quackishadj.

1670 Acct. Causes Distempers 42 The Publishing a Medicine..and crying up its virtues without giving a Rationale of the Disease, looks so rank Quackish, that every Man of Sense will..account it all bombast and splutter.

1704 T. Curteis Ess. Preserv. & Recovery Health i. 42 The most Quackish Pretender to Physick that ever mounted a Stage.

1732 A. Bower Historia Litteraria 3 558 To complete his quackish Farce [he] spread printed Bills all over Paris.

1774 A. Smith Let. 20 Sept. in Corr. (1977) cxxxxiii. 177 They should not have it in their power to use any of those quackish arts which have disgraced and degraded the half of them.

1800 Monthly Mag. 13 131 Regular, not quackish innovating practitioners.

1827 R. Pollok Course of Time II. viii. 139 With quackish ointment [he] healed the wounds And bruises of the soul, outside, but left Within the pestilent matter.

1865 Sat. Rev. Nov. 570 Another..confounds preaching the Gospel with a quackish interpretation of prophecies.

1902 Daily Chron. 3 July 3/5 If a layman invents a mode of treatment of which medical men approve, is such treatment to be styled quackish?

1947 Southern Econ. Jrnl. 14 34 We are engulfed in a great wave of quackish books on self-improvement.

1994 Crank Autumn 50 Very many great discoveries and inventions have this quackish origin.

1816 J. Gilchrist Philos. Etymol. 119 Do not let them..quackishly boast of new light and great discovery.

1846 Times 18 June 8 There never was a man who had more effectually endeavoured, not affectedly, and ostentatiously, and quackishly..to forward all fit and right schemes of education.

1997 Bks. in Canada (Nexis) Sept. 17 The traditional chiropractor, who quackishly believes our health is compressed in the spine.