"Quack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lose his office of vice-admiral, which had cost him six hundred pounds, in case he suffered Rawleigh to escape; Rawleigh solemnly assured him that he should be no loser, and that his lady should give him one thousand pounds when they got into France or Holland. About this time the French quack took his leave: the part he had to act was performed: the juggle was complete: and two wretches had triumphed over the sagacity and magnanimity of a sage and a hero, whom misfortune had levelled to folly; and who, in violating the dignity of his own character, had ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a false nut, or the fragments of the shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you awhile unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous, he strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark, with an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when the same stillness reigns, the same scenes are repeated. There is a black variety, quite rare, but mating freely with the gray, from which he seems to be distinguished ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... the Great Mexican Seer, and supposed to be gifted with second sight, as well as with endless other supernatural powers. Now, it is a peculiarity of my able brother-in-law's that, when he meets with a quack, he burns to expose him; he is so keen a man of business himself that it gives him, so to speak, a disinterested pleasure to unmask and detect imposture in others. Many ladies at the hotel, some of whom had met and conversed with the Mexican Seer, were constantly ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... by bayonets, bribes, and spies, Charlatans in church and throne, France is opening all her eyes— Down go minion, king, and quack, We'll have our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... Oxford and Cambridge. It is not possible to practise medicine, in a satisfactory way unless one is actually in possession of the qualification. Any one who does so, however well trained, ranks as a quack, and is not legally entitled to sign death certificates nor to ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... a subtlety of one of those quack operators, with which he gulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did nothing for them without money. He had, it seems, added to his bills which he gave out in the streets, this advertisement in capital letters; viz., "He gives advice ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... would have laughed at the very imposing draught, that was said to cure lords and ladies of this jumble between apoplexy and paralysis; but this was no moment for laughing, and he was in despair at fancying his mother wanted to lead her off on the quack medicine; ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... uneducated, disinherited classes. The party of extreme measures is always chiefly constituted from the proletariat because it is the very poor who most pressingly feel the need for change and because they have not usually the education to judge the feasibility of the plans, many of them quack nostrums, presented as panaceas for all their woes. A complete break with the past and with the existing order has no terrors for them, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... itself manifoldly afflicted, tormented, darkened down into sorrow and disease. You feel yourself an exile, in the East; but in the West too it is exile; I know not where under the sun it is not exile. Here in the Fog Babylon, amid mud and smoke, in the infinite din of 'vociferous platitude,' and quack outbellowing quack, with truth and pity on all hands ground under the wheels, can one call it a home, or a world? It is a waste chaos, where we have to swim painfully for our life. The utmost a man can ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... which I found a throng of men and women, it being market-day; wares of various kinds, tin, earthen, and cloth, set out on the pavements; droves of pigs; ducks and fowls; baskets of eggs; and a man selling quack medicines, recommending his nostrums as well as he could. The aspect of the crowd was very English,—portly and ruddy women; yeomen with small-clothes and broad-brimmed hats, all very quiet and heavy ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... think, Christ at least thought so difficult as to speak of it, not once or twice, but uniformly, as little less than miraculous, as tantamount to a re-creation. This Barrister may be likened to an ignorant but well-meaning Galenist, who writing against some infamous quack, who lived by puffing and vending pills of mercurial sublimate for all cases of a certain description, should have no stronger argument than to extol 'sarsaparilla', and 'lignum vitae', or 'senna' in ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to be one of the shortest and surest paths that lead to fortune—when in our own country 'the powers that be' encourage rather than check such wholesale empiricism—we cannot consistently condemn the more ancient quack, who having, in all faith, given an immense sum for a piece of nut-shell, remunerated himself by selling draughts of water out of it to his believing dupes. The extraordinary history of the nut, as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... got up, and he led her to the side of a pond, where she found a duck with its head caught in a railing. She made haste to set the poor creature free, and the drake flapped his wings and gave a joyous quack of thanks. ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... ruddy complexions. Why all these sharp-faced, lantern-jawed, lean, sallow, hard-handed people? Why this depression of spirits? Perhaps they really get a thrill out of religion after all. Why all these advertisements of quack remedies, why all this calling on God? This is a place of bright sunshine and exhilarating air. After all, I do not ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... that she has been brought here from London by the wife of that fat old foreigner, who is always trying to interfere with me. Mrs. Michelson, the fat old foreigner is a quack." ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... anything may seem to happen. But Dr. Carpenter wholly omits such cases as that of Mr. Hamilton Aide, and of M. Alphonse Karr. Both were absolutely sceptical. Both disliked Home very much, and thought him an underbred Yankee quack and charlatan. Both were in the 'expectancy' of seeing no marvels, were under 'the dominant idea' that nothing unusual would occur. Both, in a brilliantly lighted room of a villa near Nice, saw a chair ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Quack the Mallard Duck are great friends. They have been great friends ever since Peter tried to help Mrs. Quack when she and Mr. Quack had spent a whole summer on a little pond hidden deep in the Green Forest because Mr. Quack had a broken wing and so he and Mrs. Quack simply couldn't keep on to their ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... soil for this purpose, and the wonder is that each kind lies dormant until it is wanted. If I uncover the earth in any of my fields, ragweed and pigweed spring up; if these are destroyed, harvest grass, or quack grass, or purslane, appears. The spade or the plow that turns these under is sure to turn up some other variety, as chickweed, sheep-sorrel, or goose-foot. The soil is a ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... they have something the matter, they are invariably the willing prey of quack doctors and every new ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... Angelo, who resembled equally a Marseillais hair-dresser and the Hercules at a country fair, a masseur, pedicurist, manicurist and something of a dentist, rested both elbows on the table with the assurance of a quack whom one receives in the morning and who knows the petty weaknesses, the private miseries of the house in which he happens to be. M. Bompain completed that procession of subalterns, all classified with reference to some one specialty. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... that hasn't feathers and doesn't say quack," replied Mally from below. "No, darling, you're not a goose; you're Mally's good boy. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Aristotle, we see a prevailing school working directly back to the condition of affairs which existed in the Athenian agora under the disapproving eyes of the father of political philosophy. Panaceas, universal cure-alls, and quack remedies—the Initiative, the Referendum, and the Recall are paraded as if these—nostrums of the mountebanks of the county fair—would surely remedy the perplexing ills of new and hitherto unheard-of social, ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... five foot deep, lies on his back, A Cobbler, Starmonger, and Quack; Who to the stars, in pure good will, Does to his best, look upward still. Weep all you customers, that use His Pills, his Almanacks, or Shoes! And you that did your fortunes seek, Step to this grave, but once a week! This earth which bears his body's print You'll find has so ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... He felt rather as if he were being treated like a quack doctor, to whom people (if foolish enough) appeal only as ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... along the bank of the Syr-darya. Here grow small woods and thickets where tigers stalk their prey, and in the dense reed beds wild boars dig up roots. The shy gazelles like the open country, hares spring over the shrubs, ducks and geese quack on the banks, and flocks of pheasants lure the traveller to sport. The setting sun sheds a gleam of fiery red over the steppe, and as it grows dim the stars begin to twinkle. The monotonous ring of the bells and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... many people be far more worthy of the appointment than myself?" said the writer. "Where?" said the friendly Radical. "If you don't get it, it will be made a job of, given to the son of some steward, or perhaps to some quack who has done dirty work; I tell you what, I shall ask it for you, in spite of you; I shall, indeed!" and his eyes flashed with friendly and patriotic fervour through the large pair of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... mostly on roots and plants, but is fond of mussels or fresh-water clams, fish, some insects and, I am sorry to say, young birds when he can catch them. Jerry could explain where some of the babies of Mr. And Mrs. Quack the Ducks have disappeared to. Paddy the Beaver doesn't eat flesh ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... that water-fowl that cries, Quack! Quack!? Full often have I seen a waggish crew 30 Fasten the Bird of Wisdom on its back, The ivy-haunting bird, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was seized with an inflammatory rheumatism, a common and known case, dangerous, but scarce ever remembered to be fatal. He had a strong aversion to all physicians, and lately had put himself into the hands of one Thomson, a quack, whose foundation of method could not be guessed, but by a general contradiction to all received practice. This man was the oracle of Mrs. Masham,(1197) sister, and what one ought to hope she did not think of, coheiress to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... delicate melody of the horns and clarinets is taken at the proper tempo; these instruments are thus relieved from the special difficulties pertaining to them, and which, particularly with the clarinet, at times render it likely to produce a "quack" [FOOTNOTE: Anglice, "a goose,"] even in the hands of skilful players. I remember an occasion when all the musicians began to breathe at ease on my taking this piece at the true moderate pace: then the humorous sforzato ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... looked well enough, but it is somewhat overdone at all times, and requires a heavy outlay, with the possible result of ill-success. Indeed, I believe fifty quack remedies fail for one that succeeds; and millions must have been wasted in placards, bills, and advertisements, which never returned half their value to the speculator. If I live, I think I shall beguile my time with writing the lives of the principal quacks who have met with success. They ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... was that of Van Butchell, the quack doctor, who died at London in 1814, in his 80th year. This singular individual had his first wife's body carefully embalmed and preserved in a glass case in his "study," in order that he might enjoy a handsome annuity to which he was entitled "so long as his ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... sailed in. The hen set up such a din and clatter that Mrs. Gerome, who happened to get a glimpse of them, felt sorry for the poor frightened fowl, and tried to drive the little ones out of the water; but, whenever she put her hand towards them to catch the nearest, the whole brood would quack and dive,—and, when she had laughed that one short laugh, she called to me to look after them and went back to the house. You don't know ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... before whom even Royalty bows, but successful adventurers? And what are your millionaire manufacturers but canting hypocrites who have got their money by paying a starvation wage and giving the public advertised shoddy, a quack medicine, or a soap which smells pleasantly but is injurious to the skin? No, my dear Ewart," he laughed, as we turned into the long tunnel, with its row of electric lights, "the public are not philosophers. ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... into a physician, at a moment's notice. I kept silent, looking very modest, but hardly able to control my mirth, whilst the doctor was staring at me with a mixture of astonishment and of spite, evidently thinking me some bold quack who had tried to supplant him. At last, turning towards M. de Bragadin, he told him coldly that he would leave him in my hands; he was taken at his word, he went away, and behold! I had become the physician of one of the most illustrious members of the Venetian Senate! I must confess that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... relentless warfare with the clerical authorities of Catholic and Protestant lands, the anatomists and physiologists had at last obtained permission to dissect bodies and to substitute a positive knowledge of our organs and their habits for the guesswork of the mediaeval quack. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... a toorooloo whack; Hack away, merry men, hack away. Who would not die brave, His ear smote by a stave? Thwack away, merry men, thwack away! 'Tis glory that calls, To each hero that falls, Hack away, merry men, hack away! Quack! Quack! Quack! ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... with his whole wisdom of man packed up small for ready use, like a quack doctor," he said, as soon as ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... stool. He picked his bird, and dropped two with the first barrel, and another responded to the discharge of the second. They came tumbling down into the water—dead. One could not easily imagine a duck's head capable of expression, but when they come lively, alight among the dummies, and hear no quack of recognition, they soon discover the fraud, and the frightened haste with which they gather themselves up and attempt to make off, is expression all over. Crege, who is one of the best amateur shots on Long Island, as a medal now in his possession ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... Plays," viii., ix. See also, e.g., as specimens of comical scenes, the discussions between the quack and his man in the "Play of the Sacrament": "Ye play of ye conversyon of ser Jonathas ye Jewe by myracle of ye blyssed sacrament." Master Brundyche addresses the audience as if he were in front of his booth at a fair. He will cure ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Ambrose was reminded of a quack doctor in poor circumstances. He was middle-aged and flabby, and had long, straggling gray hair, bound round with a cotton fillet, ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Campbell supported himself by writings chiefly of the Encyclopedia or Gazetteer kind; and became, still in Johnson's phrase, "the richest author that ever grazed the common of literature." A more singular and less reputable character was that impudent quack, Sir John Hill, who, with his insolent attacks upon the Royal Society, pretentious botanical and medical compilations, plays, novels, and magazine articles, has long sunk into utter oblivion. It is said of him ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... The advertising quack who wearies With tales of countless cures, His teeth, I've enacted, Shall all be extracted By terrified amateurs: The music-hall singer attends a series Of masses and fugues and "ops" By Bach, interwoven With Spohr and Beethoven, At classical Monday Pops: The billiard ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... patient exclaimed, hurriedly; "I want no meddlesome quack near me, with his solemn face and pretended knowledge. There is not a doctor in Ballarat that I would trust with my life. Besides, they are so expensive, and where is the money to come from to pay a ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... fancying, I presume, that he was in his school. There would he decline, construe, and conjugate aloud, his only witnesses being the poultry, who would now and then raise a gobble, gobble, gobble, while the ducks with their quack, quack, quack, were still more impertinent in their replies. A sketch of him, in this position, has been taken by Sarah, and now hangs over the mantel-piece of my study, between two of Mr Turnbull's drawings, one of an iceberg, on the 17th ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Iddings, and the like of you is you brood over your troubles, instead of brooding over ways to improve yourself. You spend time and money on quack doctors. But I tell you, don't fight your work or your boss. Fight nature, fight sleep, fight fatigue, fight the sky, fight despair, and if you want money hunt up a place where it's ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... have experienced the appearance of the secretion from Cowper's glands and wholly misunderstanding its nature have feared that they were losing some vital fluid. This misunderstanding of the nature of this fluid makes the young man especially subject to the misrepresentations of the advertising quack and charlatan who allege that he is losing vital fluid and will, if not treated, undergo general debility and loss of procreative power. This brief explanation of the significance of the secretion of Cowper's glands will protect the young man from ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... experience of sprains and what was best for them—how some said this, and some said exactly the opposite, and how she herself, after trying all the remedies, had finally been cured by some stuff which folks called a quack medicine, but she thought none the worse of it for that. Miss Unity sat patiently and politely listening to all this, and at ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... Fred growled, buttoning his overcoat with a shiver. "What a way to sing a part for the first time! That duck really is on my conscience. It will be a wonder if she can do anything but quack! Scrambling on in the middle of a performance like this, with no rehearsal! The stuff she has to sing in there is a ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... handful of thatched cottages scattered about here and there round the vicarage. Life was so regular and quiet there that you might almost tell the time without looking at the clock. When you heard cling, clang, from the blacksmith's forge, and quack, quack, from the army of ducks waddling down to the river, it was five o'clock. Ding, dong from the church-tower, and the tall figure of Mr Vallance climbing the hill to read prayers—eight o'clock. So on throughout the day until evening came, and you knew that soon after the cows had gone lowing ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... as related by Field, "that was the saddest day of my life. Just think of shutting down on the boys, after being one of them for sixty years! But Sir Morell told the truth. The Garrick Club boys were terribly mad about it; they said Sir Morell was a quack, and they adopted resolutions declaring a lack of confidence in his medical skill. But my mind was made up. 'Billy,' says I to myself, 'you must let up, you've made a record; it's a long one and an honorable one. Now you must retire. Your life henceforth ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Zagori, a district noted for its doctors, for a quack who undertook to poison Sepher Bey on condition of receiving forty purses. When all was settled, the miscreant set out for Berat, and was immediately accused by Ali of evasion, and his wife and children were arrested as accomplices and detained, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... enough," spoke a woman's shrill voice, high above the cackle of the hens and the quack-quack of the ducks—"drownded dead, an' more's the pity; an' their ma dead, too, an' their pa in Africa, an' their aunties ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... of the system, he appears eventually to have profited but little by his schemes. "He was a quack," says Voltaire, "to whom the state was given to be cured, but who poisoned it with his drugs, and who poisoned himself." The effects which he left behind in France were sold at a low price and the proceeds dissipated. His landed estates were confiscated. He carried away with him barely ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... biographer I regret to be obliged to chronicle the fact that he made and sold an alleged specific for the White Plague, thus enabling his detractors to couple with his name the word Quack. The following article, which appeared in the New York Herald of September 1st, 1859, three days after Chabert's death, gives further details of his activities in ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... that mind nothing, and the diligent devils never fail to haunt them, so that there are more outcries of 'Stop thief!' at their door, and more constables fetched to that shop, than to all the shops in the row. There