The Humbugs of the World

A tremendous uproar surely, that could drown the voices of those gentlemen! And so he moved again, to the great Hotel de Soissons, a vast palace, with a garden of some acres. Fantastic circumstances variegated the wild rush of speculation. The haughtiest of the nobility rented mean rooms near Law’s abode, to be able to get at him. Rents in his neighborhood rose to twelve and sixteen times their usual amount. A cobbler, whose lines had fallen in those pleasant places, made $40 a day by letting his stall and furnishing writing materials to speculators. Thieves and disreputable characters of all sorts flocked to this concourse. There were riots and quarrels all the time. They often had to send a troop of cavalry to clear the street at night. Gamblers posted themselves with their implements among the speculators, who gambled harder than the gamblers, and took an occasional turn at roulette by way of slackening the excitement; as people go to sleep, or go into the country. A hunchback fellow made a good deal of money by letting people write on his back. When Law had moved into the Hotel de Soissons, the former owner, the Prince de Carignan, reserved the gardens, procured an edict confining all stock-dealings to that place; put up five hundred tents there, leased them at five hundred livres a month each, and thus made money at the rate of $50,000 a month. There were just two of the aristocracy who were sensible and resolute enough not to speculate in the stock – the Duke de St. Simon and the old Marshal Villars.

Law became infinitely the most important person in the kingdom. Great and small, male and female, high and low, haunted his offices and ante-chambers, hunted him down, plagued his very life out, to get a moment’s speech with him, and get him to enter their names as buyers of stock. The highest nobles would wait half a day for the chance. His servants received great sums to announce some visitor’s name. Ladies of the highest rank gave him anything he would ask of them for leave to buy stock. One of them made her coachmen upset her out of her carriage as Law came by, to get a word with him. He helped her up; she got the word, and bought some stock. Another lady ran into the house where he was at dinner, and raised a cry of fire. The rest ran out, but she ran further in to reach Law, who saw what she was at, and like a pecuniary Joseph, ran away as fast as he could.

As the frenzy rose toward its height, and the Regent took advantage of it to issue stock enough to pay the whole national debt, namely, three hundred thousand new shares, at $1,000 each, or a thousand per cent. in the par value. They were instantly taken. Three times as many would have been instantly taken. So violent were the changes of the market, that shares rose or fell twenty per cent. within a few hours. A servant was sent to sell two hundred and fifty shares of stock; found on reaching the gardens of the Hotel de Soissons, that since he left his master’s house the price had risen from $1,600 (par value $100 remember) to $2,000. The servant sold, gave his master the proceeds at $1,600 a share, put the remaining $100,000 in his own pocket, and left France that evening. Law’s coachman became so rich that he left service, and set up his own coach; and when his master asked him to find a successor, he brought two candidates, and told Law to choose, and he would take the other himself. There were many absurd cases of vulgarians made rich. There were also many robberies and murders. That committed by the Count de Horn, one of the higher nobility and two accomplices, is a famous case. The Count, a dissipated rascal, poniarded a broker in a tavern for the money the broker carried with him. But he was taken, and, in spite of the utmost and most determined exertions of the nobility, the Regent had him broken on the wheel in public, like any other murderer.

The stock of the Company of the Indies, though it dashed up and down ten and twenty per cent. from day to day, was from the first immensely inflated. In August 1719, it sold at 610 per cent.; in a few weeks more it arose to 1,200 per cent. All winter it still went up until, in April 1720, it stood at 2,050 per cent. That is, one one-hundred dollar share would sell for two thousand and fifty dollars.

At this extreme point of inflation, the bubble stood a little, shining splendidly as bubbles do when they are nearest bursting, and then it received two or three quiet pricks. The Prince de Conti, enraged because Law would not send him some shares on his own terms, sent three wagon-loads of bills to Law’s bank, demanding specie. Law paid it, and complained to the Regent, who made him put two-thirds of it back again. A shrewd stock-gambler drew specie by small sums until he had about $200,000 in coin, and lest he should be forced to return it, he packed it in a cart, covered it with manure, put on a peasant’s disguise, and carted his fortune over the frontiers into Belgium. Some others quietly realized their means in like manner by driblets and funded them abroad.

