Free The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1 by Daniel Kraus Page A

Infancy And Childhood, THE CROUP, Is At Hand?
    YOU! Do Not Die The Most SHAMEFUL Way: The Sure-Killing Disease Of CONSTIPATION.
    Look Upon This Picture! And Imagine Your Bodily Self Rid, Like This Girl, Of Dropsy And Scrofula And Gout. See How She Is Now?
    The first thing the Barker did at any show was to isolate a boy in the crowd, beckon him close, and bid him to fetch a pitcher of water before the lecture began. For this paltry errand, the Barker gave the lucky lad the staggering sum of two dollars. Sometimes it was the last two dollars the Barker had, but the offhand way in which he bestowed it produced an expectant buzz among the commoners.What a success this man’s tonics must be to earn such disposable wealth! The people were snared; the Barker straightened his suit and noticed them as if by accident. Softly, then, he began.
    â€œWelcome, welcome all. I am Dr. Whistler, A.M., M.D., former lecturer on nervous diseases and neurasthenia at the University of the City of New York, fellow of the Boston Academy of Medicine, author of Every Man Is a Physician , author of A History of Groin Injuries , Medicinal Therapist to the Massachusetts State Women’s Hospital, and your most humble of servants. I arrive here with an esteemed assemblage of professionals eager to diagnose and prescribe.
    â€œIn the area to my right you see the Boardwalk of Chance, at which you may exercise the spirit with rousing tests of skill; to my left, the Gallery of Suffering, in which you will meet magnificent examples of those at the mercy of inexorable conditions, each of whom combats his or her affliction in a panoply of inspiring ways. It is our great pleasure to be here in Biddy Creek—” (or Sparrowville or Two-Bit Hill or Turd Town or what-have-you) “—and our great pleasure to cure every ailment that harasses you. Look this way—this way!—now!—for a medicine that you go without at great, great personal risk.”
    Thus began the choreographed bedlam. The old and infirm were helped to the stage to quiver before their neighbors. Liver pads were demonstrated. The inconvenience of ingesting tapeworm lozenges was weighed against the inconvenience of tapeworms. Fizzing healant miraculously closed a bloody wound that in reality was a glob of red paint. Twice a day they trotted out a harrowing display called the Museum of Venereal Hardship, during which a pitchman sold an ointment that I’d buy too, if still alive: Mumford’s Cure-All forYouthful Mistakes. Bottles, bags, vials, packets, jars—they streamed from stage to crowd as if they were bobbing along a rushing river.
    There was but a single booth that offered no jumping and shouting. There, a well-dressed attendant used only a placid smile to take money from those at death’s door. The oldest and sickest of townspeople, those past believing in cures, lined up to exchange their last few coins for cheap rosaries, poorly printed pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, flimsy wooden crosses slopped with gold paint. They clutched these talismans with palsied fingers and prayed for a bigger miracle than the easing of whooping cough or the shriveling of piles. These are the faces that haunt me to this day, so desperate were they to stave off the same Death that had already claimed Mr. Stick.
    Dusk seemed to convince folk, their pockets sagging with product, to pay out just a little more to enter the Gallery of Suffering. The lectures held within were but freak shows lent veneers of respectability by vague medical overtones. Little Johnny Grandpa was the opening act, and his routine revolved around the comic disparity of a withered old man promulgating the attitudes of the young. His “spontaneous” conversations were no doubt adorable but also scripted to the final word. Pills to ward off premature aging were sold afterward.
    The other performers I shall mention in brief. Vera Diana was a lissome Romanian who dressed in a snug garment on