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A charlatan (also called a swindler or mountebank) is a person practicing
quackery
Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices. A quack is a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, ...
or a similar
confidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have ...
in order to obtain money, power, fame, or other advantages through
pretense or
deception. Synonyms for ''charlatan'' include ''
shyster
Shyster (also spelled ''schiester'', ''scheister'', ''shiester'', etc.) is a slang word for someone who acts in a disreputable, unethical, or unscrupulous way, especially in the practice of law, sometimes also politics or economics.
Etymology
Th ...
'', ''quack'', or ''faker''. ''Quack'' is a reference to ''
quackery
Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices. A quack is a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, ...
'' or the practice of dubious medicine, including the sale of
snake oil
Snake oil is a term used to describe deceptive marketing, health care fraud, or a scam. Similarly, "snake oil salesman" is a common expression used to describe someone who sells, promotes, or is a general proponent of some valueless or fraud ...
, or a person who does not have medical training who purports to provide medical services.
Etymology
The word comes from French '','' a seller of medicines who might advertise his presence with music and an outdoor stage show. The best known of the Parisian charlatans was
Tabarin
Tabarin was the street name assumed by the most famous of the Parisian street charlatans, Anthoine Girard (c. 1584 – August 16, 1633), who amused his audiences in the Place Dauphine by farcical dialogue with his brother Philippe (as Mondo ...
, whose skits and
farces were influenced by ''
commedia dell'arte'' inspired
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and worl ...
. The word can also be traced to Spanish ', an indiscreetly talkative person, a ''chatterbox''. Ultimately, etymologists trace ''charlatan'' from either the Italian ', to chatter or prattle; or from ''Cerretano'', a resident of
Cerreto, a village in
Umbria
it, Umbro (man) it, Umbra (woman)
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, known for its quacks.
Usage
A distinction is drawn between the charlatan and other kinds of confidence tricksters. The charlatan is usually a
sales
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale.
The seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in ...
person of a certain service or product, who has no personal relationship with his "marks" (customers or clients), and avoids elaborate
hoaxes or roleplaying con-games. Rather, the person called a charlatan is being accused of resorting to quackery,
pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable clai ...
, or other knowingly employed bogus means of impressing people in order to
swindle victims by selling them worthless
nostrums and similar goods or services that will
not deliver on the promises made for them. One example of a charlatan is a 19th-century
medicine show
Medicine shows were touring acts (traveling by truck, horse, or wagon teams) that peddled "miracle cure" patent medicines and other products between various entertainments. They developed from European mountebank shows and were common in the Unit ...
operator, who has long since left town by the time the people who bought his "snake oil" or similarly named "cure-all" tonic realize that it was a scam. A misdirection by a charlatan is a confuddle, a dropper is a leader of a group of conmen, and hangmen are conmen that present false checks. A gaff means to trick or con and a mugu is a victim of a rigged game.
In reported spiritual communications, a charlatan is a person who fakes evidence that a spirit is "making contact" with the medium and seekers. Notable people who have successfully debunked the claims of purported supernatural mediums include magician/scientific skeptic
James Randi
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skepticism, scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific cla ...
, Brazilian writer
Monteiro Lobato and magician
Harry Houdini.
Infamous individuals
*
Albert Abrams, the advocate of
radionics
Radionics—also called electromagnetic therapy (EMT) and the Abrams Method—is a form of alternative medicine that claims that disease can be diagnosed and treated by applying electromagnetic radiation (EMR), such as radio waves, to the bod ...
and other similar
electrical quackery
Energy medicine is a branch of alternative medicine based on a pseudo-scientific belief that healers can channel "healing energy" into a patient and effect positive results. Practitioners use a number of names including various synonyms for ...
who was active in the early twentieth century.
*
John R. Brinkley, the "goat-gland doctor" who implanted goat glands as a means of curing male impotence, helped pioneer both American and Mexican radio broadcasting, and twice ran unsuccessfully for governor of
Kansas
Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to th ...