By such means coin gradually grew very scarce, and signs of a panic appeared. The Regent tried to adjust matters by a decree that coin should be five per cent. less than paper; as much as to say, It is hereby enacted that there is a great deal more coin than there is! This did not serve, and the Regent decreed again, that coin should be worth ten per cent. less than paper. Then he decreed that the bank must not pay more than $22 at once in specie; and, finally, by a bold stretch of his authority, he issued an edict that no person should have over $100 in coin, on pain of fine and confiscation. These odious laws made a great deal of trouble, spying, and distress, and rapidly aggravated the difficulty they were meant to cure. The price of shares in the great company began to fall steadily and rapidly. Law and the Regent began to be universally hated, cursed, and threatened. Various foolish and vain attempts were made to stay the coming ruin, by renewing the stories about Louisiana sending out a lot of conscripted laborers, ordering that all payments must be made in paper, and printing a new batch of notes, to the amount of another $300,000,000. Law’s two corporations were also doctored in several ways. The distress and fright grew worse. An edict was issued that Law’s notes and shares should depreciate gradually by law for a year, and then be worth but half their face. This made such a tumult and outcry that the Regent had to retract it in seven days. On this seventh day, Law’s bank stopped paying specie. Law was turned out of his public employments, but still well treated by the Regent in private. He was, however, mobbed and stoned in his coach in the street, had to have a company of Swiss Guards in his house, and at last had to flee to the Regent’s own palace.

I have not space to describe in detail the ruin, misery, tumults, loss and confusion which attended the speedy descent of Law’s paper and shares to entire worthlessness. Thousands of families were made paupers, and trade and commerce destroyed by the painful process. Law himself escaped out of France poor; and, after another obscure and disreputable career of gambling, died in poverty at Venice, in 1729.

Thus this enormous business-humbug first raised a whole nation into a fool’s paradise of imaginary wealth, and then exploded, leaving its projector and many thousands of victims ruined, the country disturbed and distressed, long-enduring consequences, in vicious and lawless and unsteady habits, contracted while the delusion lasted, and no single benefit except one more most dearly-bought lesson of the wicked folly of mere speculation without a real business basis and a real business method. Let not this lesson be lost on the rampant and half-crazed speculators of the present day. Those who buy gold or flour, leather, butter, dry goods, groceries, hardware, or anything else on speculation, when prices are inflated far beyond the ordinary standard, are taking upon themselves great risks, for the bubble must eventually be pricked; and whoever is the “holder” when that time comes, must necessarily be the loser.

V. MEDICINE AND QUACKS

CHAPTER XXVIII

DOCTORS AND IMAGINATION. – FIRING A JOKE OUT OF A CANNON. – THE PARIS EYE WATER. – MAJENDIE ON MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE. – OLD SANDS OF LIFE

Medical humbugs constitute a very critical subject indeed, because I shall be almost certain to offend some of three parties concerned, namely; physicians, quacks, and patients. But it will never do to neglect so important a division of my whole theme as this.

To begin with, it is necessary to suggest, in the most delicate manner in the world, that there is a small infusion of humbug among the very best of the regular practitioners. These gentlemen, for whose learning, kind-heartedness, self-devotion, and skill I entertain a profound respect, make use of what I may call the gaseous element of their practice, not for the lucre of gain, but in order to enlist the imaginations of their patients in aid of nature and great remedies.

The stories are infinite in number, which illustrate the force of imagination, ranging through all the grades of mental action, from the lofty visions of good men who dream of seeing heaven opened to them, and all its ineffable glories and delights, down to the low comedy conceit of the fellow who put a smoked herring into the tail of his coat and imagined himself a mermaid.

Probably, however, imagination displays its real power more wonderfully in the operations of the mind on the body that holds it, than anywhere else. It is true that there are some people even so utterly without imagination that they cannot take a joke; such as that grave man of Scotland who was at last plainly told by a funny friend quite out of patience, “Why, you wouldn’t take a joke if it were fired at you out of a cannon!”

“Sir,” replied the Scot, with sound reasoning and grave thought, “Sir, you are absurd. You cannot fire a joke out of a cannon!”

