In his book, Medicine in Seventeenth Century England (1974), Allen G. Debus, presents three definitions of quack from Dr. Johnson’s great dictionary:
1. A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand.
2. A vain boastful pretender to physick; one who proclaims his own medical abilities in publick places.
3. An artful tricking practitioner in physick. (313)
In other words, quack is corrupt and dishonest fraud, which is often found in the Victorian health care field. Charles Dickens portrays quack medicine in his novel Our Mutual Friend (1865) through the Veneerings, an “Analytical Chemist”, Mr. Wilfer, and Twemlow. The Veneerings are drug lords who make their fortune selling quack remedies that they claim will cure miscellaneous afflictions. …show more content…
Frey, defines toxicology using the National Library of Medicine: “’the study of the adverse effects of chemicals or physical agents on living organisms’” (par. 1). To understand the biological effects that quack medicine had on Twemlow, one must have a basic understanding of toxicology. The article also quotes Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, father of the modern science of toxicology, saying, “’All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dose alone makes a thing not a poison” (par. 2). Hohenheim’s point is that an organism must be exposed to a certain amount of poison for it to cause poisoning. Therefore, the drugs that the Veneerings sold could have been too high of a dose and almost caused Twemlow to be poisoned. In fact, the article, “From Witchcraft to Allopathy: Uninterrupted Journey of Medical Science”, written by Daya R. Varma, agrees with Hohenheim in that the dosage of a substance is what causes the effects on the body. Varma observes that, “We only know of a substance as a drug because it can produce a therapeutic effect without producing unacceptable toxic effect, and this, obviously, depends upon the dose” (3608). Varma is right that a drug can have either a therapeutic or a toxic effect. For Twemlow, the drug had a toxic effect. Finally, the way the toxin could have directly damaged Twemlow’s body is described in “Toxicology”. Hauswirth and Frey suggest that the most common ways of toxins affecting physiology, “involve the disabling of enzyme systems, induction of cancers, interference with the regulation of blood chemistry, and disruption of genetic processes” (par. 5). Their point is that there are many ways that toxins can stimulate negative changes in an organism. These findings have important consequences for the broader domain of how quack medicine affects the consumer’s well
1. A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand.
2. A vain boastful pretender to physick; one who proclaims his own medical abilities in publick places.
3. An artful tricking practitioner in physick. (313)
In other words, quack is corrupt and dishonest fraud, which is often found in the Victorian health care field. Charles Dickens portrays quack medicine in his novel Our Mutual Friend (1865) through the Veneerings, an “Analytical Chemist”, Mr. Wilfer, and Twemlow. The Veneerings are drug lords who make their fortune selling quack remedies that they claim will cure miscellaneous afflictions. …show more content…
Frey, defines toxicology using the National Library of Medicine: “’the study of the adverse effects of chemicals or physical agents on living organisms’” (par. 1). To understand the biological effects that quack medicine had on Twemlow, one must have a basic understanding of toxicology. The article also quotes Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, father of the modern science of toxicology, saying, “’All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, the dose alone makes a thing not a poison” (par. 2). Hohenheim’s point is that an organism must be exposed to a certain amount of poison for it to cause poisoning. Therefore, the drugs that the Veneerings sold could have been too high of a dose and almost caused Twemlow to be poisoned. In fact, the article, “From Witchcraft to Allopathy: Uninterrupted Journey of Medical Science”, written by Daya R. Varma, agrees with Hohenheim in that the dosage of a substance is what causes the effects on the body. Varma observes that, “We only know of a substance as a drug because it can produce a therapeutic effect without producing unacceptable toxic effect, and this, obviously, depends upon the dose” (3608). Varma is right that a drug can have either a therapeutic or a toxic effect. For Twemlow, the drug had a toxic effect. Finally, the way the toxin could have directly damaged Twemlow’s body is described in “Toxicology”. Hauswirth and Frey suggest that the most common ways of toxins affecting physiology, “involve the disabling of enzyme systems, induction of cancers, interference with the regulation of blood chemistry, and disruption of genetic processes” (par. 5). Their point is that there are many ways that toxins can stimulate negative changes in an organism. These findings have important consequences for the broader domain of how quack medicine affects the consumer’s well