Word of the Day: quackery

The word quackery has appeared in four articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Aug. 15 in the book review “A Reason to Cheer for Cells and the Viruses That Feed on Them” by Alex Johnson:

In the 1910s, more than a decade before the discovery of penicillin, the self-fashioned microbiologist Felix d’Herelle was growing diarrhea-inducing bacteria in his lab. A scientist of few credentials and uncertain birth — no one knows if he was French, Belgian or Canadian — d’Herelle hoped to start an epidemic of the runs among a plague of locusts in Mexico and thus kill them off.

While cultivating his deadly microbial soup, he noticed something strange. A mysterious entity had left holes in one of his thin films of bacteria. He took samples from within the holes, spread them on other plates of bacteria and got the same effect. More holes! He knew he had something, but what was it? The culprit, it would later turn out, was a phage, a kind of virus that “eats” bacteria.

… In the hands of d’Herelle and others, the phage became a potent tool in the fight against cholera. But, in the 1940s, when the discovery of the methods to produce penicillin at an industrial scale led to the “antibiotic era,” phage therapy came to be seen as quackery in Europe and America, in part, Ireland suggests, because antibiotics, unlike phages, fit the mold of capitalist society.

Daily Word Challenge

Can you correctly use the word quackery in a sentence?

Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.

Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.

If you want a better idea of how quackery can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.