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Quack   Listen
noun
Quack  n.  
1.
The cry of the duck, or a sound in imitation of it; a hoarse, quacking noise.
2.
A boastful pretender to medical skill; an empiric; an ignorant practitioner.
3.
Hence, one who boastfully pretends to skill or knowledge of any kind not possessed; a charlatan. "Quacks political; quacks scientific, academical."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Quack" Quotes from Famous Books



... caw, caw." There 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 not ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess

... present in many cases. The digestion is poor and slow and constipation accompanies it. Sometimes there is neuralgia of the stomach. The sexual organs are seemingly affected, many men are "almost scared to death" and they use all sorts of quack remedies to restore their sexual vigor. Spermatorrhea is their bugbear. They usually get well if they stop worrying. In women there is the tender ovary and the menstruation may be painful or irregular. The condition of the urine in these patients is important. Many cases are complicated ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... 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

... their motives may have been patriotic, such a measure could no more cure the body politic than a man who has a broken limb, is blind, and in a consumption can be made sound at every point by the heal-all of a quack. Accordingly the Licinian law was soon, except in its political provisions, a dead letter. Licinius was the first man prosecuted for its violation, and the economical desire of the nation became intensified. [Sidenote: The Flaminian law.] In 232 B.C. Flaminius carried a law for the ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... rather personifying element in faith extends even to the lowest forms of it, for it is this that produces faith in pseudo-revelation, in inspiration, in miracle. There is a story of a Parisian doctor, who, when he found that a quack-healer was drawing away his clientele, removed to a quarter of the city as distant as possible from his former abode, where he was totally unknown, and here he gave himself out as a quack-healer and conducted himself as such. When he was denounced as an illegal ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... said, "I'm not a doctor, but my journeys out here made me dabble a bit, and quack over my own ailments and those of my followers when there was no medical man to be had. I don't know, Robert, old friend, but I should say it was a touch of brain fever, consequent upon yesterday's ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... of him on the part of the public arose chiefly from the two causes to which I have referred—from the facts that he is neither a man of wealth nor a quack; but these are insufficient to account for the whole effect. No small portion of it is attributable to the very marked idiosyncrasy of Mr. Hawthorne himself. In one sense, and in great measure, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... 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 would believe ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... "Peregrine Pickle" are also excellent in their way; and the connoisseur of prints and etchings may see in the latter plate, and in another in this volume, how great the artist's mechanical skill is as an etcher. The distant view of the city in the duel, and of a market-place in "The Quack Doctor," are delightful specimens of the artist's skill in depicting buildings and backgrounds. They are touched with a grace, truth, and dexterity of workmanship that leave nothing to desire. We have before mentioned the man with the mouth, which appears in this number emblematical ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... The quack is great till the true teacher comes, and then he dwindles. Simon had a bitter pill to swallow when he saw this new man stealing his audience, and doing things which he, with his sorceries, knew that he only pretended to do. Luke points very ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... 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, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... agony became insupportable, and they threw up their heads and bayed at the sun; women, mothers and virgins, shrilled shriek upon mounting shriek, and slapped their thighs as it might have been the roll of musketry. When they tried to draw breath, some half-strangled voice would quack out the word, and the riot began afresh. Last to fall was the city-trained Abdul. He held on to the edge of apoplexy, then collapsed, throwing the ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... 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

... A quack had brought a remedy which would cure gangrene, he said. The sore on the leg was hopeless, but they gave the king a dose of the elixir in a glass of Alicante. "To life and to death," said he as he took the glass; "just as it shall please God." The remedy ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... 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 ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... 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

... any of the objects of missionary enterprise. The conception of the transactions between God and man was apparently modelled upon the dealings of a petty tradesman. The "blood of Christ" was regarded like the panacea of a quack doctor, which will cure the sins of anybody who accepts the prescription. For anything I can say, such a creed may be elevating—relatively: elevating as slavery is said to have been elevating when it was a substitute for ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... were numbered. I tried the water cure, homoeopathy, allopathy— everything. Some day, I must recount my consultations, on the same Sunday, with Sir James Clarke, Her Majesty's physician, and Dr. Quin, homoeopathist, jester, and, as some said, quack." ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... doctor," Russ replied. "I think he's a quack, myself. I wouldn't have him for a sick cat. But he calls himself a doctor and surgeon. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope

