The Menace, an Exposition of Quackery Nostrum Exploitation and Reminiscences of a Country Doctor Page: 54
128 p. : ill., ports. ; 24 cm.View a full description of this book.
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The Menace
DR. P. CHESTER MAIDSON-CHICAGO.
This dispenser of that well known commodity which
comes floating in upon you to disturb your afterlunch nap,
calls himself the "Master Oculist of America," and is
another master faker. All kinds of eye diseases is meat
for Madison, but he makes quite a specialty of cross eyes.
"Why remain cross eyed?" he pertinently inquires, and
explains that he can cure people afflicted with cross eyes,
"almost instantaneously without the use of the knife, with-
out confining them to a dark room, without the use of
bandages, without the administration of anaesthetics,
chloroform or ether and with absolutely no pain." The
only draw back to this statement is that it is a ball-faced
lie. A few cases of strabismus there are, mostly those of
young people, which can be corrected by slow and careful
non-surgical treatment. But when Dr. Jones or Dr. Smith,
or any other doctor, pretends to be successful in strabismus
by an "absorbent method," or any such nonsense, he is
a liar and a thief and obtains his patients and their money
under false pretenses.
"Crossed-eyed forty-eight years, cured in twenty min-
utes," is the modest claim of this fake eye specialist,
another reads, "was cross-eyed twenty-six years" straight-
ened in thirty minutes. This is premeditated, unmitigated,
falsifying. If these reprobates straighten eyes in thirty
minutes, they do it by cutting the muscle responsible for
the uneven tension, and if he doesn't use the knife he uses
scissors or clippers or some equally painful impliment.
His "no knife" claim is simply disreputable lieing.
There are scores of petty fakers who flit from city to
city doing a little business in lotions for the eye, and minor
operations. Their preparations are either boracic acid so-
lutions, which are useful merely as a cleansing agent, and
can be bought at the corner drug store for one-twentieth
of the quack's price, or cocain concoctions, extremely dan-
gerous in unskilled hands. The man who attempts to doctor
any one's eyes through the mail or by absent treatment is
a thief and a humbug, the only kind of eye that can be
treated through the mail or by absent treatment is a glass
eye.54
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Dixon, Chas. D. (Charles D.). The Menace, an Exposition of Quackery Nostrum Exploitation and Reminiscences of a Country Doctor, book, 1914; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth143569/m1/68/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Texas Health Science Center Libraries.