"Quack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... find you are both in a story; that I must confess. But, what—not to be cured of the colic? Don't you know your patient, Mrs. Quack? Oh, 'lie upon your stomach; lying upon your stomach will cure you of the colic.' ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... specialist; it may really be very difficult to express to ordinary people. But because the man is trying to express it, it is most probable that there is something in it, after all. The honest man is he who is always trying to utter the unutterable, to describe the indescribable; but the quack lives not by plunging into mystery, but by refusing to come out ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... to run to the galley in search of cotton and bandages. He was something of a quack doctor and always kept ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... He will clear himself; and if not, abide the worst. Stukely and James found out these facts, and made good use of them afterwards. For now comes 'a severe letter from my Lords' to bring Raleigh up as speedily as his health will permit; and with it comes one Mannourie, a French quack, of whom honest King takes little note at the time, but ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... and is overflowing with milk. In one region grows no poisonous herb, nor does a querulous frog ever quack in it; no scorpion exists, nor does the serpent glide amongst the grass, nor can any poisonous animals exist in it, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and stupefying tendencies which, by a private process known to the assigns of the inventor, have been so masked or removed that it possesses in many cases an availableness which the practitioner can not despise, though compelled by the secrecy of its formula to rank it among quack medicines. The amount of it which my friend had taken during his month's eclipse represents an ounce of dry gum opium—in rough measurement a piece as large as a French billiard ball. I thus particularize ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... must, sure, have heard speak of an old Man, who walks about the City, and that part of the Suburbs which lies beyond the Tower, performing the Office of a Day-Watchman, followed by a Goose, which bears the Bob of his Ditty, and confirms what he says with a Quack, Quack. I gave little heed to the mention of this known Circumstance, till, being the other day in those Quarters, I passed by a decrepit old Fellow with a Pole in his Hand, who just then was bawling out, Half an Hour after one a-Clock, and immediately ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... how to quack like a duck without using any artificial means, but Rob did not quite get the knack of it that evening. For a time, however, after the other boys had come over also, they all squatted in the grass near to Alex, and found much pleasure ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... their 'Lovely, lovely, lovely!' and their reiterated 'Buy, buy, buy!' rang clangorous above the hoarse roaring of costermongers and the din of those who clattered pots and pans. Here and there meat was being sold by Dutch auction, a brisk business. Umbrellas, articles of clothing, quack medicines, were disposed of in the same way, giving occasion for much coarse humour. The market-night is the sole out-of-door amusement regularly at hand for London working people, the only one, in truth, for which they show any real capacity. Everywhere ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... 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
... Privy Council ordered Stukely, 'all delays set apart,' to bring the body of Sir Walter Raleigh speedily to London. Two days later, Stukely and his prisoner started from Plymouth. A French quack, called Mannourie, in whose chemical pretensions Raleigh had shown some interest, was encouraged by Stukely to attend him, and to worm himself into his confidence. As Walter and Elizabeth Raleigh passed the beautiful Sherborne which ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... enthusiasm for science, beneficence, and the honour of the family, but the Professor besieged Mrs. Brownlow with his entreaties and promises just as if-she said to herself-she had been the widow of some quack doctor for whose secret he ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... bothered," he says, "I often feels as if summut be busted in me head." As the herring season comes round, so will Tony 'hae the complaints again,' and few will pity a man who always looks so well. A few years back, Mrs Widger procured for his deafness some quack treatment—which did do him good;—but he himself had little faith in it, and did not persevere. Like the mothers who rejoice in delicate children rather than feed them properly and send them early to bed, Tony prefers ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... spirit. "That is what makes him a poet. I suppose that he sees and feels more keenly: it is that which makes him speak of what he feels and sees. You speak eagerly enough in your leading articles when you espy a false argument in an opponent, or detect a quack in the House. Paley, who does not care for any thing else in the world, will talk for an hour about a question of law. Give another the privilege which you take yourself, and the free use of his faculty, and let him be what nature ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... itself upon its wings. It seemed almost inhuman to kill the sweet little songster, particularly as it was the only creature I saw in the Arctic that uttered a pleasant note. All other sounds were such as the scream of the hawk and the gull, the quack of the duck, the yell of the wolf, the "Ooff! ooff!" of the walrus, or the bark of the seal—all harsh and unmelodious, save the tones of this sweet little singer. Nothing but starvation or scientific research could justify the slaughter ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... 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
