Quacks, false remedies and the public health / [David Walsh].

  • Walsh, David
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Quacks, false remedies and the public health / [David Walsh]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/68 (page 54)
    on it as a sort of test case, and he wished the Treasury every success in taking up cases of that kind. A great and good work would be done by stopping the sale of quack medicines. The Australian Commissioner makes some caustic comments on the result of this trial. “Can anyone claim,” he asks, “that the judicial perception of right really accords with the desires of the British people? Four years’ for stealing a skirt, two years’ for snatch- ing a hand-bag, seven years’ for embezzlement, five years’ for stealing ducks, as against three months’ for issuing—uttering—200 to 500 actual forgeries a day, and carrying on the practices for ten years at least- Hawkins made ‘considerable sums of money’ by proven fraud against the lives and health of the public, especially against persons suffering from contagious sexual diseases, so that wide personal and racial damage was done, Three months’ confinement for these multitudinous infamies! No wonder, when such is the proper punishment, according to the judicial estimate, that this was the first and only prosecution by the Treasury.” As a matter of fact, the prosecution of Hawkins had been demanded by the Zamcet ten years before his actual trial. What can be the candid feelings of newspaper editors who for all that period inserted the felonious advertisements whereby this impersonator of clergymen was enabled to defraud the public with his worthless nostrum ? From what has been said, it is clear that there are in existence many ways in which both false practi- tioners and false and secret remedies may be checked and controlled. It is to be hoped that the General Medical Council, faced with the failure of the penal section of the Medical Act of 1858, will ascertain the exact legal position both of the Council and of other bodies with regard to their powers against quacks and quackery. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION AS TO EXISTING METHODS OF CONTROL. The real want is a Public Prosecutor or a Depart- ment that would put into force some of the many existing laws that can be brought to bear upon the unqualified practice of medicine and the sale of injurious secret remedies. Were the police to take up zealously the prosecution of offenders under the Children, the Death Certification, the Adulteration, and other Acts, and generally of obtaining money under false pretences, a great deal of good would be effected. The chief defect in the application of