Tuttle, Weeks & Dennett, Printers....School Street.
PREFACE.
In submitting the present edition of the following poem, entitled Terrible Tractoration, to the American public, the author complies not only with solicitations of personal friends, but with expressed wishes of many gentlemen to whom he is personally a stranger. They say that by stripping folly of some of its disguises, and plucking the mask of deception from that impudent charlatanry, which encumbers the “march of improvement,” this burlesque production may be of service to mankind.
The origin of the poem entitled Tractoration, is as follows: In the year 1801 the author, (who is a native of Walpole, New Hampshire,) was in London, on business as an agent for a Company in Vermont. In that Metropolis he became acquainted with Mr Benjamin Douglas Perkins, proprietor of a patent right for making and using certain implements, called Metallic Tractors. These were said to cure diseases in all or nearly all cases of topical inflammation, by conducting from the diseased part the surplus of electric fluid which in such cases, causes or accompanies the morbid affection. At the request of that gentleman, the author undertook to make the Tractors the theme of a satirical effusion in Hudibrastic verse. This was originally intended for the corner of a newspaper, but subsequently in the first edition enlarged to a pamphlet of about fifty pages royal octavo. It was published in the summer of 1803, well received, and a second edition called for in less than two months. A new and enlarged edition was put to press, and met with a favorable reception both from the public and the reviewers. From the success which attended Tractoration, the author was induced to publish in London a small volume of Original Poems, which was well received and favorably reviewed.
The author never would have written a syllable intended to give Metallic Tractors favorable notoriety, had he not believed in their efficacy. As conductors of what is called animal electricity, and in principle allied to Galvanic stimulants, even their modus operandi, he thought, might be in a great measure explained. Respectable English Reviews and other periodicals gave favorable notices of the Tractors, and Mr Perkins exhibited to the author testimonials in favor of those implements from several professors of universities, many regular physicians, surgeons, clergymen, and others, men of as high standing and influence as any in community.
But although the author was willing to aid the proprietor of the tractors, he did not confine himself to topics connected with those implements. He made use of Tractoration as the title, and the tractors as the apology for a poem, in which he essayed to paint
——“every idle thing