But to return: It is certainly the case that frequently “the doctor” takes great care not to let the patient know what is the matter, and even not to let him know what he is swallowing. This is because a good many people, if at a critical point of disease, may be made to turn toward health if made to believe that they are doing so, but would be frightened, in the literal sense of the words, to death, if told what a dangerous state they are in.

One sort of regular practice humbug is rendered necessary by the demands of the patients. This is giving good big doses of something with a horrid smell and taste. There are plenty of people who don’t believe the doctor does anything to earn his money, if he does not pour down some dirty brown or black stuff very nasty in flavor. Some, still more exacting, wish for that sort of testimony which depends on internal convulsions, and will not be satisfied unless they suffer torments and expel stuff enough to quiet the inside of Mount Vesuvius or Popocatepetl.

“He’s a good doctor,” was the verdict of one of this class of leather-boweled fellows – “he’ll work your innards for you!”

It is a milder form of this same method to give what the learned faculty term a placebo. This is a thing in the outward form of medicine, but quite harmless in itself. Such is a bread-pill, for instance; or a draught of colored water, with a little disagreeable taste in it. These will often keep the patient’s imagination headed in the right direction, while good old Dame Nature is quietly mending up the damages in “the soul’s dark cottage.”

One might almost fancy that, in proportion as the physician is more skillful, by so much he gives less medicine, and relies more on imagination, nature, and, above all, regimen and nursing. Here is a story in point. There was an old gentleman in Paris, who sold a famous eye-water, and made much gain thereby. He died, however, one fine day, and unfortunately forgot to leave the recipe on record. “His disconsolate widow continued the business at the old stand,” however – to quote another characteristic French anecdote – and being a woman of ready and decisive mind, she very quietly filled the vials with water from the river Seine, and lived respectably on the proceeds, finding, to her great relief, that the eye-water was just as good as ever. At last however, she found herself about to die, and under the stings of an accusing conscience she confessed her trick to her physician, an eminent member of the profession. “Be entirely easy, Madam,” said the wise man; “don’t be troubled at all. You are the most innocent physician in the world; you have done nobody any harm.”

It is an old and illiberal joke to compare medicine to war, on the ground that the votaries of both seek to destroy life. It is, however, not far from the truth to say that they are alike in this; that they are both preëminently liable to mistakes, and that in both he is most successful who makes the fewest.

How can it be otherwise, until we know more than we do at present, of the great mysteries of life and death? It seems risky enough to permit the wisest and most experienced physician to touch those springs of life which God only understands. And it is enough to make the most stupid stare, to see how people will let the most disgusting quack jangle their very heartstrings with his poisonous messes, about as soon as if he were the best doctor in the world. A true physician, indeed, does not hasten to drug. The great French surgeon, Majendie, is even said to have commenced his official course of lectures on one occasion by coolly saying to his students: “Gentlemen, the curing of disease is a subject that physicians know nothing about.” This was doubtless an extreme way of putting the case. Yet it was in a certain sense exactly true. There is one of the geysers in Iceland, into which visitors throw pebbles or turfs, with the invariable result of causing the disgusted geyser in a few minutes to vomit the dose out again, along with a great quantity of hot water, steam, and stuff. Now the doctor does know that some of his doses are pretty sure to work, as the traveler knows that his dose will work on the geyser. It is only the exact how and why that is not understood.

But however mysterious is nature, however ignorant the doctor, however imperfect the present state of physical science, the patronage and the success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than those of honest and laborious men of science and their careful experiments.

I have come about to the end of my tether for this time; and quackery is something too monstrous in dimensions as well as character to be dealt with in a paragraph. But I may with propriety put one quack at the tail of this letter; it is but just that he should let decent people go before him. I mean “Old Sands of Life.” Everybody has seen his advertisement, beginning “A retired Physician whose sands of life have nearly run out,” etc. And everybody – almost – knows how kind the fellow is in sending gratis his recipe. All that is necessary is (as you find out when you get the recipe) to buy at a high price from him one ingredient which (he says) you can get nowhere else. This swindling scamp is in fact a smart brisk fellow of about thirty-five years of age, notwithstanding the length of time during which – to use a funny phrase which somebody got up for him – he has been “afflicted with a loose tail-board to his mortal sand-cart.” Some benevolent friend was so much distressed about the feebleness of “Old Sands of Life” as to send him one day a large parcel by express, marked “C. O. D.,” and costing quite a figure. “Old Sands” paid, and opening the parcel, found half a bushel of excellent sand.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE CONSUMPTIVE REMEDY. – E. ANDREWS, M. D. – BORN WITHOUT BIRTHRIGHTS. – HASHEESH CANDY. – ROBACK THE GREAT. – A CONJURER OPPOSED TO LYING