... 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 the office, one day, when a man blustered in. "Who," ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... sooner was it finished than he glanced fiercely round the farmyard, and then, evidently with fell intentions, made his way towards where the rival drake was digging worms from the soft mud. His pace quickened as he approached his antagonist; then, with a loud quack, he flew at him, brought him to the ground, pecked out first one eye and then the other, and otherwise assaulted him so furiously, that his unfortunate foe sank at length lifeless beneath the blows ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... Nuneham, my attention was drawn to the very elegant appearance of all the gates and rails adjacent to the road. As the ground was always beautifully farmed and in good order, the condition of the gates did not surprise me. There was, however, a story attached to their smartness. A seller of quack medicines had sent out advertisers with most objectionable little bills, which he had posted on every gate adjoining the roads. My entertainer, who was the occupier of the land, had brought an action against the medicine man for defacing ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... One of my captains soon restored him. He followed us into the village. He is a quack-doctor. I suppose he is now selling tinctures, pulling teeth, and driving away rheumatics. He gave me his card. I told him he should leave one on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... your life were the 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; ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... said that the ring was the marvel-worker; possibly it was some quality in the gold, some even-as-yet-undiscovered power of certain metals upon the human body, and which experience may have taught the old village woman and the wandering quack. But for the most part the Graevenitz's potions were harmless absurdities, yet she believed, and so did others, in ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... 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
... all the whole crowd of gods and goddesses whom their fathers had worshipped, but gave an implicit credence to sorcerers, astrologers, spirit-rappers, exorcists, and every species of imposter and quack. The ceremonies of religion were performed with ritualistic splendour, but all belief in religion was dead and gone. "That there are such things as ghosts and subterranean realms not even boys believe," ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... broke out, sudden snappings of twigs, a scurry among dead leaves, a splash in the water, the far whir of wings. There were no insect noises, no resonant voices of bull-frogs; weird squeaks arose at intervals, the murmuring complaint of water-fowl, guttural quack of duck and bittern—a vague stirring everywhere of wild things settling to rest or awaking. There were things moving in the unseen ooze, too, leaving sudden sinuous trails in the dim but growing lustre that whitened above ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... philologists that this was impossible, because the languages spoken through that wide region, demonstrated that its inhabitants must have had a common descent, he could only answer that as ducks quack everywhere, he could not see why men should not everywhere speak ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... tell a lie, then," replied Pleydell, "'as she usually does. Law's like laudanum; it's much more easy to use it as a quack does, than to learn to apply it ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Paris and spent some days there, during which time I saw only Kietz and his friend Lindemann (whom he regarded as a quack doctor). Arriving in London on 2nd March I first went to see Ferdinand Prager. In his youth he had been a friend of the Rockel brothers, who had given me a very favourable account of him. He proved to be an unusually ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... plutocracy, its secrecy, its gambling spirit, its contempt of conscience, can doubt that the artist-advertiser will often be assisting enterprises over which he will have no moral control, and of which he could feel no moral approval. He will be working to spread quack medicines, queer investments; and will work for Marconi instead of Medici. And to this base ingenuity he will have to bend the proudest and purest of the virtues of the intellect, the power to attract his brethren, and the noble duty of praise. For that picture by Millais is a very allegorical ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... (1708?-9). His notoriety brought on him the ire of a "licens'd practitioner in physick and surgery," one J. Spinke, who, in a pamphlet entitled "Quackery Unmask'd" (1709), dealt Marten some most uncourteous blows. From the pamphlet, it is difficult to judge whether Spinke or Marten were the greater quack; we should judge the former. Certainly Marten deserves our sympathy, if only for Spinke's ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... 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
... register, do you?" said the landlord in answer to Barnes' inquiry, as the latter entered the office, the walls of which were covered with advertisements of elections, auctions, sales of stock, lands and quack medicines. