Sep 23 2008
The History of Quack
On September 23, 1518, the Royal College of Physicians was established in London to protect citizens from medical charlatans and quacks.
The term “quack” was not always used to denote a fraudulent physician. During the bubonic plague epidemics in Europe, doctors brave enough to treat the ailing used protective measures similar to those used today, even though they did not yet understand how the disease was spread.
Heavy boots, long coats and gauntlets (long heavy gloves) protected them from the fleas that transmitted plague from rats to people and from person to person. They also wore respirators: cones of leather or stiff linen to filter the air, stuffed with aromatic herbs like rosemary, which minimized their olfactory exposure to the unsavory side effects of the sickness.
These respirators looked like beaks, giving the doctors an avian appearance. Thus the term “quack” – like a duck – was born.
