"...an idiot of the 33rd degree." What is that? Like a black belt in idiocy. No, Mark Twain was not talking about the recently extra-disgraced Andrew Wakefield (FoI #3). No, he was talking about patent medicine salesman JH Todd. This has been making the rounds, but is well worth two or three reads.

Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd 

1212 Webster St.

San Francisco, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and
exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of
intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying
advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who
wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now
alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the
33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching
back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand
could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles
fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a
moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who
has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded
and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while
there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own
poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and
all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do
so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

*Transcript from Letters of Note
**Originally seen at BoingBoing