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... not help laughing, because, being borne up high and dry by a tumult of the torrent, he gave me a look from his one little eye (having lost one in fight with the turkey-cock), a gaze of appealing sorrow, and then a loud quack to second it. But the quack came out of time, I suppose, for his throat got filled with water, as the hurdle carried him back again. And then there was scarcely the screw of his tail to be seen until he swung up again, and left small doubt by the way he sputtered, and failed ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... then something else happened, and another ruling passion came into play—the old instinct of the chase, which neither of them could very long forget. A faint "Quack, quack, quack," came up from the lake, and they crept to the edge of the bank, side by side, and looked down. Above them the trees stood dreamily motionless in the mellow sunshine. Below was a steep slope of ten or fifteen ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... Pompadour. It was from her I learnt what I have just related. M. Quesnay said, talking of the pearls, "They are produced by a disease in the oyster. It is possible to know the cause of it; but, be that as it may, he is not the less a quack, since he pretends to have the elixir vitoe, and to have lived several centuries. Our master is, however, infatuated by him, and sometimes talks of him as if his descent ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... subdue the senses, or in what way to deal with all the varied diseases of that soul of man which we were to set ourselves to save. All its failings, infinitely more complicated than those of the body, were grouped as "sin," and for these there was one quack remedy. If the patient did not like the remedy, or got no good from it, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... fence. This fall produced some disease of the spine, which clung to me till I was twelve years old, when it was almost miraculously cured by an itinerant Arab physician. He was generally pronounced to be a quack, but he certainly effected many wonderful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Church, with a fir-tree for its spire, Where Sin has prayed for peace, and wept for guilt, Better than if an architect the plan drew; We know of old how medicines were back'd, But true Religion needs not to be quack'd By an Un-merry Andrew! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... lookout, he by and by detected something moving among the water grasses a little way ahead, and heard a hoarse, squalling "Quack! quack!" ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... one labourer to another, and from one pastor to 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 ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... for amputation, doctor!" said he; "but, first of all, take a glass of brandy and water to steady your nerves. He knows you," says he; "hear him how he calls out Quack, quack! after you, as if he was afraid to let you perform ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... he transmitted to two families, wholly and entirely to his own exertions. Though he bore a name already distinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to make his own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born in North America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is also a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person of obscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his will, that he succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the eggs cracked one after another, "Chick, chick!" All the eggs were alive, and one little head after another peered forth. "Quack, quack!" said the Duck, and all got up as well as they could. They peeped about from under the green leaves; and as green is good for the eyes, their mother let them look ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... from our author respecting Mr. T. Sheridan's stripping of Bonduca—for we really think it worthy the son of that poet, who, neglecting his own genius and the duties of a regular practitioner, condescends to turn quack, and bedizen that high German doctor Pizarro, in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... bed, The moon in halos hid her head; The boding shepherd heaves a sigh, For, see, a rainbow spans the sky: The walls are damp, the ditches smell, Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel. Hark how the chairs and tables crack! Old Betty's joints are on the rack; Loud quack the ducks, the peacocks cry, The distant hills are seeming nigh. How restless are the snorting swine; The busy flies disturb the kine; Low o'er the grass the swallow wings, The cricket too, how sharp he sings; Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws, Sits wiping o'er ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... 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 how strangely that ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... mother's abode, one room on the second floor, to which Mr Vanslyperken proceeded, as soon as he had taken the necessary steps for the replacing, of the boat. As he ascended the stairs, the quack ear of the old woman heard his footstep, and recognised it. It must be observed, that all the conversation between Vanslyperken and his mother was carried on in Dutch, of which we, of course, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... matter of fact, women medical students are not accepted at 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 ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... modern remedies is almost endless, and many of them hold alcohol in some form; but every intelligent physician knows that 90 per cent. of these alleged remedies have little or no intrinsic value. The nostrums of the quack, the bitters, elixirs, cordials, extracts, etc. nearly all contain alcohol, and this is the ingredient which aids their sale. The whole unclean list might, with advantage to mankind, be thrown to ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... bawled: "Yew low cuss, git outer this here taown! Yew air meaner 'n pussley an' meaner 'n quack-root, an' we air bound tew run yew ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... with his criticism Addison's Cato, to which Pope had contributed the Prologue, Pope made this the occasion of a bitter satire on Dennis, called The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris (a well-known quack who professed the cure of lunatics) upon the Frenzy J. D. Addison then, through Steele, wrote to Popes publisher of this manner of treating Mr. Dennis, that he could not be privy to it, and was sorry to hear of it. In 1715, when Pope issued to subscribers the first volume of Homer, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... exordium I had noticed a venerable