medicaster

1. (dated, now chiefly literary) A quack doctor; someone who pretends to have medical knowledge.Examples: "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!"; "[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."Synonyms: quack, quacksalverdatedliterary