A Parody by R. F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 13, 1865

A Parody.

By R. F. Cottrell

Oh! for a lodge in some vast wilderness! Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumor of quack remedies afloat, Of pills and syrups, liniments and salves, Might never reach me more. My ear is pained, My soul is sick with every day's report Of "cures astonishing," which fill our prints. There is no nook in country merchants' stores That is not lined with bills. Th'old fashioned way, To wait till one is sick; then call a quack To feel the pulse, deal out the "fatal grains," Is all mere moonshine to the modern quack. He finds his fellows subject to disease In various forms; and having strong desire To fill his empty purse, and fearing lest Each invalid may not cast in his mite To fill that "aching void," he scruples not To write upon his label—"This cures all." (Much cheaper this, and safer far to boot, Than call a quack who lengthens out disease, And multiplies his visits by th'amount Of property of which you are possessed.) Thus man still cheats his brother and deceives. Some rob the industrious hand of what it earns— The toiling poor of their last piece of bread; But worst of all and most to be deplored, As human nature's broadest, foulest blot, When dire disease deprives the arm of strength, The poor, afflicted, like a drowning man, Would grasp at every straw to save himself; Quacks, with a heart more callous than the rest, Take his last mite and speed him to the grave, And leave his family to want and woe. Then what is man! And what man seeing this, And having human feelings, does not blush And hang his head, to think himself a man? I would not have a fortune thus acquired From the afflicted poor, for all the wealth Quack nostrums bought and sold have ever brought. No: dear as riches are, and in my heart's Fond estimation prized at all they're worth, I would much rather be myself the dupe, And buy the pills, than sell them to the sick. Quacks get no fees at our house; if their shade E'er falls within our door, they've lost their way. They send us pamphlets, but without effect. That's as it should be; and if every one Would serve them so, they surely must resort To some more honest way of gaining trash— The country freed from this its worst disease. R. F. COTTRILL. Selected for the Review.