What is a 'respectable quack' ?

To answer this question, we shall examine the example of Dr. Walter Freeman. This fine gentleman was a very prominent psychiatrist of the early-to-mid 20th century and a pioneer in the introduction of prefrontal lobotomy as a radical cure for mental disease.


When this procedure was introduced in the '40s it was considered as a panacea, and Dr. Freeman gained incredible popularity, performing the operation almost 3000 times, in an attempt to cure a wide spectrum of conditions ranging from schitzophrenia to sexual disorders. He was a very respectable gentleman. So respectable that even the Kennedy family entrusted him with the health of their daughter, Rosemary, whose alleged mood swings were treated with a lobotomy performed by Dr.Freeman.

Twenty years later, research data had started showing that prefrontal lobotomy wasn't the miracle cure that psychiatrists had believed it to be and the discovery of antipsychotic medicine accelerated the marginalisation of psychosurgery even more. Dr.Freeman, though, continued advocating and performing the procedure, and managed to lose his medical licence in the process. He no longer was respectable.

Fourty years later, lobotomy was outlawed in many US states and was widely considered by the public as one of the most barbaric treatments ever devised. A true shame for medical science. It was now clear that the ex-respectable Dr.Freeman (who had died in 1972) would finally remain in history as a most prominent quack.

The above example is very characteristic of a danger that no doctor (or, in our cases, future doctor) should ignore. We should never have too much faith in ourselves or our knowledge. Medicine is changing every day, new cures are discovered and old cures are rendered obsolete. We must be aware of this fact and constantly be on the lookout for signs that some of our miracle cures might not be so miraculous after all.

This is what 'respectable quack' means. A person who is a highly regarded professional, but still remains fully aware that his knowledge is both limited and mostly empirical, acting accordingly.