was a brave trade at that shop in Mr—'s time: he was a true shopkeeper; like the quack doctor, you never missed him from seven in the morning till twelve, and from two till nine at night, and he throve accordingly—he left a good estate behind him. But I don't know what these people are; they say there are two partners of them, but there had as good be none, for they are ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... were thus isolating my brother from all of us. I heard steps go upstairs, not only of the Dominican quack doctor, but of the Abbe Montagu, who had been previously sent to convert us. The good old Bonchamp, who had a conscience, was away at St. Germain with Gaspard de Nidemerle, and I—I had no one to appeal to when I knew they were harassing the very life ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hear nothing," she said. "All the fools be flying the place like so many silly sheep; or, if they come to sit awhile, their talk is all of pills and decoctions, refuses and ointments. Bah! they will buy the drugs of every foolish quack who goes about the streets selling plague cures, and then fly off the next day, thinking that they will be the next victim. Bah! the folly of the men! How glad I am that I ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... evidence of a warm and generous sympathy with the poor and the wronged, a desire to ameliorate human suffering, which would have done credit to the "philanthropisms of Exeter Hall" and the "Abolition of Pain Society." Latterly, however, like Moliere's quack, he has "changed all that;" his heart has got upon the wrong side; or rather, he seems to us very much in the condition of the coal-burner in the German tale, who had swapped his heart ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the 'Courier' and read three or four advertisements of quack medicines, but nobody entered. It was nearly midnight: he got nervous. Somebody came in; Lord Hounslow for his rubber. Even his favoured child, Bagshot, would be better than nobody. The Duke protested that the next acquaintance who entered should be his second, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... a very heinous piece of perjury, my earldom for not running away until the latter end of a certain battle, my marquisate for hoodwinking a half-senile Frenchman, and my dukedom for fetching in a quack doctor when he was sore needed by a lady whom the King at that time ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... swine, horse]; squeak, [swine, mouse]; neigh, whinny [horse]; bray [donkey, mule, hinny, ass]; mew, mewl [kitten]; meow [cat]; purr [cat]; caterwaul, pule [cats]; baa^, bleat [lamb]; low, moo [cow, cattle]; troat^, croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... understand your subject well, which is hardly likely; secondly, your opponent must also understand it well, which is even less likely; thirdly, you must listen patiently to his arguments, which is still less likely; and fourthly, he must listen to yours, the least likely of all. If a quack advertises a panacea for all human ills at a dollar a bottle, a hundred will buy the bottle, for one that will try how many are killed by it. What would the investigator gain by charging the quack with murder? Nobody ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... too, Missie! Lard, now I don't know how I'd be without I had me duck. Duckie I calls 'er and Duckie she is; company she is, too, to me mornin's, with her 'Quack, Quack,' under the winder." ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... by the sharp shot of Dr. Horne of Oxford's wit, in the character of One of the People called Christians, is still prefixed to Mr. Hume's excellent History of England, like a poor invalid on the piquet guard, or like a list of quack medicines sold by the same bookseller, by whom a work of whatever nature is published; for it has no connection with his History, let it have what it may with what are called his Philosophical ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... I, the son of King Charles VII, must hear this sort of thing from a quack doctor! I have always liked people of low rank; Olivier ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... will employ the cheapest physician, without regard to his ability to kill or cure; some will treat diseases in their incipiency with quack medicines, bought cheap, hoping thereby to fend off the doctor's bill. Some women seem to be pursued by an evil demon of economy, which, like an ignis fatuus in a bog, delights constantly to tumble ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... above referred to. In March following he produced at the Haymarket, under the pseudonym of Scriblerus Secundus, The Author's Farce, with a "Puppet Show" called The Pleasures of the Town. In the Puppet Show, Henley, the Clare-Market Orator, and Samuel Johnson, the quack author of the popular Hurlothrumbo, were smartly satirised, as also was the fashionable craze for Opera and Pantomime. But the most enduring part of this odd medley is the farce which occupies the two first acts, and under thin ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... forfeit. But I never believed in Burr's talent for conspiracy. He is too sanguine and visionary. He desires power, office, and emolument—rewards for his henchmen before they desert him; but I believe he'd go—or get—no farther, and the country is strong enough to stand a quack or two; while, if we ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Elizabeth. This is a statement which is true, but needs explanation. It is not the case that there was no acting. On the contrary, there has always been acting of some kind or other. There was acting at the fairs, where the Cheap Jack and the Quack had their tumbling boys and clowns to attract the crowd. There were always minstrels and tumblers, men and women who played, sang, danced, and tumbled in the hall for the amusement of the great people in the long winter evenings. Not including the wandering mummers, the Theatre ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... presented by the people of the United States. Whenever I see the poor, intelligent, broad-minded physician struggling along, barely able to procure for himself the necessaries required to maintain himself with proper books and appliances, while the itinerant quack or dogmatic practitioner rolls in undeserved affluence, I question the wisdom of our ethical code. Braddock, at the Monongahela, scorned to have his regulars, who had fought under Marlborough and Eugene, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... was enchanted by the philosophic veteran. In after years he so far forgot himself as to write of Saint Simon as a depraved quack, and to deplore his connection with him as purely mischievous. While the connection lasted he thought very differently. Saint Simon is described as the most estimable and lovable of men, and the most delightful in his relations; he is the worthiest of philosophers. Even after the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... place where four roads meet is that, if possible, generally chosen,—he hangs the unfortunate duck by the leg to the branch of a neighbouring tree, which, as if divining the part that he is intended to play in the piece, flaps his wings, and begins to cry and quack most vehemently. