University of Virginia Library

These are among the patients whose cures are attested in Perkins's publication, in which he has introduced them to show that his tractors do not cure by an influence on the imagination. The fallacy of any deductions, drawn from such cases, in favor of the tractors, will be apparent from the following most learned and elaborate investigation of the subject.

There are no animals in existence, I shall incontestably prove, that are more susceptible of impressions from imagination, than those above mentioned.

To begin with the crow. Strong mental faculties ever indicate a vivid imagination; and what being, except Minerva's beauty, the owl, is more renowned for such faculties than the crow?—Who does not know that he will smell gunpowder three miles, if it be in a gun, and he imagine it be intended for his destruction? These emblems of sagacity, besides “fetching and carrying like a spaniel,” and talking as well or better than colonel Kelly's parrot (which by the by I suspect to have been a crow) are, as Edwards assures us in his Natural History, “the planters of all sorts of wood and trees.” “I observed,” says he, “a great quantity of crows very busy at their work. I went out of my way on purpose to view their labor, and I found they were planting a grove of oaks.”

Vol. v. Pref. xxxv.

These geniuses always can tell, and always have told, since the days of Virgil, the approach of rain. That poet says,

They can likewise tell when bad news is approaching, as we learn from the same writer,

Now I beg leave to know what mortal can do more? and to suppose a crow not blessed with those more brilliant parts, under which imagination is classed, is to do them a singular injustice, which I shall certainly resent on every occasion.

Now as to infants. Whoever has been in the way of an acquaintance with some of the more musical sort of these little gentry (like my seven last darlings for instance) and has been serenaded with the dulcet sonatas of their warbling strains, will not be disposed to deny their powers on the imagination of others. I have known the delusion practised so effectually by these young conjurers, that I have myself imagined my head was actually aching most violently, even on the point of cracking open; but on going beyond the reach of their magic spell, that is, out of hearing, my head has been as free from pain as it necessarily must be at this moment, while I am penning this lucid performance. Now, I maintain it to be most unphilosophical, and totally opposite to certain new principles in ethics, which I shall establish in a future publication, to suppose that infants should be able to impart either pleasure or pain, by operating on the imagination, and not themselves possess a large share of that imagination, by the aid of which they operate to so much effect upon others.

Next come dogs. Dr Shaw, in his Zoology, vol. i. p. 289, informs us, “that a dog belonging to a nobleman of the Medici family always attended his master's table, changed the plates for him, carried him his wine in a glass placed on a salver, without spilling the smallest drop.” The celebrated Leibnitz mentions another, a subject of the elector of Saxony, who could discourse in an “intelligible manner,” especially on “tea, coffee, and chocolate;” whether in Greek, Latin, German, or English, however, he has not stated; but Dr Shaw, alluding to the same dog, says, undoubtedly under the influence of prejudice, “he was somewhat of a truant, and did not willingly exert his talents, being rather pressed into the service of literature.”

Indeed, our greatest naturalists assure us, that this animal is far before the human species in every ennobling quality. Buffon makes man a very devil compared with the dog; and had he come directly to the point, I presume he would have told us that the dog is one link above man in the great chain from the fossil to the angel. “Without the dog,” says Buffon, “how could man have been able to tame and reduce other animals into slavery? To serve his own safety, it was necessary to make friends among those animals whom he found capable of attachment. The fruit of associating with the dog was the conquest and the peaceable possession of the earth. The dog will always preserve his empire. He reigns at the head of a flock, and makes himself better understood than the voice of the shepherd” (well he might, for it appears he is more knowing, more powerful, and more just.) “Safety, order, and discipline, are the fruits of his vigilance and activity. They are a people submitted to his management, whom he conducts and protects, and against whom he never employs force but for the preservation of peace and good order.”

Barr's Buffon, vol. v. p. 302.

It is to me somewhat remarkable that theorizing Frenchmen, many of whose discoveries are scarcely less important than my own, cannot make them apply in such a manner as to effect some practical good in society. Buffon discovered that a dog was a species of demi-god, and appears on the point of worshipping this great Anubis of the Egyptians. Voltaire tells us, that Frenchmen are half monkey and half tiger, and everybody knows that the one is insufferably mischievous, and the other infinitely ferocious. Now it is surprising that these philosophers could not contrive to improve the breed by a little of the canine blood. Indeed, I should advise them to import some of our Bond street male puppies, to be paired with French female monkeys, and I will venture to assert that there will be very little of the tiger perceivable in their offspring. And since a dog, as Buffon says, “reigns with so much dignity at the head of a flock, will always preserve his empire, never employs force but for the preservation of peace and good order,” and is endowed with so many other great qualifications, which seem to denote him to be a proper personage to wield the sceptre of dominion, I would seriously advise the abbe Sieyes, when he frames his 999th Constitution for the free French Republic (which it is said he has already begun to manufacture) so to organize the executive branch, that at least one of the consuls should be a true blooded English bull-dog.