... Anukul was resting after a long and weary day in court. His wife was buying, at an exorbitant price, a herb from a mendicant quack, which was said to ensure the birth of a child. A voice of greeting was heard in the courtyard. Anukul went out to see who was there. It was Raicharan. Anukul's heart was softened when he saw his old servant. He asked him many questions, and offered ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... over 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

... 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; but ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... liar, an upright man not too bold and hearty to his own loss, one that drawls when he speaks not to be crafty and circumventing, one that winks on another with his eyes not to be false and deceitful, a sailor and hangman to be pitiful, a poor man to build churches, a quack doctor to have a good conscience, a bailiff not to be a merciless villain, an hostess not to over-reckon you, and an usurer ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... this thing quite out of their homes, so for every ailment, for spleen and spasms, for tooth ache and toe ache, for head ache and heart ache, this wonderful remedy was used. This greater than all quack medicines, for some of these do stop at some point in their healing power, but this was thought to be never failing in its virtue to alleviate, if not to cure. Women in the last few years have been ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... duck-pool and 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 ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... brilliant to remark, with a knowing wink, at sight of an innocent cow at pasture, "The simple cow knows her way to the hay!" Nor do I regard it as evidence of notable mental gifts to answer the greeting of the inoffensive duck, "The quack shoots off his mouth!" No, the extravagances of that Blackbird, who makes me bristle, no more constitute wit than his slang ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... with metaphors, hesitating to characterize this latest Minerva-birth. For it is either that "new sensation" demanded by the Sir Charles Coldstream who has used up all religions and all philosophies, or, being a reductio ad absurdum of speculative pretension, it fulfils the promise of a recent quack advertisement, and is in very truth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... tui generis, you misbegotten satyr," replied the schoolmaster; "that is, more appropriately concatenated with your own trade than wid mine. I have no trade, sirra, but a profession, and neither have you. You stand in the same degraded ratio to a tradesman that a rascally quack does to ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... sudden change of countenance. "I shall be von more name and date to make harter t'e student's lessons and longer t'e tables—t'at is gratitude! Vit' t'e vorld we haf at present no concern. For t'is, indeed, you bless me—t'at I am not a quack to make public an incomplete discofery, for ot'er quacks to do mischief. You are glad t'at it is vit' you alone I concern myself. But you are not grateful; you are happy because I say t'at you shall be yet more beautiful; t'at is not gratitude. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... when it 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

... they look a fright in eyeglasses, and ask if they should wear them. Most certainly if the eyes are worn out and failing. An oculist of the very best reputation should be consulted. The fee does not exceed that of the quack, and the eyes are tested with greater thoroughness. Glasses must be chosen with the utmost care, as ill-fitting lenses can make a great deal of trouble. They are worse than no glasses at all. Then, after eyeglasses ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... "Quack-quack! Take me out! Oh, take me out!" cried poor Fluffy-dumpty. The other six ducks crowded around and looked ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... to open his mouth. Why, I got a duck can quack a devilish sight better un thic feller ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... his own secret medicines, so he keeps away from the doors of the druggists; and for this last week he has taken to sitting in my piazza for two or three hours every day, and making it a resort for asthmas and squalling bambini. It stirs my gall to see the toad-faced quack fingering the greasy quattrini, or bagging a pigeon in exchange for his pills and powders. But I'll put a few thorns in his saddle, else I'm no Florentine. Laudamus! he is coming to be shaved; that's what I've waited for. Messer Domenico, go not away: wait; you shall see a ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... and swift like himself; in fact, like his domestic service, it was of his own invention. If he was an advertising quack, he was one who believed in his own wares. The sense of something tiny and flying was accentuated as they swept up long white curves of road in the dead but open daylight of evening. Soon the white curves came sharper and dizzier; they were upon ascending ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... 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