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... place it against the roof of the mouth, tin side up, and with the edge of the rubber towards the front. When once wet, it will adhere to the roof of the mouth, and by skilful blowing, it can be made to send forth a most surprising variety of sounds. The quack of the duck and the song of the thrush may be made to follow each other in a single breath, and the squeal of a pig or the neigh of a horse are equally within its scope. In short, there is scarcely any animal, whether bird or quadruped, the cry of which may not ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... look to the betterment of the animal's condition. The owner of the animal, not being able to see the condition of the animal's teeth for himself, is persuaded into having the animal's teeth worked on regardless of whether it is needed or not. The quack or transient Veterinarian will pull and crack healthy, sound teeth, and also lacerate the poor animal's mouth. Be sure the Veterinarian employed for this purpose ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... consequence of this knowledge, or the effects of observation and experience. The powers of a somnambule extend equally to the morale as well as to the physique. In this respect a phrenologist is a pure quack in comparison with a lady in a trance. The latter has no dependence on bumps and organs, but she looks right through you, at a glance, and pronounces ex cathedra, whether you are a rogue, or an honest man; a well-disposed, or an evil-disposed child of Adam. In this ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... lies on his back A cobbler, starmonger, and quack; Who to the stars, in pure good will, Does to his best look upward still. Weep, all you customers that use His pills, his almanacks, or shoes; And you that did your fortunes seek, Step to his grave but once a-week; ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... on no one, 'xcept this,—I'd advise Emerline there ter throw them socks inter the fire; there'll never none o' them be fit ter sell, 'nless she wants ter spread the disease. Wal, I'm sorry yer 've concluded ter hev thet old quack Sprague; never hed no more diplomy 'n I; don' b'lieve he knows cow-pox from kine, when he sees it. The poor young man's hed his last well day, I'm afeard. Good-day ter ye; say good-bye fur me ter Stephen. I'll call ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... mother-in-law. He had been made to accept Saunders McNitre, Luke Waters, Giles Jowls, Podgers' Pills, Rodgers' Pills, Pokey's Elixir, every one of her Ladyship's remedies spiritual or temporal. He never left her house without carrying respectfully away with him piles of her quack theology and medicine. O, my dear brethren and fellow-sojourners in Vanity Fair, which among you does not know and suffer under such benevolent despots? It is in vain you say to them, "Dear Madam, I took Podgers' specific ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lighting a cigar, I leisurely watched the frolics of the crowd. The customary fooling proper to the day was going on, and no detail of it seemed to pall on the good-natured, easily amused folks who must have seen it all so often before. Much laughter was being excited by the remarks of a vender of quack medicines, who was talking with extreme volubility to a number of gayly dressed girls and fishermen. I could not distinguish his words, but I judged he was selling the "elixir of love," from his absurd amatory ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... preference to a higher one, making some narrow or selfish good paramount over a wider or disinterested one. A man, educated as a physician, practiced his profession on scientific principles, and nearly starved on an income of seven hundred dollars a year. He then set up as a quack, compounded a worthless nostrum, and, by dint of impudence, advertising, and other charlatanry, made eighteen thousand dollars a year, and justified his conduct on the ground of his success. By falsehood ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... you do if asked to hold a consultation with a practitioner whom you have every reason to suppose an incapable quack? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... up my mind to yield to the impulse and go abroad. My intention was to avoid cities, and, wandering from village to village, lay my soul bare to the healing influences of nature. As to any healing in the power of Time, I despised the old bald-pate as a quack who performed his seeming cures at the expense of the whole body. The better cures attributed to him are not his at all, but produced by the operative causes whose servant he is. A thousand holy balms ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... desire to behold Niagara," and that, when he beheld it, his "feelings were not so much those of astonishment as of an overpowering sense of Law"; or that a peddler in a railroad-car sold nine bottles of quack medicine at a dollar a bottle; or that he had eight pages of interview with a Baltimore madman, who proved his insanity by perpetually calling Mr. Mackay the "Prince of the Poets of England." The dreary solemnity with which these incidents ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... feeding in our pastures. Among the Birds, this similarity of voice in Families is still more marked. We need only recall the harsh and noisy Parrots, so similar in their peculiar utterance. Or take as an example the web-footed Family,—do not all the Geese and the innumerable host of Ducks quack? Does not every member of the Crow Family caw, whether it be the Jackdaw, the Jay, the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... excessive heat; the pitch was bubbling up from the seams of the deck; a strong, hot, burning smell pervaded the vessel; the chickens in the hencoops hung their heads and forgot to cackle; the ducks refused to quack, and sat with their bills open, gasping for breath; the pig lay down, as if about to yield up the ghost; and even Ungka, who generally revelled in a fine hot sun, and selected the warmest place on board, now looked out for a shady spot, and sat with his paws ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... came a good deal into collision. Addison's tragedy of Cato, for which Pope had written a prologue, had been attacked by Dennis. Pope, to defend Addison, wrote an imaginary report, pretending to be written by a notorious quack mad-doctor of the day, entitled The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Frenz of F. D. Dennis replied to it by his Character of Mr. Pope. Ultimately Pope gave him a place in his Dunciad, and wrote a prologue for ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... not listen. His eyes sparkled with indignation. "Sir Arthur," he said, "I have so often warned you against that rascally quack, that I wonder you quote ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... altered voice; "that thought is an insult. And even now, who knows if she really loves? does she know herself? She is enamored of genius, of the soul and intellect of that seller of verses, that literary quack; but she will study him, we shall all study him; and I know how to make the man's real character peep out from under that turtle-shell of fine manners,—we'll soon see the petty little head of his ambition and his vanity!" cried Butscha, ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... necessity goes, quite functionless shareholder. He may be a heavy-eyed sensualist, a small-minded leader of fashion, a rival to his servants in the gay science of etiquette, a frequenter of race-courses and music-halls, a literary or scientific quack, a devotee, an amateur anything—the point is that his income and sustenance have no relation whatever to his activities. If he fancies it, or is urged to it by those who have influence over him, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... to Lawrence, he in his usual jocular manner exclaimed: "Ah, so now you are to have Kaffee Klatsch with the Princess. I told you so. The lady is in love with you, and the Emperor is going to offer you her hand in marriage after he has bestowed on you an Iron Cross in return for one of your quack medicines." ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... have no time for the journalists, I refuse to be photographed, and I am not likely to accept the invitations. It takes my two secretaries half their time to wade through my correspondence and to decide which of it is to be pitched into the waste-paper basket. I am not a dealer in quack remedies, or an actor. I don't ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that very name; a name which we still retain in gas, from the German geist, or ghost! Paracelsus carried the tiny spirits about him in the hilt of his great sword! Having first discovered the qualities of laudanum, this illustrious quack made use of it as an universal remedy, and distributed it in the form of pills, which he carried in the basket-hilt of his sword; the operations he performed were as rapid as they seemed magical. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... PASSENGERS.] What a motley crew! A royal prince; Spanish nobles; Italian counts; French marquises; Dutch chevaliers; and, I may proudly add, English gentlemen. We had also a quack doctor from Paris; a gaming-house-keeper from Milan; a clergyman, poor as an Apostle, from Iceland; a grim-looking student from the University of Goettingen; a Danish baron, music-mad; a singing count from Sienna; a crazy architect from Paris; and two Russian noblemen. There were ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... discovered that they love to for I asked the children to use imitate sounds, so we will play their boards and chalks for a at this. They could draw a cat definite drawing, and they should and say "miauw," and a duck and have had the time to use them say "quack." They could also freely and discover their use. I imitate the wind. got very little information ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... deception was the origin of it. Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories; men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks. Let us try if, leaving out both the quack theory and the allegory one, and listening with affectionate attention to that far-off confused rumour of the Pagan ages, we cannot ascertain so much as this at least, That there was a kind of fact at the heart of them; that they too were not mendacious ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... may the devil get me, (and I'm no friend of his,) if I don't think all that is needed to render it safe, is just to let it alone. Nor would it be much lost if some kindly disposed gentleman would kill off a few score of our Union savers, who, like quack doctors, go about with their pockets full of plasters, and are for ever hunting for the crack in the nation's skull. And I would advise all politicians to spin less patriotic yarns, to be more modest, to learn wisdom, to drink less whiskey; in truth, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... commencement of his acquaintance with the famous Arise Evans, a Welsh prophet: whose "Echo from Heaven," &c., 2 parts, 1652, 12mo., is a work noticed by Warburton, and coveted by bibliomaniacs. Yet one more quack-medicine entry: "March 11, 1681. I took early in the morning a good dose of Elixir, and hung three spiders about my neck, and they drove my ague away—Deo gratias!" p. 359. It seems that Ashmole always punctually kept "The Astrologer's Feast;" and that he had such celebrity as a curer of certain ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... shew you your way, and the other to dazzle and confound your weak brain. Heark ye, Clinker, you are either an hypocritical knave, or a wrong-headed enthusiast; and in either case, unfit for my service. If you are a quack in sanctity and devotion, you will find it an easy matter to impose upon silly women, and others of crazed understanding, who will contribute lavishly for your support. If you are really seduced by the reveries of a disturbed imagination, the sooner ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... man in your position going to an infernal quack like Professor Cyrus! Professor? Humph! The man's ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... of complete silence followed the asking of the blessing, then, as Edward took up a carving-knife, and stuck the fork into a roast duck in front of him, there was a loud "Quack, quack," that startled everybody for an instant, followed by merry peals of ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... boy has reached thirteen, the father will have explained to him the facts and temptations of the pubescent period. The crime of allowing boys in middle and later adolescence to worry themselves sick over normal nocturnal emissions, and often to fall into the hands of the quack, or of the advocate of illicit intercourse, lies at the door of ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... "Quack! quack!" answered the duck, and it sounded just as if she said, "What? what?" So Sammie, thinking she was a ...
— Sammie and Susie Littletail • Howard R. Garis
... the scene in Lelia's chamber. Again, the procedure and orations of Lopus the mountebank are but the flimsiest alterations of Volpone, Act ii, Scene I, nor could Killigrew change Jonson for anything but the worse. He has even gone so far as to name his quack's spouse Celia, a distinct ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... there for all customers; and stuffs and wares were offered for sale from all countries. And in the wake of this business part of the fair there invariably followed a crowd of ministers to the popular tastes— quack doctors and merry andrews, jugglers and minstrels, singlestick players, grinners through horse-collars, and sportmakers of ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... as th' attempt on summer eve to count What dogs and beggars haunt the Pincian Mount. All Tuzzi's frauds, all Coco's falsehoods tell, And all the Beckers[1] all the rogues shall sell; How many sick some sapient quack at Rome Helps—not to England, but their longer home;[2] How many Couriers forge the scoundrel tale; How many Maids their mistress' fame assail; How many English girls, by foreign arts Seduced, have smiled on needy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... into fury by learning the express favour shown to Adam by the king, and the marvellous results expected from his contrivance. His envy, then, forbade all tolerance and mercy; the world was not large enough to contain two such giants,—Bungey and Warner, the genius and the quack. To the best of our experience, the quacks have the same creed to our own day. He vowed deep vengeance upon his associate, and spared no arts to foment the popular hatred against him. Friar Bungey would have been a great critic ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rotten green; but I was ready to swear that the ceiling was snow and that the walls were as green as grass if it would have made him feel more comfortable. His sight began to get bad about six years before, he said; he didn't take