man in a fine blue surtout and a wide-brimmed hat, who sat upon the shaft of a cart and puffed slowly at a great pipe. And as he puffed, he listened intently to the quack-salver's address, and from time to time his eyes would twinkle and his lips curve in an ironic smile. The cart, upon the shaft of which he sat, stood close to a very small, dirty, and disreputable-looking tent, towards which the old gentleman's back was turned. Now, as I watched, I saw the point ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... therefore no wonder, if my father could never bring me to any perfection. Secondly, as those that in some dangerous sicknesse, moved with a kind of hope-full and greedie desire of perfect health againe, give eare to every Leach or Emperike, [Footnote: Doctor or quack.] and follow all counsels, the good man being exceedingly fearefull to commit any oversight, in a matter he tooke so to heart, suffered himselfe at last to be led away by the common opinion, which like unto the Cranes, followeth ever those that go before, and yeelded to customer having those ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... example, in Caliban upon Setebos, the Grammarian's Funeral, My Last Duchess, and Mr. Sludge, the Medium. These are all psychological studies, in which the poet gets into the inner consciousness of a monster, a pedant, a criminal, and a quack, and gives their point of view. They are dramatic soliloquies; but the poet's self-identification with each of his creations, in turn, remains incomplete. His curious, analytic observation, his way of looking at the soul ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... by 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 ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... who was known as the medicine-man to the royal household, but his services were not often in request, because people were seldom ill, save when they were going to die, and when that time came it was generally thought best to let them die in peace. This medicine-man, though a quack in regard to physic, was, however, a true man, as far as his knowledge went in surgery—that is to say, he was expert at the setting of broken bones, when the fractures were not too compound; he ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... song—poets in chrysalis, all those who dream of what some do, and make the audience of those great articulate ones. But there were one or two trifling doubts to set at rest before final decision. The Reader has greatly misconceived Narcissus if he has deemed him one of those simple souls whom any quack can gull, and the good faith of this mysterious fraternity was a difficult point to settle. A tentative application through the address given, an appropriate nom de mystere, had introduced the ugly detail of preliminary expenses. Divine truth has to pay its postage, its rent, its taxes, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... beer and stout gave out. The tipplers grew pale and visibly thinner; nature made her exactions with unwonted abruptness. A certain degree of sympathy was felt for the Bacchanals, by none more sincerely than by the druggist—artful old quack! It was to him the sufferers had to turn, to such straits were they reduced. Drugs were booming, and the druggist, not satisfied with the normal hugeness of his profits, slipped into the fashion and fleeced all round with unprecedented flagrancy. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... and pallid. Not many 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 ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... unkindly little quack trotted away, leaving Reginald in the dark without a gleam of hope to ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... and from experience. No one has more detestation than I have for the quack that patters in the presence of trained skill; but from what I have seen and known of mission life, both in myself and others, since coming to North China, I think it is a little less than culpable homicide to deny a little hospital training to men who may have to pass weeks ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... that the wheel-hoe is much too clumsy an affair to allow of the pursuit of an individual weed. While the operator is busy adjusting his machine and manipulating it about the corners of the garden, the quack-grass has escaped over the fence or has gone to seed at the other end of the plantation. He devised an expeditious tool for each little work to be performed on the garden,—for hard ground and soft, for old weeds and young (one of his implements ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... thousand and one quack nostrums, pomade divine, like James's powder, has obtained a reputation far above the most sanguine expectations of its concoctors. This article strictly belongs to the druggist, being sold as a remedial agent; nevertheless, ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... followers as 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 ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... tepee, reeking as it is, with filth and poisonous odors. There is no such a thing as an health officer among that band of braves. They have a half spiritualized personage whom they desiginate the Medicine Man; but he is nothing more or less than a quack of the worst kind. As in every other part of their life, so in the domestic ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... the innkeeper without increasing his suspicions. He ate and slept there, and on the following morning proceeded on his journey, and by night was within eight or ten miles of Burlington. Here he stopped at an inn kept by one Doctor Brown, "an ambulating quack-doctor" ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... The quack doctor deserves to be kicked; found bottle of medicine on table somewhere; pure water; five shillings. He is coining money and fleecing people most scandalously; child now luckily in hospital; spoke strongly to parents ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... 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
