138:3]

FOOTNOTES:

[135:1] M. Mallet, _Northern Antiquities_, p. 226.

[136:1] John Thrupp, _The Anglo-Saxon Home_.

[136:2] Nelson's _Encyclopaedia_.

[136:3] H. D. Traill, _Social England_, vol. ii, p. 110.

[136:4] Joseph Strutt, _Manners of the English_, vol. i, p. 17.

[136:5] Vol. iii, p. 455.

[138:1] _The Egil's Saga_, chap. 72.

[138:2] Jacob Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, pp. 1173-1174.

[138:3] George F. Fort, _Medical Economy in the Middle Ages_.

CHAPTER XII

METALLO-THERAPY

Metallo-therapy has been defined as a mode of treating various
affections, chiefly those of a nervous character, by the external
application of metals. It was recommended by Galen and other medical
writers, but they attributed its curative powers to the magical
inscriptions which the metals bore.

Mesmer experimented with magnets extensively, but soon abandoned their
use, as he found that he could obtain equally good results without them.

The so-called "metallic tractors" originated with Dr. Elisha Perkins
(1740-1799), a practising physician of Norwich, Connecticut, and
consisted of two rods, one of brass, and the other of steel. In cases of
rheumatism and various neuroses, the affected portions of the body were
lightly stroked by means of the tractors, and many remarkable cures were
reported. The new therapeutic method was endorsed by many reputable
practitioners, both in the United States and Europe, and its fame spread
like wild-fire.

It was soon discovered, however, that wooden tractors were fully as
efficacious as the metallic ones, and that the many vaunted cures were
psychic. Thus Perkins's tractors afford a striking example of the
curative force of suggestion.

Thereby (wrote John Haygarth, M.D., Fellow of the Royal Medical Society
of Edinburgh, in a brief treatise on the Imagination, published in the
year 1800) is to be learned an important lesson in Medicine, namely, the
wonderful and powerful influence of the passions of the mind, upon the
state and disorders of the body. This fact, he continued, was too often
overlooked in Practice, where sole dependence was placed upon material
remedies, without utilizing mental influence. To the latter, this
sagacious physician, writing more than a century ago, was shrewd enough
to ascribe the marvellous cures attributed to the remedies of quacks,
whose magnificent and unqualified promises inspire weak minds with
confidence.

In one of his Lowell Institu