receiving any relief, Brother Angel was dismissed.

The abbot of Belze succeeded him at Versailles. He was a Norman priest who decided to say he was a physician; he purged Madame Dauphine twenty-two times in two months, and during the period when it is rash to do remedies on women; [13] the princess became very unwell and Misses Besola and Patrocle, two of her chambermaids who had also made use of the abbot’s medicine, contracted a continual stomach indigestion of which they died one after the other.

Mister of Cerf came next with an oil of guaiac which rendered people immortal. One of the chaplains of Madame Dauphine, instead of meddling in his business, decided to suggest the Mister of Cerf; the charlatan saw the princess, assured that he had cured those sicker than her; ran to prepare his remedy; returned, and found the princess dead; and this man, who had the secret of immortality, died three months after.

Who made so much noise, who was more fashionable than the physician of Chaudrais? Chaudrais is a small hamlet made up of five or six houses, near Mantes; there was found a peasant of enough good sense, who advised others to use sometimes a herb, sometimes a root; they honored him with the title of physician . His reputation spread throughout his province and flew all the way to Paris from where the sick flocked to Chaudrais. They were obliged to build houses there to accommodate them; those who only had minor illnesses were cured by use of his pulverized plants, or dried roots: others returned as they came. The torrent of sick people went on however for three or four years.

It is a singular phenomenon that the court has an appeal for charlatans ; it is there that they present themselves to everyone. Mister Bouret landed there with some marvelous pills for inflammatory colic; but, unfortunately for the fortune of this one, he was attacked himself while disembarking by this disease, which his remedy exacerbated so much that he died in four days.

There is the abridged history of the most famous charlatans . It was, as we see, a foreign marquis, monks, priests, abbots, peasants, all sorts of people even more assured of success, than their condition was foreign to Medicine.

Medical charlatanry is neither less common nor less accredited in England; it is true that it hardly shows itself except in public spaces, where it knows well to flaunt patriotic mania to its advantage. Each charlatan is the first patriot of the nation and the first physician of the world. He cures all diseases, whatever they are, with his specifics, and the blessings of God ; it is always one of the conditions of the show.

I remember, says Mr. Addisson, to have seen at Hammersmith one of these patriots, who said one day to his audience: “I owe my birth and my education to this place, I love it dearly; and in recognition of the kind deeds that I received here, I make a present of a crown to all who will want to accept it.” Each person waited, with mouth gaping, to receive the coin of five schelins; [14] the physician places his hand in a long bag, pulling a handful of small packets, and says to the assembly: “Gentlemen, I ordinarily sell these for five schelins six sols, [15] but for the inhabitants of this place, that I love tenderly, I will subtract five schelins.” Accepting his generous offer, his packets were carried off, the assistants having responding for each other that there were no longer any foreigners among them and that they were all natives, or at least inhabitants of Hammersmith.

As nothing is more appropriate to impress the common man than to astonish his imagination and to keep his surprise, the charlatans of the British Isles are announced under the title of physicians recently arrived from their voyages, during which they practiced Medicine and Surgery by land and sea, in Europe and the Americas, where they learned surprising secrets, and from where they brought drugs of an invaluable worth for any illness which could arise.

Some hang up on their doors sea monsters stuffed with straw, freakish bones of animals, etc. the former instructing the public that they have had some extraordinary accidents since birth, and that some surprising disasters have occurred to them during their life; the latter give notice that they cure cataract better than any person, having had the misfortune of losing an eye in such a such battle in service of the homeland.

Each nation has its charlatans and it appears that everywhere these men place as much care to studying the weakness of other men, as the true Physicians to knowing the nature of remedies and diseases. And wherever in the world you are, there is practically no one that cannot recall the passage of Plautus that we had cited above, and to dismiss it with the following account. It is of an English gentleman; he was in his bed cruelly tormented by gout, when he was informed of a charlatan who had a sure remedy against this disease. The lord demanded if the doctor came by coach, or by foot: by foot, responded the servant. “Well, replied the patient, go say to this rogue to go away; because if he had the remedy of which he boasts, he would roll up in a carriage with six horses, and I would go in search of it, and offer him half of my possessions to be relieved of my illness.”

This article is an excerpt from an excellent dissertation by the Chevalier of Jaucourt, which the limits of this work have regretfully forced us to shorten.

Notes

1. Latinized Greek. These men were similar to troubadours, but it was used as a general term for all different types of charlatans or quacks.

2. mountebanks

3. travelers

4. peddlers

5. stall physicians

6. Chariton of Aphrodisias

7. More commonly known as Galen of Pergammon (129–c.200 C.E.), he was sometimes referred to in French as Claude Galien.

8. itinerant mountebank

9. quack

10. The term batteleur was used to refer not only to conjurers, but also to anyone who mounted the stage in public including charlatans, cord dancers, and jesters.

11. A “loüis d’or” or gold coin.

12. The French name for friars of Franciscan Observantists, a strict and pious order of the Franciscans.

13. During menstruation.

14. A French sterling coin, similar to an English shilling.

15. Sol is an older form of “sou”; it has a value of a twentieth of a livre (pound sterling) and was equivalent approximately to an English sixpence.