Modern Charlatans

Marat began a campaign of rhetoric against the Academy, and against Lavoisier in particular. In a pamphlet titled Modern Charlatans, or Letters on Academic Charlatanism, published in 1791 but written earlier, Marat wrote ... 

Magical medicine men—from primitive shamans with painted faces to modern charlatans puffed on television—can cure diseases they can neither... 

Nonetheless, it was not until 1793 that the English scientist and clergyman Joseph Priestley discovered the first modern inhalant compound, the anesthetic gas nitrous oxide. This gas was widely used for recreational purposes by the English aristocracy in private parties, and traveling charlatans expanded... 

While Bolton s lecture gave examples of modern alchemical charlatans and seemed less than serious about some of the French Hermetic groups he discussed, the New York Times coverage of the speech focused primarily on the positive issue of modern science s relationship to alchemy. Its headline The Revival of Alchemy was followed by the subheadlines Dr. H. Carrington Bolton Lectures on the Modern Aspect of Chemistry s Forerunner and Many Still Believe in It (New York Times 1897, 6). 

Thus, in the millennia extending from antiquity to the mid-nineteenth century, epilepsy remained a medical condition surrounded by mystique— permitting charlatanism, superstition, and quackery to prosper. In general, the therapies of this time were without merit, as demonstrated by the detailed but disturbing description of King Charles IPs death, which provides a comprehensive summary of the complexity and futility of seizure therapy during the pre-modern era. 

That curious occult philosophy which constitutes the basis of alchemy in the modern sense of the term, derived from the Greek neoplatonists and transmitted mainly through Arabian disciples, was to find a recrudescence with, if possible, more extravagant manifestations of credulity, mysticism and charlatanism in the western alchemists of the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, a development greatly fostered also by the revolt from authority which culminated in the Protestant Reformation and was facilitated by the printing press in the latter part of the fifteenth century. 

Gentilcore, David. " Charlatans, Mountebanks and Other Similar People The Regulation and Role of Itinerant Practitioners in Early Modern Italy." Social History 20, no. 3 (1995] 297-314. 

Poirier uses Cultural Revolution " to describe France s revolt against the intellectual authority of knowledge similar, by implication, to that seen in China during the 1960s. The Academy s 1784 criticism of mesmerism, in which both Lavoisier and Franklin played lead roles, was now attacked as elitist. Two excerpts from Marat s 1791 pamphlet Les Charlatans Modernes illustrate the vulnerability of the academicians ... 

Food quack (food charlatan)—A food quack is a pretender who claims to have skill, knowledge, and qualifications in foods, nutrition, and/or medicine, which he does not possess. The quack is the modern counterpart of the medicine man of old. His motive is usually money. 

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