Medicaster

Quick meaning: Medicaster is a noun meaning (dated, now chiefly literary) A quack doctor; someone who pretends to have medical knowledge.

Meaning

(dated, now chiefly literary) A quack doctor; someone who pretends to have medical knowledge.

Example Sentences

[I]t [opium] is a double-edged sword, a divine gift in the hands of a master, a poison in those of a mere routinist—a medicaster—a demi-physician.

[I]f pushed, I would judge that many of those ‘medicasters’ and ‘charlatans’ commonly arraigned as tricksters were less cheats than zealots: if we are to speak of delusion, it is primarily self-delusion[…].

But these innovating Medicaſters have introduced a Practice not only very precarious, but in many Reſpects extremely dangerous, and quite devoid of any one of the Qualities which conſtitute a good Remedy, viz. to cure the Patient, as the Axiom has it, cito, tuto, & jucunde, i.e. ſpeedily, ſafely, and pleaſantly.

The most idiotic medicaster, when he had named, or, as they term it, diagnosticated a typhoid fever, found himself upon a level with the medical celebrities of the epoch. […] If the patient died, that was perfectly simple: he had a typhoid fever to which he was inevitably doomed to succumb! If he recovered, what a noble triumph for the medicaster, even when he had perhaps arbitrarily imposed the name of typhoid upon a simple and benignant fever, as is constantly done!

Word Forms

• medicasters

Synonyms for medicaster

Depending on context, synonyms include quack, quacksalver.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include mediciner, medician, medical, salver, medic, mercurialist.

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