The Fool Killer was evidently just as active one hundred and fifty years ago as he is now, and the problems of the medical profession in dealing with him were just as real. In illustration of this we publish below the "Epitaph on a Patient Killed by a Cancer Quack," written by Dr. Lemuel Hopkins. It is interesting to see that more than a hundred and fifty years ago, at a time when we are prone to regard medicine as being in the dark ages, an intelligent physician's view of the quacks' treatment of cancer differed in nowise from the view of the physicians of the present day.
Dr. John E. Lane, who numbers among his other scholarly attainments that of medical antiquarian, gives the following account of the author:
Dr. Lemuel Hopkins was born in Naugatuck, Conn., June 19, 1750. He began to practice in Litchfield in 1776. He