... the good old days of Europe, before the cowardice of the French aristocracy (in the shameful Revolution, which served them right) brought ruin on our order.... You call a doctor an honourable man—a swindling quack, who does not believe in the nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea for whispering in your ear that it's a fine morning; and yet, forsooth, a gallant man who sits him down before the baize and challenges ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... could not without extravagance be called a note, still less a chirp, and least of all a song. It is not a bark—not quite. It is hardly a growl or a grunt or a snort; I should be sorry to call it a bray or a yelp. And yet I am not going to admit that it is a quack or a bleat; and it isn't a screech or a squeal or a sob. Nor is it a croak, though now we are getting nearer to it. The puzzling thing about it is that it was clearly meant by Nature to be an interjection. Uttered once, suddenly, from the far side of a hedge it would admirably convey such ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... livelihood." No, not if support were given only to other ways. A man may make a round sum at a rowing match which cripples his strength for life; or by leaping across Passaic Falls, till he breaks his neck; he may set up for a wizard or a conjuror or a quack doctor,—he may pick your pocket or fire your house,—all in the way of business. The only question is in which way will you help him on. Things must be judged of quite apart from their money-making results. The old African maker of "greegrees" (charms) ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... the rising generation must be thoroughly instructed in this matter. That quack specific "ignorance" has been experimented with quite too long already. The true method of insuring all persons, young or old, against the abuses of any part, organ, function, or faculty of the wondrous machinery of life, is ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... 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 'Knaves of Hearts!' Or left our church, in spite of solemn ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... 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
... duck 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
... To pawn any thing. I'll vamp it, and tip you the cole: I'll pawn it, and give you the money. Also to refit, new dress, or rub up old hats, shoes or other wearing apparel; likewise to put new feet to old boots. Applied more particularly to a quack bookseller. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... make a start, hobbling along, switch in hand, behind the ducks. They too, poor little things, have sensitive soles to their feet; they limp, they quack with fatigue. They would refuse to go any farther if I did not, from time to time, call a halt under the shelter of ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... "Just quack and coo and cluck as nicely as you can, and have a care to lay nice eggs. Attend very strictly to your own affairs, for I have found that one learns a great deal ...
— The Little Brown Hen Hears the Song of the Nightingale & The Golden Harvest • Jasmine Stone Van Dresser
... of the physical agony of the Knight of the Mirrors was stilled by a quack, whom they found in a town along the road. Tom Cecial, the squire for a day and a night, had been cured of knight-errantry and returned to his less venturesome occupation in his La Mancha village; but the thoughts of evilness would not leave his master, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... we might take the field to cure a fashionable ailment. I know a quack doctor who has built himself a house with nothing but mercury, as the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a good Scottish family, was educated at Leyden. He invented an electuary for the cure of fluxes, and in 1730, in The Danger of Improving Physick, satirised the academical physicians who envied him the fortune he had made by his secret remedy. He was described in 1729 as "an old very rich quack." ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... local skill had treated in vain. Already surrounded by a crowd of admirers waiting for the words of wisdom to fall from his lips, he would start on that exordium which bore no little resemblance to the patter of the modern quack, albeit interlarded with many a Latin quotation and great display of mediaeval learning. "Good people and worthy citizens of this town," he might say, "behold in me the great master ... prince of necromancers, astrologer, second mage, chiromancer, agromancer, pyromancer, ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... grave face, "you would not compare the spiritual Christian, such as Luther, holding his cardinal doctrine about justification, to any such formal, legal, superstitious devotee as Popery can make, with its carnal rites and quack remedies, which never really cleanse the soul or reconcile it ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... in mankind, that at length all political phenomena find their solution. As long as we fail to follow their effects to this point, and look only at immediate effects, which act but upon individual men or classes of men as producers, we know nothing more of political economy than the quack does of medicine, when, instead of following the effects of a prescription in its action upon the whole system, he satisfies himself with knowing how it affects the palate ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... girls. On approaching the capital, the wicked woman pushed her step-child out of the carriage and repeated some magic words over her. After this she became very small and covered with feathers, then in a moment she was changed into a wild-duck. She began to quack, and made for the water, as ducks do, and swam to a far distance. The stepmother bade her farewell in the following words: "By the strength of my hate may my will be fulfilled. Swim about the banks in the form of a duck, and rejoice in thy liberty. During that time my daughter ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... lies