Hl mencken essays

Hl mencken essays

Jan 03,  · As shown in H.L. Mencken on the Writing Life, Mencken was an influential satirist as well as an editor, literary critic, and longtime journalist with The Baltimore Sun. As you read his arguments in favor of the death penalty, consider how (and why) Mencken injects humor into his discussion of a grim subject. His satirical use of the persuasive essay format uses irony and sarcasm to help make his blogger.comtion: English And Rhetoric Professor May 01,  · Journalist H.L. Mencken was renowned for his playfully combative prose style and his politically incorrect points of view. First published in "Prejudices: Sixth Series" in , Mencken's essay "The Libido for the Ugly" stands as a powerful exercise in hyperbole and invective. Note his reliance on concrete examples and precise, descriptive blogger.comtion: English And Rhetoric Professor H.L. Mencken essaysIn order to have an opinion regarding the controversial views of artist and their work; one must come to terms with the meaning of art. Art is abstract, it involves the ordinary and entwining it into a creation of many dimensions. Art is creativity, expression, rebirth and a state

Hl mencken essays

This preposterous quackery flourishes lushIy in the back reaches of the Republic, hl mencken essays, and begins to conquer the less civilized folk of the big cities. As the old-time family doctor dies out in the country towns, hl mencken essays, with no competent successor willing to take over his dismal business, he is followed by some hearty blacksmith or ice-wagon driver, turned into a chiropractor in six months, often by correspondence.

In Los Angeles the Damned, there are probably more chiropractors than actual physicians, and they are far more generally esteemed. That pathology is grounded upon the doctrine that all human ills are caused by pressure of misplaced vertebrae upon the nerves which come out of hl mencken essays spinal cord — in other words, that every disease is the result of a pinch. This, plainly enough, is buncombe. The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such pinches is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover.

This, obviously, is buncombe doubly damned. Both doctrines were launched upon the world by an old quack named Andrew T. Still, the father of osteopathy. For years the osteopaths merchanted them, and made money at the trade. But as they grew opulent they grew ambitious, i. The high-toned osteopath of today is a sort of eclectic. He tries anything that promises to work, from tonsillectomy to the x-rays. Thus enlightened, he seldom has much to say about pinched nerves in the back, hl mencken essays.

But as he abandoned the Still revelation it was seized by the chiropractors, led by another quack, one Palmer. This Palmer grabbed the pinched nerve nonsense and began teaching it hl mencken essays ambitious farm-hands and out-at-elbow Baptist preachers in a few easy lessons.

Today the backwoods swarm with chiropractors, and in most States they have been able to exert enough pressure on the rural politicians to get themselves licensed. Large numbers of rustic legislators are themselves believers in chiropractic. So are many members of Congress. No education beyond the elements is necessary. The takings are often high, and so the profession has attracted thousands of recruits — retired baseball players, work-weary plumbers, truck-drivers, longshoremen, bogus dentists, dubious preachers, cashiered school superintendents.

Now and then a quack of some other school — say homeopathy — plunges into it. Hundreds of promising students come from the intellectual ranks of hospital orderlies.

Such quackeries suck in the botched, and help them on to bliss eternal. When these botched fall into the hands of competent medical men they are very likely to be patched up and turned loose hl mencken essays the world, to beget their kind. But massaged along the backbone to cure their lues [syphylis], they quickly pass into the last stages, and so their pathogenic heritage perishes with them. What is too often forgotten is that nature obviously intends hl mencken essays botched to die, and that every interference with that benign process is full of dangers.

That the labors of quacks tend to propagate epidemics and so menace the lives of all of us, as is alleged by their medical opponents — this I doubt, hl mencken essays. The fact is that most infectious diseases of hl mencken essays seriousness throw out such alarming symptoms and so quickly that no sane chiropractor is likely to monkey with them.

Seeing his patient breaking out in pustules, or choking, or falling into a stupor, he takes to the woods at once, hl mencken essays, and leaves the business to the nearest medical man. His trade is mainly with ambulant patients; they must come to his studio for treatment. Most of them have lingering diseases; they tour all the neighborhood doctors before they reach him.

His treatment, being nonsensical, is in accord with the divine plan. It is seldom, perhaps, that he actually kills a patient, but at all events he keeps any a worthy soul from getting well. The osteopaths, I fear, are finding this new competition serious and unpleasant.

As I have said, it was their Hippocrates, the late Dr. Still, who invented all of the thrusts, lunges, yanks, hl mencken essays, hooks and bounces that the lowly chiropractors now employ with such vast effect, and for years the osteopaths had a monopoly of them. But when they began to grow scientific and ambitious their course of training was lengthened until it took in all sorts of tricks and dodges borrowed from the regular doctors, or hl mencken essays men, including the plucking of tonsils, adenoids and appendices, the use of the stomach-pump, and even some of the legerdemain of psychiatry.

They now harry their students furiously, and turn them out ready for anything from growing hair on a bald head to frying a patient with the x-rays. All this new striving, of course, quickly brought its inevitable penalties. Worse, very few aspirants could make the long grade. The essence of osteopathy itself could be grasped by any lively farmhand or night watchman in a few weeks, but the borrowed magic baffled him, hl mencken essays.

Confronted by the phenomenon of gastrulation, or by the curious behavior of heart muscle, or by any of the current theories of immunity, he commonly took refuge, like his brother of the orthodox faculty, in a gulp of laboratory alcohol, or fled the premises altogether.

Thus he was lost to osteopathic science, and the chiropractors took him in; nay, they welcomed him. He was their meat. Borrowing that primitive part of osteopathy which was comprehensible to the meanest understanding, they threw the rest overboard, at the same time denouncing it as a sorcery invented by the Medical Trust.

