The Beat-Transfer: A Verbal Correction
BMJ · 1894
JOURNALISTS AND QUACKS.AFTER the Review of Reviews, the Daily News, after Mattei, Gatchkowsky.If the irresponsible, unblushing, and most mischievous patronage of the wildest and most senseless form of quackery were not nowadays so frequent in British journalism, the insertion of such an editorial paragraph as the subjoined in a journal of weight and standing, and enjoying a well-deserved political and literary reputation, would be incredible and impossible.But no excess of fatuous absurdity and no extremity of self-evident ignorance are beyond the credulity of the political journalist of to-day.Nevertheless, it was not without regret that we read in the Daily News of this week the subjoined editorial paragraph, which embodies, perhaps, as much impudent and mis- leading and extravagant pretension as any in the annals even of mediaeval darkness.The italics are ours." ' Vitaline,' a Cure for Consumption.-Abouteight years ago M. Gatch- kowsky, a Polish amateur chemist, struck, in the course of his medical studies, with the remarkable cures effected by the Chinese doctors, deter- mined to turn his energies in that direction, and, after a long series of experiments, succeeded in obtaining, as a result of an admixture of borax and glycerine (!), a compound for which the most extraordinary virtues are claimed.After elaborate analysis on the part of numerous celebrated (?) French doctors, 'Vitaline'-such being the name given by M. Gatch-