.
*
Alfredo Bowman
Alfredo Darrington Bowman (26 November 1933 – 6 August 2016), better known as Dr. Sebi (), was a Honduran self-proclaimed herbalist healer, who also practiced in the United States in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Bowman claimed to c ...
, who claimed to cure all disease with herbs and a unique vegan, alkaline diet.
*
Alessandro Cagliostro
Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (, ; 2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795) was the alias of the Italian occultist Giuseppe Balsamo (; in French usually referred to as Joseph Balsamo).
Cagliostro was an Italian adventurer and self-styled magician ...
, (real name Giuseppe Balsamo) who claimed to be a
count
Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: ...
.
*
Billie Sol Estes, a famous Texas conman.
*
Gustavus Katterfelto, a Prussian
conjurer who used a solar microscope which he claimed could detect disease.
*
Ivar Kreuger
Ivar Kreuger (; 2 March 1880 – 12 March 1932) was a Swedish civil engineer, financier, entrepreneur and industrialist. In 1908, he co-founded the construction company Kreuger & Toll Byggnads AB, which specialized in new building techniques. B ...
, the Swedish "Match King", who ran a worldwide
Ponzi scheme in the 1920s.
*
Bernard Madoff
Bernard Lawrence Madoff ( ; April 29, 1938April 14, 2021) was an American fraudster and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion. He was at one time chairman of the NASDAQ ...
, an American stockbroker who ran the world's largest
Ponzi scheme, defrauding investors out of $18 billion.
*
Elisha Perkins, the inventor of his own quack therapy that utilized "tractors".
*
John Henry Pinkard, Roanoke businessman and purveyor of quack medicines.
*
Charles Ponzi, for whom the "
Ponzi scheme" is named, a scam that relies on a "pyramid" of "investors" who contribute money to a fraudulent programme, typically where monies from later investors are used to pay unusually high returns to earlier investors, thus allowing and promoting the growth of the scheme.
*
Gert Postel
Gert Uwe Postel (born June 18, 1958 in Bremen) is a German impostor, best known for successfully applying several times for public health positions as a medical doctor without ever having received medical education.
Gert Postel went to Hauptsc ...
, a German fraud who feigned experience in the field of psychiatry and became a senior physician, despite having no training.
*
Grigori Rasputin, a self-proclaimed holy man and healer who gained considerable influence on the family of
Tsar Nicholas II
Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Polan ...
and was involved in the political turmoil on the brink of the
Russian Revolution.
See also
*
Cerreto di Spoleto
Cerreto di Spoleto is an Italian village and ''comune'' of the province of Perugia in Umbria. It is a dispersed rural community with 1,158 inhabitants spread over 8 '' frazioni''. Its claim to fame is to be the root of the English term "charlatan" ...
*
Confidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have ...
*
Fraud
*
Impostor
An impostor (also spelled imposter) is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise. Their objective is usually to try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering, but also often for purposes ...
*
Poseur
A poseur is someone who poses for effect, or behaves affectedly, who affects a particular attitude, character or manner to impress others, or who pretends to belong to a particular group.
*
Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable clai ...
*
Quackery
Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices. A quack is a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, ...
References
Further reading
* Brock, Pope. (2009). ''Charlatan: The Fraudulent Life of John Brinkley''. Phoenix.
*
Humbertclaude, Éric. ''Récréations de Hultazob'' Paris: L'Harmattan 2010, (sur Melech August Hultazob, médecin-charlatan des Lumières Allemandes assassiné en 1743)
* Riordan, Timothy B. (2009). ''Prince of Quacks: The Notorious Life of Dr. Francis Tumblety, Charlatan and Jack the Ripper Suspect''. McFarland.
* Porter, Roy. (2003). ''Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in Medicine''. NPI Media Group.
*Stratmann, Linda. (2010). ''Fraudsters and Charlatans: A Peek at some of History's Greatest Rogues''. The History Press.
External links
*
{{Authority control
Deception
Pseudoscience