The History of the Metallic Tractors, or Perkinism.

The first two illustrate the ease with which numerous facts are
accumulated to prove the most fanciful and senseless extravagances.

The third exhibits the entire insufficiency of exalted wisdom, immaculate
honesty, and vast general acquirements to make a good physician of a
great bishop.

The fourth shows us the intimate machinery of an extinct delusion, which
flourished only forty years ago; drawn in all its details, as being a
rich and comparatively recent illustration of the pretensions, the
arguments, the patronage, by means of which windy errors have long been,
and will long continue to be, swollen into transient consequence. All
display in superfluous abundance the boundless credulity and excitability
of mankind upon subjects connected with medicine.

"From the time of Edward the Confessor to Queen Anne, the monarchs of
England were in the habit of touching those who were brought to them
suffering with the scrofula, for the cure of that distemper. William the
Third had good sense enough to discontinue the practice, but Anne resumed
it, and, among her other patients, performed the royal operation upon a
child, who, in spite of his, disease, grew up at last into Samuel
Johnson. After laying his hand upon the sufferers, it was customary for
the monarch to hang a gold piece around the neck of each patient. Very
strict precautions were adopted to prevent those who thought more of the
golden angel hung round the neck by a white ribbon, than of relief of
their bodily infirmities, from making too many calls, as they sometimes
attempted to do. According to the statement of the advocates and
contemporaries of this remedy, none ever failed of receiving benefit
unless their little faith and credulity starved their merits. Some are
said to have been cured immediately on the very touch, others did not so
easily get rid of their swellings, until they were touched a second time.
Several cases are related, of persons who had been blind for several
weeks, and months, and obliged even to be led to Whitehall, yet recovered
their sight immediately upon being touched, so as to walk away without
any guide." So widely, at one period, was the belief diffused, that, in
the course of twelve years, nearly a hundred thousand persons were
touched by Charles the Second. Catholic divines; in disputes upon the
orthodoxy of their church, did not deny that the power had descended to
protestan