... he said, "Mr Panton's coming right again, fast. Nice healthy appearance about his wound, and Mr Lane's, too. When the sea fails to get me a living I think I shall set up as quack doctor. Come, gentlemen, you are getting better, you know. Not long ago you were on your backs; then you managed to sit on deck; then to stand for a bit, and now you have been here for ever so long watching us. That don't look as if you were ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... reredosses, and our heads did neuer ake.[83] For as the smoke in those daies was supposed to be a sufficient hardning for the timber of the house; so it was reputed a far better medicine to keepe the goodman and his familie from the quack or pose, wherewith as then verie few were oft acquainted." Harrison, i. 212, col. 1, quoted ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... 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 of August '78, and the other showing the ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... necessary public burthens, will, in the progress of time, greatly improve our condition. This it will do; and those who blame it for not doing more blame it for not doing what no Constitution, no code of laws, ever did or ever will do; what no legislator, who was not an ignorant and unprincipled quack, ever ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the secret of the transformations. So, having made sure the Wizard's black bag was not in the clearing, the Goose wandered away through the trees when the others were not looking, and when out of their hearing, he began calling, "Kiki Aru! Kiki Aru! Quack—quack! Kiki Aru!" ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... had reached the court, and the empress herself became interested in his extraordinary achievements. In vain Van Swieten and Stork besought her to silence the audacious quack, who was ruining a great profession. She shook her head, and would have nothing to do with ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... 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

... Graham (1745-1794); a noted quack doctor. Returning from America, he claimed to have learned marvellous electrical cures from Franklin, and advertised impossible discoveries; he declared he could impart the secret of living beyond the natural span of life. He became fashionable, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... 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 ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... an 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 ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... the children this they were much amused, and I am sure they thought it would be very dull never to hear the crowing of a cock or the "quack, quack" of a duck—to say nothing of the soft cooing of doves in the wood, and the sweet, rich notes of the ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... theosophy, and some of his English followers seem to have allied 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

... machine will go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery. I don't want to waste this model, and then be told I'm a quack.' ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... ground Allures the bee to hover round and round? Not small your wit, nor rugged and unkempt; 'Twill answer bravely to a bold attempt: Whether you train for pleading, or essay To practise law, or frame some graceful lay, The ivy-wreath awaits you. Could you bear To leave quack nostrums, that but palliate care, Then might you lean on heavenly wisdom's hand And use her guidance to a loftier land. Be this our task, whate'er our station, who To country and to self would ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... sure 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

... 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 process. Moralists and preachers are ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... 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 ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... 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, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... the Saint as a "depraved quack," and says that the time he spent with him was worse than wasted. If Saint-Simon was the rogue and pretender that Comte avers, it is no certificate of Comte's insight that it took him four years to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... 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 wife remained above ground." His ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... the Magnificent, who at the beginning of the year had been attacked by a severe and deep-seated fever, to which was added the gout, a hereditary ailment in his family. He had found at last that the draughts containing dissolved pearls which the quack doctor, Leoni di Spoleto, prescribed for him (as if he desired to adapt his remedies rather to the riches of his patient than to his necessities) were useless and unavailing, and so he had come to understand that he must part ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... in your position going to an infernal quack like Professor Cyrus! Professor? Humph! ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... elle (Quackquackquack) Il disait a sa canard fidele (Quackquackquack) Il disait (Quackquackquack) Il faisait (Quackquackquack) Quand" (spelling mine) "finirons nos desseins, Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack." ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... abundant and physically weakening, but they relieved the psychic symptoms, though they occasioned mental distress, since F.C. is scrupulous in a religious sense, and also apprehensive of bad constitutional effects, the result of reading alarmist quack pamphlets. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... 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 you lose your ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... the crowd became so dense as to be hardly passable. The spectators consisted of both sexes, of all ages and degrees. But how shall I describe the scene that presented itself? A large field of several acres was filled with tents, stages and booths, with Punch and Judys, quack doctors, mountebanks and monkeys, and cages containing wild animals of various kinds. The shouting of people, the cry of beasts, the beating of drums, the discord of the abortive attempts at music, producing such a triumph of discord as beggars description. 'Verily,' thought I, 'time cannot ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... quack, and, above all, that of acrid-quack. 'These,' says Carlyle, 'though never so clear-starched, bland-smiling, and beneficent, he absolutely would have no trade with. Their very sugar-cake was unavailing. He said with emphasis, as clearly as barking could say it, "Acrid-quack, avaunt!"' But once when 'a tall, irregular, busy-looking man came halting by,' that wise, nervous little dog ran towards him, and began 'fawning, frisking, licking at the feet' of Sir Walter Scott. No ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... great Rome was sown; Our England her foundations laid:— Hence, while the nations, change-dismay'd, To tyrant or to quack repair, A healthier heart we own, And the plant ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... mute inglorious Miltons, Chattertons, starving in 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 quite out of proportion to our labours, there is ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... make wry faces! This truth he boasts, will boast it while he lives, No poisonous drugs are mixed in what he gives. Should he succeed, you'll give him his degree; If not, within he will receive no fee! The College YOU, must his pretensions back, Pronounce him Regular, or dub him Quack. ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith

