Longue durée

One striking feature of the modern totalitarianisms (real and nascent) centred on pandemics and climate, is that their ancestry goes deep into the past.  In the case of ‘airborne viral diseases and pandemics’, one can go back over 300 years to see where medical and drug totalitarianism began.  Modern Scientism, as evidenced with Corona or Climate, namely the alliance of government, corporations, propaganda, media and (false) $cience, has deep roots back to the Victoria and Georgian ages.  Much of ‘modern science’, which is used as a pretext for state intervention (Statism) and coercive governance is premised on faulty and unscientific Victoria and Georgian dogma – gospels that do not tolerate being challenged.  Climate nonsense for example can be dated back to the 1880s and unscientific theories on the role of carbon dioxide and ‘greenhouse’ gases (another myth).

In reading through the history of ‘medicine’ and the Georgian era (roughly 1714-1830), it is clear that Victorian ‘medicine’ (1830-1901), was simply a more professional and thorough extension of Georgian-era quackery.  Today’s pharmaceutical-drug industry, built on the foundations of the Victorian, is in large measure an industry producing unhealthy potions for profits – much as it was during the Victorian and Georgian periods. 

Plus ca change?

There are significant differences between the 3 eras including the medical-drug industry’s growth and size, the sophistication of techniques, the types of ingredients, the technology applied, the marketing and distribution systems deployed, along with the profits accrued.  However, everything we see today in the government-pharmaceutical complex, including graft, fraud, false claims, propaganda, death and injury, sick populations, and the general failures of modern medicine and drugs, is easily recognisable in the 18^th century.  The Corona fascism of 2020-2022, in which the corporate fascism of government and pharma was implemented on a global scale abetted by a beguiled, gullible and ignorant mass (Desmet’s ‘mass formation’) seems almost inevitable when viewing the longue durée of history.

Georgian Medical Orthodoxy ie Quackery

During the 1700s in England a ‘professional’ system and hierarchy around ‘medicine’ was established, which was copied by other nations.  First and most importantly there was the ‘College of Physicians’, secondly the ‘Incorporation of Surgeons’ and third, the ‘Apothecaries' Company’ (or drug dispensers in shops).  

In terms of practitioners, doctors were supposed to study at university, but many like Saint Edward Jenner simply bought their degree.  Those who practised medicine were called ‘physics’ (physician) and these comprised the notorious quacks such as Jenner and his ilk, who sold services and remedies at a price.  Surgeons existed, though most were simple and barbaric focusing on de-limbing, and were usually trained as apprentices, or at a university.  The apothecary was the store proprietor and the forerunner of modern apothecaries and pharmacies. 

Jostling around and within these 3 groups, were a wide range of naturopathic, homeopathic, ‘alternative’ and traditional practitioners.  Sage-women, midwives, nurses, cow-doctors, horse-doctors, chemists, grocers, itinerant pedlars, and more were all active, always for a fee.  For the average person living between 1714 and 1830, soliciting solutions and cures, there was precious little to choose from between the licensed and unlicensed dispensers of medical remedies.

The Quack

'Quack' was and is a term of abuse.  It is akin to heretic, idiot, criminal.  Georgian physicians used the term when describing those outside the 3 formal levels of medicinal hierarchy mentioned above.  The term indicated the man or woman to be a fraud, a cheat.  Dr Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary defines the quack:

A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. 2. A vain boastful pretender to physic, one who proclaims his own Medical abilities in public places. 3. An artful, tricking practitioner in Physic.

Most medical historians such as L.R.C. Agnew have viewed quacks in the same light:

I find it difficult to be objective about quackery – even quackery in seventeenth-century England. I do not like quacks; indeed, I despise them, and while I recognise that an occasional quack remedy or belief has been imported into orthodox medicine, I cannot evince the least sympathy for the breed, those crab lice that have feasted parasitically on the body medical since the very beginning of recorded medical history'.

In reality Agnew is condemning all of medicine in the Georgian era.

Quacks are thus generally regarded as frauds. The problem with the word quack and its implication, is that it is impossible to separate the usual litany and gospel of the ‘approved’ saints, such as Saint Jenner of the cowpox stab, from the hated ‘quack’ of folk lore, with his entertaining costumes, soapbox orations and ridiculous remedies. 

Georgian and Victorian doctors were by definition ‘quacks’.  None of their remedies were proven valid.  None of their cures reduced disease or discomfort.  None of their articulations were scientifically valid or replicated.  These ‘professionals’ were just as fanatical, corrupt, sloppy, experimental and deluded as any snake oil salesman.  More here