Thus they gathered in the garage mechanics, ash-men and decayed welterweights, hl mencken essays, and the land began to fill with their graduates, hl mencken essays. Now there is a chiropractor at every crossroads.

I repeat that it eases and soothes me to see them so prosperous, for they counteract the evil work of the so-called science of public hygiene, which now seeks to make imbeciles immortal.

And if that same man, having achieved lawfully a lovely babe, hires a blacksmith to cure its diphtheria by pulling its neck, then I do not resist the divine will that there shall be one less radio hl mencken essays later on.

In such matters, I am convinced, the laws of nature are far better guides than the fiats and machinations of medical busybodies. If the hl mencken essays gentlemen had their way, death, save at the hands of hangmen, policemen and other hl mencken essays legalized assassins, would be abolished altogether, and the present differential in favor of the enlightened would disappear, hl mencken essays.

On the contrary, it seems to me that the current coddling of the half-witted should be stopped before it goes too far if, indeed, it has not gone too far already.

To that end nothing operates more cheaply and effectively than the prosperity of quacks. Every time a bottle of cancer oil goes through the mails Homo americanus is improved to that extent. And every time a chiropractor spits on his hands and proceeds to treat a gastric ulcer by stretching the backbone the same high end is achieved. But chiropractic, of course, is not perfect.

It has superb potentialities, but only too often they are not converted hl mencken essays concrete cadavers. The hygienists rescue many of its foreordained customers, and, turning them over to agents of the Medical Trust, maintained at the public expense, get them cured.

Moreover, chiropractic itself is not certainly fatal: even an Iowan with diabetes may survive its embraces. Yet worse, I have a suspicion that it sometimes actually cures.

For all I know or any orthodox pathologist seems to know it may be true that certain malaises are caused by the pressure of vagrant vertebra upon the spinal nerves. And it may be true that a hearty ex-boilermaker, by a vigorous yanking and kneading, may be able to relieve that pressure. What is needed is a scientific inquiry into the matter, under rigid test conditions, hl mencken essays, by a committee of men learned in the architecture and plumbing of the body, and of a high and incorruptible sagacity.

Let a thousand patients be selected, let a gang of selected chiropractors examine their backbones and determine what is the matter with them, hl mencken essays, and then let these diagnoses be checked up by the exact methods of scientific medicine. Then let the same chiropractors essay to cure the patients whose maladies have been determined.

But I am willing to be convinced. Where is there is such a committee to be found? The land swarms with men competent in anatomy and pathology, hl mencken essays, and yet not engaged as doctors, hl mencken essays. There are thousands of hospitals, with endless clinical material. I offer to supply the committee with cigars and music during the test.

I offer, further, to supply both the committee and the chiropractors with sound wet goods. I offer, finally, to give a bawdy banquet to the whole Medical Trust at the conclusion of the proceedings.

Henry Louis Mencken was a controversial American journalist, essayist and literary critic. During the s, he became famous for his vitriolic attacks on what he considered to be the hypocrisy, hl mencken essays, and bigotry of much of American life. For obvious reasons, his critics considered him highly skilled at satire but intolerant and often crude.

This essay was published in the Baltimore Evening Sun in December Although the medical knowledge of his day was still quite primitive, hl mencken essays, Mencken knew enough to realize that chiropractic theory was preposterous. This new edition of the most comprehensive text available in the field continues to provide a vast amount of information to enable consumers to make wise choices regarding health products and services. It offers a panoramic view of the health marketplace, while explaining the scientific methods that are essential for validating claims about how products and services affect health.

Order on Amazon. Index to OIG Reports Including How Medicare Can Detect Improper Claims. Chiropractic Income Has Been Dropping Steadily. Consumer Reports Gives Bad Advice about Chiropractors. Can Chiropractic Become a Respected Mainstream Profession? Be Wary of Spinal Decompression Therapy with VAX-D or Similar Devices. Improper Claims on Chiropractic College Web Sites.

Answers to Questions about Chiropractic. A Close Look at the NutriMost Ultimate Fat Loss System. Quackwatch abides by the HONcode principles of the Health On the Net Foundation. We've recently redesigned this website, let us know if anything got lost or broken during the move. All articles on this Web site except government reports are copyrighted.

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Chirobase Home Page Share, hl mencken essays. Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions This new edition of the most comprehensive text available in the field continues to provide a vast amount of information to enable consumers to make wise choices regarding health products and services, hl mencken essays.

Index to OIG Reports Including How Medicare Can Detect Improper Claims Chiropractic Income Has Been Dropping Steadily Consumer Reports Gives Bad Advice about Chiropractors Can Chiropractic Become a Respected Mainstream Profession? Notice an error on this page?

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H.L. Mencken essays

Jan 03,  · As shown in H.L. Mencken on the Writing Life, Mencken was an influential satirist as well as an editor, literary critic, and longtime journalist with The Baltimore Sun. As you read his arguments in favor of the death penalty, consider how (and why) Mencken injects humor into his discussion of a grim subject. His satirical use of the persuasive essay format uses irony and sarcasm to help make his blogger.comtion: English And Rhetoric Professor Henry Louis Mencken () was a controversial American journalist, essayist and literary critic. During the s, he became famous for his vitriolic attacks on what he considered to be the hypocrisy, stupidity, and bigotry of much of American blogger.comted Reading Time: 7 mins Hl mencken essays. Hl mencken essays. Hall university press release for literary reputation as unthinkable as i believe that religion and social critic, Learn everything else is right about hl mencken - get a multitude of h. Happy days one of the urge to discharge it. Published , humorous journalist in his satirical essays, and h