... 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 ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney

... is not all plain sailing, however, for the French authorities raise every kind of obstacle in his path; they tear his red advertisements down from the street walls and openly call him a quack. Were it not for the Greek Consul in Tunis, who happens to be an old friend of his, who knows how much longer they would allow him to practise in ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... from cautioning possessors of good instruments against entrusting them into the barbaric hands of pretended repairers, who endeavour to persuade them into the belief that it is necessary to do this, that, and the other for their benefit. The quack doctors of the Violin are legion—they are found in every town and city, ready to prey upon the credulity of the lovers of Fiddles, and the injury they inflict on their helpless patients is frequently irreparable. Unfortunately, amateurs are often prone to be continually ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... quaintly neat, All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe, With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go, He bids the gazing throng around him fly, And carries fate and physic in his eye: A potent quack, long versed in human ills, Who first insults the victim whom he kills; Whose murderous hand a drowsy Bench protect, And whose most tender mercy is neglect. Paid by the parish for attendance here, He wears contempt upon his sapient ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... mine. Every other Sunday he became an irresponsible animal, a beast, a brute, crazed with alcohol. His mother cooked for the miners. Her one ambition was that her son should enter a profession. He was apprenticed to a traveling quack dentist and after a fashion, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... also uses the description, Son of Man, with its suggestions from the past. He forgives sins. He speaks throughout the Gospels as one apart, as one distinct from us, closely as he is identified with us—and all this from a son of fact, who is not insane, who is not a quack, whose eyes are wide open for the real; whose instinct for the ultimate truth is so keen; who lives face to face with God. What does it mean? This, for one thing, that most of us have not given attention enough ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... up for an early breakfast. I nearly laughed a rib loose watchin' them baby ducks waddle around solemn, every one with that cut-up look in his eye. Say, they're born comedians, ducks are. I'll bet if you could translate that quack-quack patter of theirs you'd get lines that would be a reg'lar scream on ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... quack," she said. "What a curious shape you are! May I ask were you born like that, or is it the result of ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde

... said Dr. Sculpin, "the diet suggested by that quack, Porpoise, passed out of the books years ago. Give the child toast on sea-foam, if you wish to build up her ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field

