Quackery

Quackery is a derogatory term used to describe the promotion of unproven or fraudulent medical practices.

Sourced

• You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? - Medicine.
  • Tim Minchin, comedian

• Orthodox medicine has not found an answer to your complaint. However, luckily for you, I happen to be a quack.
  • Caption from a Mischa Richter cartoon

• I bought an unction of a mountebank,
  So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
  Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
  Collected from all simples that have virtue
  Under the moon, can save the thing from death
  That is but scratch'd withal.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act IV, scene 7, line 142.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 652.

• Void of all honor, avaricious, rash,
  The daring tribe compound their boasted trash—
  Tincture of syrup, lotion, drop, or pill;
  All tempt the sick to trust the lying bill.
  • George Crabbe, Borough, Letter VII, line 75.

• From powerful causes spring the empiric's gains,
  Man's love of life, his weakness, and his pains;
  These first induce him the vile trash to try,
  Then lend his name, that other men may buy.
  • George Crabbe, Borough, Letter VII, line 124.

• Out, you impostors!
  Quack salving, cheating mountebanks! your skill
  Is to make sound men sick, and sick men kill.
  • Philip Massinger, Virgin-Martyr, Act IV, scene 1.