THE BLACK QUAD AND HIS WHITE BROTHER.
The trial of M. Vries, who called himself the Black Doctor, and murdered a good many unfortunate French persons who, afflicted with cancer, sought the infallible remedy the Surinam scamp proffered, has set Mr. Punch a-thinking what a blessed thing it is for a Quack to be in practice in England instead of in France.
Vries has been put upon his trial, and if he had been one of the celebrated Surinam toads instead pf a quack doctor, he could not have been more mercilessly dissected by French philosophers than he was by the Tribunal of Correctional Police. Here is a very small sample of the treatment the scoundrel got:-
“He had convoked all the architects of all nations to send in plans for a temple of Solomon, to be erected in the Champs Elysees, and had promised a prize of 2,500f. for the best. One plan had been sent to him, and he had suspended it in his dining-room: but in was not a good one, and he had not paid the money. ‘You did all that,’ said the President, ‘in order to attract public attention; and to gain that object all means appeared good to you. Thus you took the name of the Black Doctor, though you are not what may be called black; and you wrote to the President of the Academy of Medicine a letter, in which you undertook to cure persons afflicted with cancer, dysentery, and dropsy. Pray, who made you a physician?’ ‘I, myself, Sir,’ answered the accused. ‘But you represented that you were a physician of the University of Leyden?’ ‘Hippocrates had no diploma.’”
Passing over a bit of the dingy quack’s blasphemy, here is another specimen of the Court’s respect for a rascal’s feelings:-
“’Seventeen persons afflicted with cancer were placed in your hands, and you undertook to cure them in six months: but at the end of two month seven were dead?’ ‘Not one!’ ‘Dr. Velpeau and Dr. Fauvel affirm the contrary. The former analysed your remedies, and found in them nothing peculiar,- nothing that is not to be obtained everywhere. But as to your patients in the hospital, they are at this moment all dead, and since then it is not I who have attended them!’ On the demand of Dr. Velpeau you were excluded from the hospital, and then you caused puffs on your skill to be inserted in the newspapers, and had your portrait published. Did not this publicity bring you in money?’”
With a good deal more of the same sort of mild suasion. The end will be, that the quack, whose trial stands over, will be sentenced to a heavy fine and a long imprisonment.
But suppose that M. Vries, instead of being a Surinam quack, before the Parisian Correctional Police, had been practising in England. Suppose, for instance that instead of his name being M. Vries, it had been Mr. Hosea Habbakuk, and that he had been one of those medieal ornaments of the Hebrew race who advertise very largely, and who are thought to proceed upon the wise abd humane principle of terrifying and plundering any timid fool as much as possible, in order to make him set, for the future, a due value on his precious health and money. Now, as these persons are usually “ignorant as dirt,” it is quite on the cards that Mr. Habbakuk might have slain a few victims in his zeal for improving them. He might – such is the coarse brutality of the Anglo-Saxon nature – be brought before a police Magistrate. But would there be anything of this kind:-
“’Now, Habbakuk, you are a Jew quack, are you not’ Prisoner. ‘Vell, I can’t say as I ain’t a Jew, but quacks is matters of opinion.’ ‘You call yourself a medical man, but you have had no regular medical education.’ ‘Vot’s the odds?’ ‘You advertise yourself everywhere.’ ‘Vell, advertisin’ ain’t no crime, I spose.’ ‘But you pretend to cure what you don’t understand?’ ‘So does many folks.’ ‘You begin by telling a patient that he is horribly ill and in awful danger, and you extort large fees out of his terrors.’ ‘O vot’s the fools of this here earth for, my dear, if not to be plunder for the vise therehof.’ ‘You artfully draw from him his family history, and then, if he hesitates in paying you, you threaten to make unpleasantness.’ ‘Fools should keep their mouths shut.’ ‘And you don’t do him any good after all, but harm.’ ‘Anyhow, he’s got a lesson.’ ‘I commit you for trial.’”
Why, every Old Bailey barrister shudders at the mere idea. Talk this way to a man who can pay for legal assistance! Bedlam broke loose could not equal the noise that would break forth from the bewigged Bulls of Bashan. The Magistrate would be simply slain by the Power of Sound – and fury. No, poor Surinam toad,- quack, we mean,- what would occur here would be another thing. Habbakuk would be represented by a barrister who would watch every syllable that was uttered,- forbid the accused party to say a word,- bully, insult, and ridicule every witness against him, especially every lady witness,- protest against the Magistrate’s expressing the faintest opinion,- and finally declare that there was not the least pretence for any charge whatever against Habbakuk. Possibly the Magistrate might not be overborne by this declaration, and might decide on the case going to another tribunal. Then Habbakuk’s barrister would say that “of course” bail would be taken, and as instantly solvent housekeepers would be forthcoming. The Magistrate would probably “regret to see a gentleman of Mr. Habbakuk’s station and appearance exposed to the charge of manslaughter, but justice knew no difference between man and man,”- and Habbakuk would drive back in his gaudy carriage to his smart house, and hasten to plunder as many more patients as possible, in order to make up for the expense occasioned by his brutal prosecutors. And when the trial came he would be acquitted on some technical point; and though the Judge would not express the slightest regret for the inconvenience Habbakuk had sustained, he would not feel it his duty to the public to say: “There, you Jew quack, you’ve had a squeak for it; but mind how you serve anybody else who may be fool enough to let you rob him.”
Ah! poor Surinam toad, you should have been an English Advertising Quack.
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