on his Back, A Cobler, 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: This Earth which bears his Body's Print, You'll find ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... the mamma duck. She was Mrs. Wibblewobble, a nice, white duck, being a cousin to Mrs. Quack-Quack, who once rescued Billie and Johnnie Bushytail, and Jennie Chipmunk from the desert island where they ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... however, promised a rich treat on the morrow. As soon as the morrow came, I betook myself to the church. It was Sunday morning. The square, before the west front of the church, was the rendezvous both of townsmen and countryfolks: but what was my astonishment on observing in one corner of it, a quack doctor vending powder for the effectual polishing of metals. He had just beaten his drum, in order to collect his audience; and having got a good assemblage, was full of the virtues of his wares—which were pronounced to be also "equally ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... writer once said, that it was impossible for a girl to succeed on the stage without impaired morals, is a statement as untrue as to say that no man can succeed as a lawyer unless he be a rogue, a doctor unless he be a quack, a parson ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... ratio, after all compromises have been tried. There may be an inevitable conflict. The permanent principles of nature and society, which are beyond all laws, will decide the issue. But Manning's is a mere quack remedy. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Sowerby congratulated him, and the bishop joked with him and said that he knew that he would not give up good company so soon; and Miss Dunstable said she would make him her chaplain as soon as Parliament would allow quack doctors to have such articles—an allusion which Mark did not understand, till he learned that Miss Dunstable was herself the proprietress of the celebrated Oil of Lebanon, invented by her late respected father, and patented by him with such wonderful results in the way of accumulated fortune; ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... talk about New York and London in his queer stilted way. He had been a fireman on board ship, a teacher of jiujitsu, a juggler, a quack dentist, Heaven knows what else. Driven by the conscientious inquisitiveness of his race, he had endured hardships, contempt and rough treatment with the smiling patience inculcated in the Japanese people by their education. "We must chew our gall, and bide ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... eyes sparkling with indignation. "Sir Arthur, I have so often warned you of the knavery of that rascally quack, that I really wonder you should quote ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... themselves with the famous Astrologer William Lilly, whose prophetic Almanacks, under the title of Merlinus Anglicus, had been appearing annually since 1644. But indeed all sorts of men were in contact with this quack or quack-mystic. He had been consulted by Charles I as to the probable issue of events; he had been consulted and feed by partisans of the other side: his Almanacks, with their hieroglyphics and political predictions, had a boundless popularity, and were bringing him a good income; he ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... had adopted this healing resolution, I reached the spot where the almost perpendicular face of a steep hill seems to terminate the valley, or at least divides it into two dells, each serving as a cradle to its own mountain-stream, the Gruff-quack, namely, and the shallower, but more noisy, Gusedub, on the left hand, which, at their union, form the Gander, properly so called. Each of these little valleys has a walk winding up to its recesses, rendered more easy by the labours of the poor during the late ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... we are really so deteriorate! There is nothing but feebleness in us. Our youths, who spend their days in trying to build up their constitutions by sport or athletics and their evenings in undermining them with poisonous and dyed drinks; our daughters, who are ever searching for some new quack remedy for new imaginary megrim, what strength is there in them? We have our societies for the prevention of this and the promotion of that and the propagation of the other, because there are no individuals among us. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... dreamily on the grey river. He was already conscious of the glow of the wine in his veins. The sensation was half pleasurable, in a sense distasteful to him. He resented this artificial humanity. He had the feeling of a man who has stooped to be doped by a quack doctor. And ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... curs of all sorts of mis-begotten and degenerate breeds. I believe that the famous Mr. WEBB HALL, who was then a practising attorney in Bristol (of the firm of Jarman and Hall); I believe that this profound agricultural quack of 1821, was, in 1812, one of the formidable phalanx which was drawn ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... ceremony, and for the last time tries his skill in restoring the defunct to animation. Failing in this, he throws on the body a piece of leather, or some other article, as a present, which in some measure appeases the resentment of his relatives, and preserves the unfortunate quack from being maltreated. During the nine days the corpse is laid out, the widow of the deceased is obliged to sleep along side it from sunset to sunrise, and from this custom there is no relaxation even during the hottest days of summer! While the doctor ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... to sell his discovery to princes and men of learning. Purchasers had to agree strictly to maintain the secret. Professor Williams speaks of this conduct as follows: "These were the acts of a charlatan peddling some secret quack nostrum."