great cities, the abounding
success--financially--of the blue-glass cure, the faith cure, and of
science healing. The Rain Water Doctor worked wondrous miracles, and did
a vast and lucrative business until he was unluckily drowned in a
hogshead of his own medicine at his own door. Bishop Berkeley, in his
pamphlet Siris, started a flourishing tar-water craze, which lived long
and died slowly. This cure-all, like the preceding aquatic physic, had
the merit of being cheap. A quart of tar steeped for forty-eight hours
in a gallon of water, tainted the water enough to make it fit for
dosing. Perhaps the most expansive swindle was that of Dr. Perkins, with
his Metallic Tractors. He was born in Norwich, Conn., in 1740, and found
fortune and fame in his native land. Still he was expelled from the
association of physicians in his own country, but managed to establish a
Perkinean Institution in London with a fine, imposing list of officers
and managers, of whom Benjamin Franklin's son was one. He had poems and
essays and eulogies and books written about him, and it was claimed by
his followers that he cured one million and a half of sufferers. At any
rate, he managed to carry off L10,000 of good English money to New
England. His wonderful Metallic Tractors were little slips of iron and
brass three inches long, blunt at one end, and pointed at the other, and
said to be of opposite electrical conditions. They cost five guineas a
pair. When drawn or trailed for several minutes over a painful or
diseased spot on the human frame, they positively removed and cured all
ache, smart, or soreness. I have never doubted they worked wonderful
cures; so did bits of wood, of lead, of stone, of earthenware, in the
hands of scoffers, when the tractorated patients did not see the bits,
and fancied that the manipulator held Metallic Tractors.

As years passed on various useful medicines became too much the vogue,
and were used to too vast and too deleterious an extent, particularly
mercury. Many a poor salivated patient sacrificed his teeth to his
doctor's mercurial doses. One such toothless sufferer, a carpenter,
having little ready money, offered to pay his physician in hay-rakes;
and he took a revengeful delight in manufacturing the rakes of green,
unseasoned wood. After a few days' use in the sunny fields, the doctor's
rakes were as toothless as their maker.

Physicians' fees were "meene" enough in olden times; but sixpence a
visit in Hadley