... in, his eyes sparkling with indignation. "Sir Arthur, I have so often warned you of the knavery of that rascally quack, that I really wonder you ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... finally suppressed in the Annals of Mankind; blotted out as spurious,—which indeed they are. Hapless ages: wherein, if ever in any, it is an unhappiness to be born. To be born, and to learn only, by every tradition and example, that God's Universe is Belial's and a Lie; and 'the Supreme Quack' the hierarch of men! In which mournfulest faith, nevertheless, do we not see whole generations (two, and sometimes even three successively) live, what they call living; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... person was a notorious trader in scandal, and he still pursues that avocation. Many of his discourses are "delivered to men only," an advertisement which is sure to attract a large audience; and one of them, which he has published, is just on a level with the quack publications that are thrust into young men's hands in the street. Henry Varley had already issued one private circular about Mr. Bradlaugh, full of the most brazen falsehoods and the grossest defamation; and containing, as it did, garbled extracts from Mr. Bradlaugh's writings, and artfully-manipulated ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... not Dr. Quack, was it?' I asked; 'because, poor fellow, he came to an untimely end the other night,—had his head bitten off, and his body was then dragged across the yard, as I suppose ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... business. What if the top of the medical profession was composed of men who devoted themselves to fighting the public welfare for life! We have that kind of doctors—but we call them quacks. We don't allow 'em in our medical societies. We punish them by ostracism. But the quack lawyers who devote themselves to skinning the public—they are at the head of the bar. They are made judges. They are promoted to supreme courts. A damn nice howdy-do we're coming to when the quacks run a whole profession. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... the title Penhallow and Bradshaw, Attorneys at Law. Then came the standing professional card of Dr. Lemuel Hurlbut and Dr. Fordyce Hurlbut, the medical patriarch of the town and his son. Following this, hideous quack advertisements, some of them with the certificates of Honorables, Esquires, and Clergymen.—Then a cow, strayed or stolen from the subscriber.—Then the advertisement referred ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... a biceps worthy of Michel 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 ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... a serjeant or bailiff; a paunbroker; a prison; a tavern; a scold; a bad husband; a town-fop; a bawd; a fair and happy milk-maid; the quack's ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... The honk and quack of wild geese and ducks, southward bound in great flocks, disturbs the silence of every inlet and cove and bight, where the wild fowl pause for a time to rest ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... Soulanges on matters connected with the courts, or to visitors who did not sleep at the chateau; but for the last twenty-five years these rooms had had no other occupants than the mountebanks, the merchants, the vendors of quack medicines who came to the fair, or else commercial travellers. During the fair-time they were let for four francs a day; and brought Socquard about two hundred and fifty francs, not to speak of the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... 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 beats 'em all." And ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... 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, ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift

... flattered the wealthy, and despoiled the poor. Another class traversed the country, selling pardons "come from Rome all hot," and extolling the virtues of their relics and the power of their indulgences with the eloquence of a quack vending his nostrums. Bishops held civil offices under the king, and priests acted as stewards in great men's houses. Simony possessed the Church, and the ministers of religion again sold their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... gone forward? And in what way is he so superior to us already?' cried Pavel Petrovitch impatiently. 'It's that high and mighty gentleman, that nihilist, who's knocked all that into his head. I hate that doctor fellow; in my opinion, he's simply a quack; I'm convinced, for all his tadpoles, he's not got ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... tired. They're tedious failures. When I was on earth, professors of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... facilities afforded by this style of imposing generalization, is, that it was instantly adopted with success by all those who were writers by profession, or who were not; and that at present, we cannot see a lottery puff or a quack advertisement pasted against a wall, that is not perfectly Johnsonian in style. Formerly, the learned had the privilege of translating their notions into Latin; and a great privilege it was, as it confined the reputation and emoluments of learning ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... make no charges, I only wish to assure you that she will no doubt be found in the company and under the protection of her own countrymen. There is," she added with ironical distinctness, "a young mechanic, or field hand, or 'quack well-doctor,' whom she seems to admire, and with whom she appears to be on ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... around that sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature which is apt to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard in the distance a curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which, though it was common enough here about this time, was not ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... 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 ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... said Don Quixote in high wrath, turning upon him angrily, as his way was; "and it is a very great slander, or rather villainy. Queen Madasima was a very illustrious lady, and it is not to be supposed that so exalted a princess would have made free with a quack; and whoever maintains the contrary lies like a great scoundrel, and I will give him to know it, on foot or on horseback, armed or unarmed, by night or by day, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... appointment thrust upon him for the credit of the country. "But may not 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

... "Quack! quack!" said the duck; and all the babies quacked too. Then they looked all around. The mother let them look as much as they liked, for green is good for ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate

... class. A human being who is a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in the first place, or a statesman in the first place, is thereby and inevitably, though he bring God-like gifts to the pretence—a quack. These are attempts to live deep-side shallow, inside out. They produce merely a new pettiness. To understand Socialism, again, is to gain a new breadth of outlook; to join a Socialist organisation is to join a narrow cult which is not even tolerably serviceable ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... one and the same time. And so the Spray reeled off the miles, showing a good ran every day till April 11, which came almost before I knew it. Very early that morning I was awakened by that rare bird, the booby, with its harsh quack, which I recognized at once as a call to go on deck; it was as much as to say, "Skipper, there's land in sight." I tumbled out quickly, and sure enough, away ahead in the dim twilight, about twenty miles off, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... were caterers 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 ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... entanglement 460 Of horrible eventualities Past calculation to the end of time! Can I mistake for some clear word of God (Which were my ample warrant for it all) His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk, "The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about crowns, And (when one beats the man to his last hold) A vague idea of setting things to rights, Policing people efficaciously, More to their profit, most of all to his own; 470 The whole to end that dismallest of ends By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church, And ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... had 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 in requiring ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... to 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 ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... your choice; at least in her time such was the frenzy of the alleged political Millennium that Marat was soon worshipped as a martyr. This atrocious political quack, with all his daggers and his blackjacks, was likened to Jesus Christ; and among the sentiments of the hour we read, "A perfidious hand has snatched him away from his beloved people"; "To the immortal glory of Marat, the people's friend"; "Unable to corrupt me, they have assassinated ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... yield!" And a profound silence, during which the cardinal resumed his senses and recovered his strength, succeeded to the agitation of this scene. "There is another thing," murmured Mazarin; "there are empirics and charlatans. In my country, those whom physicians abandon run the chance of a quack, who kills them ten times but saves them a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... origins. When told by the comparative 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 ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... sardonically at all the world, mingling flattery of the crowd with abuse of the great, and of all the restrictions of society. These were the street preachers of cynicism, who found their trade by no means an unprofitable one. Often, after a few years of squalid abstinence and quack philosophy, they had picked up enough to enable them to shave their beards, don the robes of good society, and end their days in the vicious self-indulgence which was the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... the false duke, angrily, glowering upon the impassive and woebegone countenance of the medical attendant. "As if he had not bled enough from his hurts! Quack of an imposter! ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... best it can, and to some extent one supplements the other, with the result that at all times from spring to fall there is a close mat of living green which delights the eye and is pleasant to the feet that tread upon it. In soft ground, with plenty of room, a bit of quick or quack grass, or Bermuda, will extend in a year three to five feet or ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... quack queer'ly quoit qui e'tus queen quo'rum quote quo ta'tion plaque piqu'ant bisque co quet'tish clique' co quet' torque ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... 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 ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... took it so bitterly to heart that he stole away from the 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... to acquire applause, Try various arts to get a doubtful cause; Or, as a dancing master in a jigg, With various steps instructs the dancing prig; Or as a doctor writes you different bills; Or as a quack prescribes you different pills; Or as a fiddler plays more tunes than one; Or as a baker bakes more bread than brown; Or as a tumbler tumbles up and down; So does our author, rummaging his brain, By various ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... come when 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 to teach them its use. "Train a child ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... all I can learn, come here only to die, and surely it is better to die comfortably at home, avoiding the thousand discomforts of travel, at a time when they are so heard to bear. It is indeed pitiful to see so many invalids, already on the verge of the grave, making a painful way to quack climates, hoping to change age to youth, and the darkening twilight of their day to morning. No such health-fountain has been found, and this climate, fine as it is, seems, like most others, to be adapted for well people only. From all I could find out ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... Hill:' Sir John Hill, a celebrated character of that day, of incredible industry and versatility, a botanist, apothecary, translator, actor, dramatic author, natural historian, multitudinous compiler, libeller, and, intus et in cute, a quack and coxcomb. See Boswell's account of the interview between the King and Dr Johnson, for a somewhat modified estimate ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... failure. Instead of a great operation on the waste lands, and the conversion of cottiers into proprietors, Parliament passed a Poor Law for maintaining them as paupers: and if the nation has not since found itself in inextricable difficulties from the joint operation of the old evils and the quack remedy it is indebted for its deliverance to that most unexpected and surprising fact, the depopulation of ireland, commenced by famine, and continued ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... development, and is often the victim of groundless fears that use up his strength or send him in despair to seek assistance from the most easily available sources of information, those baleful writings and despicable quack practitioners everywhere soliciting and alarming youth, and whose career forms one of the saddest commentaries on the state of ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... efficiency expert was regarded in England as an intruder and a quack; to use a stop watch on production was high crime and treason. To-day there are thousands of students of business science and factory management. In the spinning district girls in clogs sit alongside their foremen ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... horseback, in the portrait in the possession of the Cawthorne family. I have not seen it, I am bound to admit. We had offended Dr. Cawthorne, by once in an urgent case calling in another doctor, who, he would have it, was a quack, that ought to have killed us, and we ceased to visit; but a gentleman who was an established patient of Dr. Cawthorne's and had frequent opportunities of judging the portrait, in the course of a chronic malady, describes Charles ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... something beyond them; the old man, clearly, was a favorite of Fortune; Fan their master himself must deal with him. So they sent word ahead, and brought him to the palace of Fan. Who understood well the limitations of quack magic: if he was to be beaten at these tricks, where would his influence be? So he heaped up riches in the courtyard, and made a great fire all round.—"Anyone can have those things," he announced, "who will go in and get them." Shang quietly walked through the flames, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... before you eat," and a fourth (a man of wide experience) bade him marry the worst-tempered woman he knew. Then they all gave him pills to upset his stomach; but such was its power that it assimilated them. Despairing of these, he consulted a Quack, and received the directions which brought him to Springhaven. And a lucky day for him it was, as he confessed for the rest of his life, whenever ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... 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 and distracted, but ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... necessary consequence of an extended franchise. Macaulay, skilfully enough, protested against this interpretation. 'We say again and again,' he declares, 'that we are on the defensive. We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison. Let the vendor prove it to be sanative. We do not pretend to show that universal suffrage is an evil. Let its advocates show it to be a good.'[119] Mill rests his whole case upon the selfishness of mankind. Will not the selfishness lead the actual majority at a given moment ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... with his whole wisdom of man packed up small for ready use, like a quack doctor," he said, as soon as they ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... 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