There is a fellow in Williamsburg who calls himself a clergyman, and sells a “consumptive remedy,” by which I suppose he means a remedy for consumption. It is a mere slop corked in a vial; but there are a good many people who are silly enough to buy it of him. A certain gentleman, during last November, earnestly sought an interview with this reverend brother in the interests of humanity, but he was as inaccessible as a chipmunk in a stone fence. The gentleman wrote a polite note to the knave asking about prices, and received a printed circular in return, stating in an affecting manner the good man’s grief at having to raise his price in consequence of the cost of gold “with which I am obliged to buy my medicines” saith he, “in Paris.” This was both sad and unsatisfactory; and the gentleman went over to Williamsburg to seek an interview and find out all about the prices. He reached the abode of the man of piety, but, strange to relate, he wasn’t at home.

Gentleman waited.

Reverend brother kept on not being at home. When gentleman had waited to his entire satisfaction he came back.

It is understood it is practically out of the question to see the reverend brother. Perhaps he is so modest and shy that he will not encounter the clamorous gratitude which would obstruct his progress through the streets, from the millions saved by his consumptive remedy. It is a pity that the reverend man cannot enjoy the still more complete seclusion by which the state of New York testifies its appreciation of unobtrusive and retiring virtues like his, in the salubrious and quiet town of Sing Sing.

A quack in an inland city, who calls himself E. Andrews, M. D., prints a “semi-occasional” document in the form of a periodical, of which a copy is lying before me. It is an awful hodgepodge of perfect nonsense and vulgar rascality. He calls it “The Good Samaritan and Domestic Physician,” and this number is called “volume twenty.” Only think what a great man we have among us – unless the Doctor himself is mistaken. He says: “I will here state that I have been favored by nature and Providence in gaining access to stores of information that has fell to the lot of but very few persons heretofore, during the past history of mankind.” Evidently these “stores” were so vast that the great doctor’s brain was stuffed too full to have room left for English Grammar. Shortly, the Doctor thus bursts forth again with some views having their own merits, but not such as concern the healing art very directly: “The automaton powers of machinery” – there’s a new style of machinery, you observe – “must be made to WORK FOR, instead of as now, against mankind; the Land of all nations must be made FREE to Actual Settlers in LIMITED quantities. No one must be born without his birthright being born with him.” The italics, etc., are the Doctor’s. What an awful thought is this of being born without any birthright, or, as the Doctor leaves us to suppose possible, having one’s birthright born first, and dodging about the world like a stray canary-bird, while the unhappy and belated owner tries in vain to put salt on its tail and catch it!

Well, this wiseacre, after his portentous introduction, fills the rest of his sixteen loosely printed double-columned octavo pages with a farrago of the most indescribable character, made up of brags, lies, promises, forged recommendations and letters, boasts of systematic charity, funny scraps of stuff in the form of little disquisitions, advertisements of remedies, hair-oils, cosmetics, liquors, groceries, thistle-killers, anti-bug mixtures, recipes for soap, ink, honey, and the Old Harry only knows what. The fellow gives a list of seventy-one specific diseases for which his Hasheesh Candy is a sure cure, and he adds that it is also a sure cure for all diseases of the liver, brain, throat, stomach, ear, and other internal disorders; also for “all long standing diseases” – whatever that means! – and for insanity! In this monstrous list are jumbled together the most incongruous troubles. “Bleeding at the nose, and abortions;” “worms, fits, poisons and cramps.” And the impudent liar quotes General Grant, General Mitchell, the Rebel General Lee, General McClellan, and Doctor Mott of this city, all shouting in chorus the praises of the Hasheesh Candy! Next comes the “Secret of Beauty,” a “preparation of Turkish Roses;” then a lot of forged references, and an assertion that the Doctor gives to the poor five thousand pounds of bread every winter; then some fearful denunciations of the regular doctors.