much notice of it at first, and then he saw a quack, who made his eyes worse. He had already the manner of the blind—the touch of every finger, and even the gentleness in his speech. He had a boy down with him—a "sorter cousin of his," and the boy saw him round. "I'll have to be sending that youngster ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... tobacco Inspired, turned State quack-o; And got more by his feigned zeal Then by ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... times and on all other subjects just what we thought, and advertised nothing that we did not believe in. No advertisements of quack remedies appeared in our columns. One of our clerks once published a bread powder advertisement, which I did not see until the paper appeared; so, in the next number, I said, editorially, what I thought of it. I was alone in ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... be obliged to confess that we always act our creed. A man's conduct, just because he is man, is generated by his view of himself and his world. He who cheats his neighbour believes in tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the Supreme Quack for his God. No one ever acted without some dim, though perhaps foolish enough, half-belief that the world was at his back; whether he plots good or evil he always has God as an accomplice. And this is why character cannot be really bettered by any peddling ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... wrestling, or shooting at a mark with cross-bows. There, girls and boys were dancing to the sound of a pipe, or still smaller children were playing at marbles, or amusing themselves with the toys they had just purchased. Not far from these, a quack from one scaffold was descanting on the virtues of his medicines, whilst a preacher from another was holding forth to the graver part of the crowd, the joys and terrors of another life; and yet farther on, a motley groupe were listening to a blind ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... his business, and was never heard of for months. Then he turned up in Sussex with a little girl, who had been saved from diphtheria by tracheotomy, and some unknown quack. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... shadowy flood, Save rare sharp stridence (that means "quack"), Low amber light in Ariel track Athwart the dun ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... was no need of looking to see who that was. Peter Rabbit knew without looking. Mrs. Quack knew without looking. Just the same, both looked up. Just alighting in the top of a tall tree was Blacky the Crow. "Caw, caw, caw, caw," he repeated, looking down at Peter and Mrs. Quack and Mr. Quack and the six young Quacks. "I hope I am ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... son of a Khooghra's doing?" Gerd asked. "He and that—" He used a couple of Sheshan words, viler than anything in Lingua Terra. "—that quack headshrinker, Mallin, are preparing a report, accusing you and Ben Rainsford of perpetrating a deliberate scientific hoax. You taught the Fuzzies some tricks; you and Rainsford, between you, made those artifacts yourselves and the two of you are conspiring to foist the ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... of miracles, when these things were demanded with an insatiable appetite and supplied in a competitive plenty which seems equally inexhaustible, almost as bewildering to our age as our deep thirst for bad sermons and quack medicines will be to generations which have outgrown our superstitions. St. Hugh had drunk so deeply and utterly and with all his mind of the gravity and the humility which was traditional from the holy authors of ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... had climbed high above the trees, and everything was very quiet, that a long, slim fox stole softly beneath the fence and came creeping—creeping across the barn yard. Mamma Goose was so frightened that she almost said "Quack! quack!" out loud, but still she kept her eyes on the big white cock, and ...
— The Wise Mamma Goose • Charlotte B. Herr
... two sisters, sensible, benevolent women. They were not of that race of fine ladies who are miserable the moment they come to THE COUNTRY; nor yet were they of that bustling sort, who quack and direct all their poor neighbours, for the mere love of managing, or the want of something to do. They were judiciously generous; and whilst they wished to diffuse happiness, they were not peremptory ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... another. But what value have these rudimentary, vague experiences, compared to the united experience of all the men of science there have been in the world? It is as if you told me that the stock of knowledge of a quack was greater and better than that of a ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... now a settlement of colored people who have been there for three or four generations, the founder of which, Toby Gilmore, was an old Revolutionary veteran who had served his country faithfully. Stoughton Corner contributed Quack Matrick to the ranks of the Revolutionary soldiers; Lancaster sent Job Lewis, East Bridgewater Prince Richards. So did many other towns and States in this Commonwealth. Rhode Island raised a regiment which did signal service at Red Bank in completely routing the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... that reason the person who is taking it must be under the care and observation of a physician from time to time. Only the ignorant undertake to treat themselves for syphilis, though how many of these there are can be inferred from the amount of patent medicine and quack treatment there is in these fields. Properly given, mercury has no harmful effects, and there is no ground whatever for the notion some people have, that mercury will do them more harm than a syphilitic infection. Improperly ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... tales in this little volume appeared originally in the "Atlantic Monthly" as anonymous contributions. I owe to the present owners of that journal permission to use them. "The Autobiography of a Quack" has been recast with ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... ancients, showing their universal belief in the possibility of seeing into futurity, nor a cloud of witnesses from our modern philosophers, attesting the truth of the phenomena of somnambulism, but only observe that this very Academy of Paris, which in 1784 anathematised Mesmer as a quack, a cheat, and a charlatan or fool, and which in conjunction with all the academies of Europe (that of Berlin alone excepted) reviled his doctrines and insulted all who upheld them, as witches had been reviled in preceding centuries, and compelled Mesmer ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... sixteenth century; several volumes of Chinese, marbled, and other papers; early almanacks; a quantity of engravings of towns, costumes, trades, furniture, etc.; curious advertisements of tobacco, tea, quack medicines, etc.; specimens of fine writing; and many other miscellaneous papers of ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... such results can be accomplished by means of hygiene and proper feeding. They think there is some fakery about it, for their professors, books and experience have taught them otherwise. They consider the views of the natural healer unworthy of serious attention and often call him a quack, which epithet closes the discussion. They are ethical and do not wish to be mired by ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... repentance; And, when his medicines do no good, Supports their minds with heavenly food: At which, however well intended. He hears the clergy are offended; And grown so bold behind his back, To call him hypocrite and quack. