The word for today is…

charlatan (noun) – A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud.

Source : Merriam -Webster

Etymology : In medieval times, people claiming medical skills they did not have roamed throughout Italy, selling “medicine” that was often completely without worth. Many of these pretenders reputedly came from a village called Cerreto, and as a result, cerretano (meaning “inhabitant of Cerreto”) became an epithet for a quack physician. In addition, these frauds used a practiced patter to attract customers, rather like the chatter of a circus barker. The Italian word for “chatter” is ciarlare, and chattering was so associated with the cerretano that the spelling of the word shifted to ciarlatano. By the early 17th century, we had anglicized the Italian word to charlatan and adopted it as our own.

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David is a retired surgeon originally from London who came to New Zealand twenty-seven years ago after being delayed in Singapore for thirteen years on leaving the UK. He was coerced into studying Latin...