Physician and patient

by Worthington Hooker

The success of the Tractors was attested not only by multitudes of wealthy and titled and learned men, but even by many of the medical profession; and selfish motives were unhesitatingly attributed to all physicians who were unbelievers. A physician, who was of sufficient respectability to be a president of a medical society, said of such unbelievers, that “like infidels to the gospel, they admit of no mysteries, and refuse to believe what they do not readily comprehend.” Dr. Haygarth, an eminent physician of Bath, and some others, drew down a storm of public wrath upon their heads, because they asserted that a pair of wooden Tractors, painted so as to resemble the real metallic ones, had produced in their hands as marked effects as those which were purchased of Mr. Benjamin Douglass Perkins, at five guineas a pair. So strong was the hold which ‘the new science of Perkinism,’ as it was called, had obtained upon the public favor, that the son of the inventor of the Tractors was spoken of as being most unjustly persecuted by a large proportion of the medical profession; and his name was often associated with those of Galileo and Harvey and Jenner, who, it was said, had suffered like persecution before him, from the stereotyped hatred of everything that is new.

The efficacy of the Tractors was almost universally acknowledged; and the only difficulty seemed to be to account for their operation. Many ingenious electrical and galvanic theories were broached by learned men in England and in other countries. Perkinism, as it was called by acclamation, was hailed as one of the greatest of discoveries, and it was supposed to form a new era in medicine. The Tractors were sold in abundance at five guineas a pair. That the poor might be benefitted equally with the rich, the liberality of the British public was appealed to, and not in vain. A ‘Perkinean Institution’ was formed under the patronage of the first men in the kingdom. Lord Rivers was president, and there is a long list of titled vice presidents.

A pamphlet, giving an account of this institution was published, of which I have a copy. The regulations were evidently based upon the idea that it was to be a permanent establishment. One of them prescribes that a donation of ten guineas constitute a governor for life. As many ladies were very enthusiastic patrons of the Tractors, as they are now of infinitesimal globules, one of the regulations was, that “ladies have liberty to vote by proxy, given to any governor of the institution, or by letter to the chairman.”

In this account it is stated that the published cases of cures by the Tractors up to March, 1802, amounted to about five thousand. “Supposing,” the author goes on to say, “that not more that one cure in three hundred, which the Tractors have performed has been published, and the proportion is probably much greater, it will be seen that the number, to March, 1802, will have exceeded one million five hundred thousand. It is believed that no medical remedy ever yet discovered has been supported by so many well-authenticated and important cures, performed in so short a time.”

And now, I ask, where is the Perkinean Institution, with its troop of governors for life, and where is the Perkinean practice, with its list of five thousand published cures? The institution expired while the governors for life were almost to a man in the land of the living; and in less than ten years after the summing up of the five thousand cures, Perkinism was only thought of as a thing that was past, and the far-famed Tractors were almost forgotten.

And what became of Benjamin Douglass Perkins, who suffered for the cause of science and humanity such persecution as Galileo and Harvey and Jenner suffered before him? He returned to his native land with ten thousand pounds of John Bull’s money, as a reward of his patient endurance of persecution, and his active benevolence!

I might extend this notice of names which have been famous in the history of quackery, but it is not necessary. Those which I have noticed will answer as illustrations of the mode in which medical delusions obtain their hold upon the public mind, and of the facility with which each in its turn is supplanted by some other. The essential materials of quackery, as I remarked in the Preface, have been the same in all ages; and its history would be only a description of the endless forms into which these materials have been moulded. Great as is the variety in the series of phantasmagoria with which quackery has excited the wonder of the world, they have all been produced upon the same canvas, and by the same old magic lantern.

And busy and multiform as quackery has been, and lofty as have been its claims, I know not that it has ever made a single discovery in medicine. It may possibly have stumbled upon some discovery, but I am not aware that it has done even this. On the other hand, all the discoveries which have been made in the medical art, so far as I know, have been the results of a truly scientific observation, and fairly belong to that ‘regular’ profession, which so many consider as being opposed to everything which is new.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The following anecdote of an ignoramus, who set himself up as a doctor, furnishes a good illustration of this erroneous mode of reasoning. His first case was that of a butcher, who recovered. As he gave his patient beefsteak and wine quite liberally, he referred the cure to these articles, and put down in his note-book—beefsteak and wine will cure a butcher. His next case was that of a tailor, which, under the same treatment, resulted unsuccessfully. He, therefore, added to the above note—but will kill a tailor.