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... exorcise the phantom with 'Solomon's key' and other magic formulae, and at length, when he threatens it with the mystic formula of the Trinity, it dissolves into mist, and out of the mist steps forth Mephistopheles, dressed as a 'travelling scholar'—an itinerant professor, or quack doctor. ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... insignificant. Some of them have great historical, or economic, or intellectual value; others are as nearly worthless as it is possible for any printed matter to be. Why should you treat a pamphlet upon Pears's soap, or a quack medicine, or advertising the Columbia bicycle, with the same attention which you would naturally give to an essay on international politics by Gladstone, or a review of the Cuban question by a prominent Spaniard, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... rains very early there are three or four when it rains later. But we wait till the world has got dirty, and the air full of the smoke of thousands of breakfasts, and clouds are beginning to gather, and then we say England has a horrible climate. I do not believe in many quack medical prescriptions, but I have the firmest faith in May dew as a wash for the complexion. Any morning dew is nearly as efficacious if it is gathered in warm clothes, thick boots, and at a ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... among the blooms, to be hurried away almost immediately by a new rapture of music. He had the volubility of an Italian charlatan at a fair, and, like him, appeared to be proclaiming the merits of some quack remedy. Opodeldoc-opodeldoc-try-Doctor-Lincoln's-opodeldoc! he seemed to repeat over and over again, with a rapidity that would have distanced the deftest-tongued Figaro that ever rattled. I remember Count Gurowski saying once, with that easy superiority of knowledge about this country ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... the female sex. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth, the realm was alive with men who were pretenders to knowledge of mysteries. So closely was the occupation allied to that of the physician that no such strict line as now exists between reputable physicians and quack doctors separated the "good witches" from the regular practicers of medicine. It was so customary in Elizabethan times for thoroughly reputable and even eminent medical men to explain baffling cases as the results of witchcraft[37] that to draw the line of demarcation ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... may be any agent—medicinal, alimentary, or poisonous—which unduly stimulates the kidneys; the reckless administration of diuretics, which form such a common constituent of quack horse powders; acrid diuretic plants in grass or hay; new oats still imperfectly cured; an excess of roots or other very watery feed; a full allowance of salt to animals that have become inordinately fond of it; but, above all, feeding on hay, grain, or bran ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... come the advertisements of the Quack Doctors. Of the account of belles-lettres in 1754, two years after Amelia and in the actual year of Sir Charles Grandison, M. Rouquet's report is not flattering:—"The presses of England, made celebrated by so many masterpieces of wit and science, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... who died in B.C. 149, wrote a guide to domestic medicine for the use of Roman fathers of the Republic, but he was a quack and full of self-conceit. He hated the physicians practising in Rome, who were mostly Greeks, and thought that their knowledge was much inferior to his own. Plutarch relates that Cato knew of the answer given to the King of Persia by Hippocrates, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... they must be always either very busy for the good of others, or else extremely ill themselves. Some natural delicacy of constitution, in fact, with an unfortunate turn for medicine, especially quack medicine, had given them an early tendency at various times to various disorders. The rest of their suffering was from their own fancy, the love of distinction, and the love of the wonderful. They had charitable hearts and many amiable feelings; but a spirit of restless activity, and the glory ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... had tried to keep her before the public. As Robert James Vandiver I had hoped to withdraw her; for if ever one was made to keep company with said Vandiver and smell the salt breeze on the south shore of Long Island and listen to the ducks quack in the watches of the night, it was the Ashton set ...
— Options • O. Henry
... "the same thing has been said of the quack Cagliostro,—mere fables. I will believe them when I see this diamond turn to a wisp of hay. For the rest," he added gravely, "I consider this illustrious gentleman my friend; and a whisper against his honour and repute will in future be equivalent ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... year Swift published a pamphlet called "A Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners," which anticipated many of the arguments used in the Tatler and Spectator; and he also commenced his attack on John Partridge, quack doctor and maker of astrological almanacs. On the appearance of Partridge's "Merlinus Liberatus" for 1708, Swift—borrowing a name from the signboard of a shoemaker—published "Predictions for the year 1708, wherein the month and day of the month are set down, the persons named, and the ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... frost had nipped all my thoughts, I grew suddenly conscious that the first ceremony I assisted at with Aniela was a funeral. As a person in long sickness, having lost faith in medicine, turns to quack doctors and wise women, so the sick soul, doubting everything, still clings ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... garrets, Shakespeares in the workhouse, while dull modern productions are applauded on the silly English stage, and poetasters are crowned by the Academies; but believe me that in Archaeology, in the deciphering of manuscripts, the quack is detected immediately. The science has been carried to such a state of perfection that, if our knowledge is still unhappily imperfect, our materials inadequate, the public recognition of our services ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... that nearly all crimes, vices, cruelties, and other evil acts are due to ignorance or to mental disease. I do not hate the man who calls me an infidel, a liar, a blasphemer, or a quack. I know that he is ignorant, or foolish, or ill-bred, or vicious, and I ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... house, and whereas no one could find him, we feared for a long time that he had done himself a mischief. Nevertheless he was alive and of good heart. He had passed the months in a various life; first as a crier to a wandering quack, and afterwards, inasmuch as he was a nimble and likely lad, he had waited on the guests at one of the best frequented inns at Wurzberg. It came then to pass that his eminence Cardinal Branda, Nuncio from his Holiness the Pope, took up his quarters ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