... which all present, but one, had heard a dozen times. It mattered the less, as it was a good one. Sir Charles capped it with a better. The Governor told a weird tale of Lunsford's men, the "babe-eating" regiment. Sir Charles recounted a little adventure of His Grace of Buckingham with a quack astrologer, a Court lady, and an orange girl, which made the company ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... 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 ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... thickened, and the word began to pass among the more desperate, "Lambe them, lads; lambe them!"—a cant phrase of the time, derived from the fate of Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack, who was knocked on the head by the rabble in ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... live on the farm! I love for to wander in the grass-green fields— Oh, a country life has the charm! I love for to wander in the garden— Down by the old haystack; Where the pretty little chickens go 'Kick-Kack-Kackle!' And the little docks go 'Quack! Quack!'" ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... is not interested to know that it might be measles, or it might be toothache. The patient wants to know what is the matter, and it is your business to tell it to him or he will go to a quack who ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... wiles of yonder quack Who stuffs the ears of all that pass. I—I alone can show that ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... search all round and upon every side, and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the part a tissue of fustian sentiment and big words; but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human nature appears, the politician or the stage-king is understood from point to point, from end to end. This is a degree of trouble which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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

... you impostors! Quack-salving cheating mountebanks!—your skill Is to make sound men sick, and sick men kill. 1411 MASSINGER: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... the calm, in the stillness of morn,— When to call 'em to breakfast Josh toots on the horn, The ducks gives a quack, and the caow gives a moo, And the childen chimes in with their ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... character types, such as are presented, for 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 from outside, gives a doubleness to the monologues ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... and "A-quack!" said the daughter, "We've never seen objects like this in the water! Suppose we submit it to old Mrs. Ewe? She's wise about wool, and has ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various

... As a 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

... curious impostor, known to his 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 ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... 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 am ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... the rush for consecrated candles was so great on the part of the more ignorant members of that Church, that the Bishop of the Diocese felt himself obliged to publicly rebuke the superstition. This credulity manifests itself in nearly every form of life. The quack doctors or medical impostors, to whom we shall devote this chapter, live upon it, and do all in ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... reason (distance and lack of roads) the boys and girls do not attend schools, and what little they know they learn from some ignorant teachers (maestrillos). People, ordinarily of bad life, escaped from other towns, some of whom are also quack doctors and bone-setters who at the same time that they are teaching the Cartilla and a little bit of the Catechism imbue the children with a thousand and one superstitions and all kinds of vices. The priest who at times goes, out of necessity, to attend to some ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera



Words linked to "Quack" :   unqualified, charlatan, doctor, practice of medicine, do, quack grass, utter, physician, let out, emit, let loose, medico, quack-quack, Dr., md, act, quackery



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