[93] Mr. Quick says, "He would also found a school in which all arts and sciences should be rapidly learned and advanced; he would introduce, and peacefully maintain throughout the continent, a uniform speech, a uniform government, and, more wonderful still, a uniform religion. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... all this enjoyment of empire he never once violated that respectful awe with which the usher had found means to inspire him; but he by no means preserved the same regard for the principal master, an old illiterate German quack, who had formerly practised corn-cutting among the quality, and sold cosmetic washes to the ladies, together with teeth-powders, hair-dyeing liquors, prolific elixirs, and tinctures to sweeten the breath. These nostrums, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... remarked that the principal establishments she praised in print probably paid her in their merchandise. There was a dowager whose aristocratic name appeared daily on the fourth page of the newspapers, attesting the merits of some kind of quack medicine; and a retired opera-singer, who, having been called Zenaide Rochet till she grew up in Montmartre, where she was born, had had a brilliant career as a star in Italy under the name of Zina Rochette. La Rochette's name, alas! is unknown to ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... of him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786. BOSWELL. There we learn that he was in his time a grammar-school usher, actor, poet, the puffing partner in a quack medicine, and tutor to a youthful Earl. He was suspected of levying blackmail by threats of satiric publications, and he suffered from a disease which rendered him an object almost offensive to sight. He was born in 1738 or ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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 of the basses and bassoons at once produced an intelligible effect; the ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... that honest face, that thick head of hair, and that identical cap, sticking out of the top of a portable wooden frame covered with placards, setting forth the virtues of quack medicines, the excellencies of dry goods, or the unequalled attractions of concert saloons. He also remembered that this wooden frame was much taller than any of the long procession of frames which followed it, and that, from a hole in the right side thereof, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... a respectable man, I understand, this Grimshawe,—a quack, intemperate, always in these scuffles: let him ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pretty broad-minded allopath," said Quincy, "to give such a sweeping recommendation to a quack." ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... 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, ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... the way, telling Owen and Amy to keep close to him, and to fear nothing. As they passed by Lakin's pond, a duck gave a loud quack; when they came to the great ash-tree, a bee buzzed by them: but neither the quacking nor the buzzing frightened the bold Alan; and on he ...
— The Nursery, July 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 1 • Various
... larned to open his mouth. Why, I got a duck can quack a devilish sight better un ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... intuitionist, whether we do good to benefit ourselves or whether certain acts and states are intrinsically good. The Buddha is a physician who prescribes a cure for a disease—the disease of suffering—and that cure is not a quack medicine which pretends to heal rapidly but a regime and treatment. If we ask whether the reason for following the regime is that it is good for us or that it is scientifically correct; or why we want to be well or whether health ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... counterplotting as to the disposal of the crown, the poor boy-king lay there almost neglected, or watched only by those who waited the moment of his death with impatience. As the disease took deeper and fatal hold of him, all forsook him save an incompetent quack nurse; and how far she may have helped on the end no one ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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
... service for better sorts! Ask Serjeant Roland his opinion of Oliver Q.C. "Ordinaire, my good fellow, ordinaire, with a port-wine label!" Ask Oliver his opinion of Roland. "Never was a man so overrated by the world and by himself." Ask Tweedledumski his opinion of Tweedledeestein's performance. "A quack, my tear sir! an ignoramus, I geef you my vort? He gombose an opera! He is not fit to make dance a bear!" Ask Paddington and Buckminster, those two "swells" of fashion, what they think of each other? They are notorious ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a boy six or seven years old a quack phrenologist stopped at our house and Father kept him over night. In the morning he fingered the bumps of all of us to pay for his lodging and breakfast. When he came to my head I remember he grew enthusiastic. "This boy will be a rich man," he said. "His head ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... also, some directions for various cosmetics. How many of these are original, however, is difficult to say. Trotula's name had become a word to conjure with, and many a quack in the after time tried to make capital for his remedies in this line by attributing them to Trotula. As a consequence, many of these remedies gradually found their way into the manuscript copies of her book, and subsequent copyists incorporated them into the text, until it became practically ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... a constant stream of strange vagabonds drifted along the road: minstrels who wandered from fair to fair, a foul and pestilent crew; jugglers and acrobats, quack doctors and tooth-drawers, students and beggars, free workmen in search of better wages, and escaped bondsmen who would welcome any wages at all. Such was the throng which set the old road smoking in a haze of white dust from ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle |
