ho know of no
other interest than the luxury of relieving the distressed. And I do not
despair of seeing the day when but very few of this description as well
as private families will be without them."

Whether the motives assigned by this medical man to his professional
brethren existed or not, it is true that Dr. Perkins did not gain a great
deal at their hands. The Connecticut Medical Society expelled him in
1797 for violating their law against the use of nostrums, or secret
remedies. The leading English physicians appear to have looked on with
singular apathy or contempt at the miracles which it was pretended were
enacting in the hands of the apostles of the new practice. In looking
over the reviews of the time, I have found little beyond brief occasional
notices of their pretensions; the columns of these journals being
occupied with subjects of more permanent interest. The state of things
in London is best learned, however, from the satirical poem to which I
have already alluded as having been written at the period referred to.
This was entitled, "Terrible Tractoration!! A Poetical Petition against
Galvanizing Trumpery and the Perkinistic Institution. Most respectfully
addressed to the Royal College of Physicians, by Christopher Caustic, M.
D., LL. D., A. S. S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians,
Aberdeen, and Honorary Member of no less than nineteen very learned
Societies." Two editions of this work were published in London in the
years 1803 and 1804, and one or two have been published in this country.

"Terrible Tractoration" is supposed, by those who never read it, to be a
satire upon the follies of Perkins and his followers. It is, on the
contrary, a most zealous defence of Perkinism, and a fierce attack upon
its opponents, most especially upon such of the medical profession as
treated the subject with neglect or ridicule. The Royal College of
Physicians was the more peculiar object of the attack, but with this
body, the editors of some of the leading periodicals, and several
physicians distinguished at that time, and even now remembered for their
services to science and humanity, were involved in unsparing
denunciations. The work is by no means of the simply humorous character
it might be supposed, but is overloaded with notes of the most seriously
polemical nature. Much of the history of the subject, indeed, is to be
looked for in this volume.

It appears from this work that the principal members of