But – as the auctioneers say – “I can’t dwell.” I will only add that the real villainy of this fellow only appears here and there, where he advertises the means of ruining innocence, or of indulging with impunity in the foulest vices. He will sell for $3.30, the “Mystic Weird Ring.” In a chapter of infamous blatherumskite about this ring he says: “The wearer can drive from, or draw to him, any one, and for any purpose whatever.” I need not explain what this scoundrel means. He also will sell the professed means of robbery and swindling; saying that he is prepared to show how to remove papers, wills, titles, notes, etc., from one place to another “by invisible means.” It is a wonder that the Bank of Commerce can keep any securities in its vaults – of course!

But enough of this degraded panderer to crime and folly. He is beneath notice, so far as he himself concerned; I devote the space to him, because it is well worth while to understand how base an imposture can draw a steady revenue from a nation boasting so much culture and intelligence as ours. It is also worth considering whether the authorities must not be remiss, who permit such odious deceptions to be constantly perpetrated upon the public.

I ought here to give a paragraph to the great C. W. Roback, one of whose Astrological Almanacs is before me. This erudite production is embellished in front with a picture of the doctor and his six brothers – for he is the seventh son of a seventh son. The six elder brethren – nice enough boys – stand submissively around their gigantic and bearded junior, reaching only to his waist, and gazing up at him with reverence, as the sheaves of Joseph’s brethren worshipped his sheaf in his dream. At the end is a picture of Magnus Roback, the grandfather of C. W., a bull-headed, ugly old Dutchman, with a globe and compasses. This picture, by the way, is in fact a cheap likeness of the old discoverers or geographers. Within the book we find Gustavus Roback, the father of C. W., for whom is used a cut of Jupiter – or some other heathen god – half-naked, a-straddle of an eagle, with a hook in one hand and a quadrant in the other; which is very much like the picture by one of the “Old Masters” of Abraham about to offer up Isaac, and taking a long aim at the poor boy with a flint-lock horse-pistol. Doctor Roback is good enough to tell us where his brothers are: “One, a high officer in the Empire of China, another a Catholic Bishop in the city of Rome,” and so on. There is also a cut of his sister, whom he cured of consumption. She is represented “talking to her bird, after the fashion of her country, when a maiden is unexpectedly rescued from the jaws of death!”

Roback cures all sorts of diseases, discovers stolen property, insures children a marriage, and so on, all by means of “conjurations.” He also casts nativities and foretells future events; and he shows in full how Bernadotte, Louis Philippe, and Napoleon Bonaparte either did well or would have done well by following his advice. The chief peculiarity of this impostor is, that he really avoids direct pandering to vice and crime, and even makes it a specialty to cure drunkenness and – of all things in the world – lying! On this point Roback gives in full the certificate of Mrs. Abigail Morgan, whose daughter Amanda “was sorely given to fibbing, in so much that she would rather lie than speak the truth.” And the delighted mother certifies that our friend and wizard “so changed the nature of the girl that, to the best of our knowledge and belief, she has never spoken anything but the truth since.”

There is a conjurer “as is a conjurer.”

What an uproar the incantation of the great Roback would make, if set fairly to work among the politicians, for instance! But after all, on second thoughts, what a horrible mass of abominations would they lay bare in telling the truth about each other all round! No, no – it won’t do to have the truth coming out, in politics at any rate! Away with Roback! I will not give him another word – not a single chance – not even to explain his great power over what he calls “Fits! Fits! Fits! Fits! Fits!”

CHAPTER XXX

MONSIGNORE CRISTOFORO RISCHIO; OR, IL CRESO, THE NOSTRUM-VENDER OF FLORENCE. – A MODEL FOR OUR QUACK DOCTORS

Every visitor to Florence during the last twenty years must have noticed on the grand piazza before the Ducal Palace, the strange genius known as Monsignore Créso, or, in plain English, Mr. Crœsus. He is so called because of his reputed great wealth; but his real name is Christoforo Rischio, which I may again translate, as Christopher Risk. Mrs. Browning refers to him in one of her poems – the “Casa Guidi Windows,” I think – and he has also been the staple of a tale by one of the Trollope brothers.