TAPEWORMS AND GALLSTONES.
Plug-hatted Faker—Frequency of Tapeworms—Some Tricks Exposed—How the Defunct Worm was Passed—Rubber Near-Worm—New Gallstone Cure—Relation to Osteopathy—Perfect, Self-Oiling, “Autotherapeutic” Machine—Touch the Button—The Truth About the Consumption and Insanity Cures.
There is another trump card the traveling medical grafter plays, which wins about as well as the guaranteed rheumatism cure, namely, the tapeworm fraud. Last summer I heard a plug-hatted faker delivering a lecture to a street crowd, in which he said that every mother’s son or daughter of them who didn’t have the rosy cheek, the sparkling eye and buoyancy of youth might be sure that a tapeworm of monstrous size was, “like a worm in the bud,” feeding on their “damask cheeks.” To prove his assertion and lend terror to his tale, he held aloft a glass jar containing one of the monsters that had been driven from its feast on the vitals of its victim by his never-failing remedy. The person, “saved from a living death,” stood at the “doctor’s” side to corroborate the story, while his voluptuous wife was kept busy handing out the magical remedy and “pursing the ducats” given in return.
How about the worm exhibited? How this one was secured I do not know; but intelligent people ought to know that cases of tapeworm are not so common that eight people out of every ten have one, as this grafter positively asserted.
An acquaintance once traveled with one of these tapeworm specialists to furnish the song and dance performances that are so attractive to the class of people who furnish the ready victims for grafters. This is how the game was worked. The “specialist” would pick out an emaciated, credulous individual from his crowd, and tell him that he bore the unmistakable marks of being the prey of a terrible tapeworm. If he couldn’t sell him a bottle of his worm eradicator, he would give him a bottle, telling him to take it according to directions and report to him at his hotel or tent the next day. The man would report that no dead or dying worm had been sighted. This was when Dr. Grafter got in his expert work. The man was told that if he had taken the medicine as directed the worm was dead beyond a doubt, but sometimes the “fangs” were fastened so firmly to the walls of the intestines, in their death agony, that they would not come away until he had injected a certain preparation that always “produced the goods.”
The man was taken into a darkened room for privacy (?), the injection given, and the defunct worm always came away. At least a worm was always found in the evacuated material, and how was the deluded one to know that it was in the vessel or matter injected? Of course, the patient felt wondrous relief, and was glad to stand up that night and testify that Dr. Grafter was an angel of mercy sent to deliver him from the awful fate of living where “the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.”
I was told recently of a new tapeworm graft that makes the old one look crude and unscientific. This one actually brings a tapeworm from the intestines in every case, whether the person had one before the magic remedy was given or not. The graft is to have a near-worm manufactured of delicate rubber and compressed into a capsule. The patient swallows the capsule supposed to contain the worm destroyer. The rubber worm is not digested, and a strong physic soon produces it, to the great relief of the “patient” and the greater glory and profit of the shyster. What a wonderful age of invention and scientific discoveries!
Another journal tells of a new gallstone cure that never fails to cause the stones to be passed even if they are big as walnuts. The graft in this is that the medicine consists of paraffine dissolved in colored oil. The paraffine does not digest, but collects in colored balls, which are passed by handfuls and are excellent imitations of the real things.
How about tapeworms, gallstones and Osteopathy, do you ask?
We heard about tapeworms and gallstones when we were in Osteopathic college.