Mountebank

Use in the book

The discussion passes from optical illusions and a qualified report about Roger Bacon to deceptive sounds. Mountebanks join jugglers, exorcists and mass priests in a collective accusation: voices can be made to seem distant or supernatural, leaving listeners astonished and frightened. The point is a manufactured experience presented as contact with spirits. The grouping carries Burton’s religious polemic; it is not an independently verified account of every person in those occupations.

In the defence of medicine, the force is professional. Burton distinguishes those who take the physician’s name from someone genuinely learned, skilful and honest. Mountebanks and quacksalvers belong to the former list, alongside empirics. The accusation is that their conduct brings the art into disrepute, not that medicine itself is fraudulent.

The same vocabulary participates in social criticism. Poor vicars are said to be forced into remedy selling by inadequate support. In the account of overcrowded professions, a hostile list of rival practitioners raises the question of how trained physicians can earn a living. These passages explain why imposture, competition and patronage repeatedly meet in Burton’s medical vocabulary.

The imagination passage complicates any easy equation between denunciation and sheer inefficacy: it speaks of cures associated with mountebanks and wizards, while explaining the effects through strong belief and imagination. That is a historical claim about the cause of the reported result, not independent proof of a treatment. Its body-text incredulity and marginal credulity also remain different readings; the account cannot be silently harmonized.

Related entries

Physick

Physician

Empiric

Paracelsian

Imagination

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 16–19Medical makeshifts and clerical poverty.
2. Subsection 2. The Power of Imagination · paragraphs 27–30Reported cures explained through imagination, with a body–margin discrepancy.
3. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on The… · paragraphs 37–39Competition among practitioners in the misery-of-scholars discussion.
4. Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraph 28 through Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraph 1Optical and auditory deception; mountebanks in the fabricated-voices catalogue.
5. Member 4. Subsection 1. Physician, Patient, Medicine · paragraphs 3–5Mountebanks and quacksalvers contrasted with the qualified physician.

In this edition

“Mass-Priests and Mountebanks” becomes “mass priests and quacks.” The word quacks offers a familiar disparaging equivalent while the rest of the group preserves the religious polemic. “Mountebanks, Quacksalvers” becomes “mountebanks, quacks”: one historical label is retained and the other clarified.

The neighbouring empirics are untrained practitioners in this particular professional contrast. That rendering must not be turned into a judgment on modern empirical science, nor does Burton give every occurrence of empiric exactly the same condemnatory force. “Mountebanks and Wizards” becomes “quacks and wizards,” within the attributed explanation through belief.

Mountebank

Printed “Mountebanks” (English; family).

A disparaging name for public performers and sellers of dubious remedies.

Here: Mountebanks join a catalogue of people alleged to manufacture voices and frighten listeners into believing in spirits.

Context: The collective allegation is Burton’s, attributed in part to Roger Bacon; the anti-Catholic grouping is polemical.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Mass-Priests and Mountebanks

Modern rendering: mass priests and quacks

Word and construction: Mountebanks supplies quacks; Mass-Priests supplies mass priests within the coordinated group.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Mountebanks” (English; family).

Here: Remedy sellers are contrasted with the competent, learned, skilful and honest physician.

Context: Burton accuses these practitioners of assuming a title and thereby discrediting medicine.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Mountebanks, Quacksalvers

Modern rendering: mountebanks, quacks

Word and construction: Mountebanks is retained as mountebanks; the following Quacksalvers is separately rendered quacks.

Sense relation: The same lexical sense in a further distinct local use or qualification.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “mountebanks” (English; family).

Here: The occupation is one of the makeshifts into which poor vicars are said to be forced.

Context: The hostile vocabulary operates within an attack on patrons who fail to support their clergy.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: mountebanks, quacksalvers, empiricks

Modern rendering: mountebanks, quacks, and empirical healers

Word and construction: Mountebanks is retained as mountebanks; quacksalvers and empiricks supply the other two items, quacks and empirical healers.

Sense relation: The same lexical sense in a further distinct local use or qualification.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Mountebanks” (English; family).

Here: The term occurs among practitioners whose reported cures Burton explains through imagination and belief.

Context: The explanation is presented with authorities and an unresolved difference between incredulity in the body and credulity in the margin.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Mountebanks and Wizards

Modern rendering: quacks and wizards

Word and construction: Mountebanks supplies quacks; Wizards supplies wizards in the coordinated phrase.

Sense relation: The same lexical sense in a further distinct local use or qualification.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Quacksalver

Printed “Quacksalvers” (English; lemma).

Sellers or dispensers of supposed cures, named disparagingly.

Here: The paired term joins mountebanks in a professional contrast; it is not a neutral synonym for every physician.

Context: Burton’s list condemns unqualified claimants to medical authority.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Mountebanks, Quacksalvers

Modern rendering: mountebanks, quacks

Word and construction: Quacksalvers supplies quacks; the preceding Mountebanks is separately retained as mountebanks.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.