After the ample proof I have now given of the infinite superiority of the dog to man, when his merits are fairly estimated, which it is very difficult for us, being interested, to do without prejudice, I shall take it for granted, that he must possess all the brilliancy even of a poet's imagination, and therefore that he is far more likely to be cured by imagination than man.

It now remains to speak of horses, and these (not to mention the Bucephalus of Alexander, or the Pegasus of doctor Caustic) I shall show, in a very few words, can boast of performances and qualifications, to which a lively fancy in the comparison is but as the wit of an oyster to the wisdom of philosopher. One of the most scientific nations that ever existed, renowned alike for its refinements in the arts, and prowess in war, has been compelled to yield the palm to the superior attainments of a horse, and aknowledge its inability to achieve what he most readily effected. Ten long years was the whole power of Greece engaged in an ineffectual siege of far-famed Troy. The bravest of armies, commanded by heroes allied to the gods, assailed the foe in vain. At this disheartening period stepped forth a wooden horse and promised a victory, provided his plans were adopted. Aware of the horse's great capacity, which enabled him to comprehend a great number of subjects, the sagacious Greeks entered into his measures, and Troy was levelled in the dust.

If all this could have been accomplished by a wooden horse, none but a Perkinite will be so absurd as to pretend that one composed of flesh and blood, like man, does not enjoy far greater privileges, among which are those of receiving as many cures by the influence of imagination as he pleases.

Now then, gentlemen, I trust that if any man will con over, digest, comprehend, and admit this my ingenious and learned exposition of the fallacy of the arguments in favor of the tractors, so much harped upon by our adversaries, which are drawn from the circumstance of their having cured crows and infants, dogs and horses, he will with great facility be enabled to confound and overthrow them on all occasions, provided he enforce and proclaim it with the ardency its importance deserves.

So said the learned bishop Berkley, in a scientific treatise called Principles of Human Knowledge, in which his reverence makes it apparent, to those who have a clue to his metaphysical labyrinth, that there is no such thing as matter, entity, or sensation, distinct from the mind which perceives, or thinks it perceives, such ideas or substances. The bishop's authority being so pat in point, I cannot but admire that it has not more frequently been adduced in opposition to the tractors.

This CAPITAL argument, that it might make a CAPITAL figure, I have ordered my printer to put in CAPITAL letters, and I hope it will make a CAPITAL impression on your worshipful intellects. But still I have not given it half that pre-eminence which its importance claims, under existing circumstances. A great hue and cry has been raised by the Perkinites, by which some of the less penetrating part of the profession have been awed into silence, respecting the duty of medical practitioners. They say that it is the duty of a medical man to employ only such means as will cure his patient in the most safe, cheap, and expeditious manner. This infamous pretension takes its origin from no other person than Perkins himself. That you may individually be aware of the effrontery with which it is brought forward, I shall, in this note, copy from Perkins's book his manner of treating the subject. Your worships will form some idea of the magnitude of this objection of our adversaries, in their own estimation, and the mischief it has already occasioned, not only in Great Britain, but abroad, when I inform you that it has been echoed in both the English and foreign journals, and in many of them treated as a complete refutation of the arguments of Dr Haygarth, and of all who object against the tractors, on account of their curing diseases merely by operating on the imagination. Among other foreign publications, I observe that the 21st volume of the Bibliotheque Britannique, printed at Geneva, closes a long account (40 pages) of “Perkinisme” with this “petite histoire de Mr Perkins.”

“A gentleman came from the country to London, for the advantage of medical assistance, in a complaint of peculiar obstinacy and distress. After being under the care of an eminent physician several weeks, and paying him upwards of thirty guineas, without any relief, he was induced to try the tractors. To be short, they performed a remarkable cure; the person was perfectly restored in about ten days. The physician, calling soon after, was informed of the circumstance. He began lamenting that so sensible a person as the patient should be caught in the use of so contemptible a piece of quackery as the tractors. After assuring the patient that he had thrown away his five guineas, for that it was well established by Dr Haygarth, that a brick-bat, tobacco-pipe, goose-quill, or even the bare finger, would perform the same cures, he was interrupted by his patient: ‘And are you sincere in your belief that you could have produced, by those means, the same effects upon me, which I have experienced from the tractors?’ ‘Do I believe it? Ay, I know it; and that a thousand similar cures might be effected by means equally simple and ridiculous.’ ‘And sir,’ interrupted the gentleman again, in a more stern and serious tone, ‘why did you not cure me then, by those simple means? Remember I have paid you thirty guineas, under the supposition that you were exerting your utmost endeavors to cure me, and that in the most safe, cheap, and expeditious manner. You now, in substance, acknowledge, that, although in possession of the means of restoring me to health, for the dishonorable purpose of picking my pocket, you continued me upon the bed of sickness! Who turns out to be the impostor? Let your own conscience answer.’ The justness of the retort, it will be easily believed, precluded the possibility of an exculpation.”

Perkins's New Cases, p. 145.

Had I been the physician, however, I would have rejoined with arguments, not dissimilar to that which is so beautifully expressed in the above stanza. I would have told him that the Author of nature most certainly would not have created either a poisonous or salubrious vegetable, without intending that it should “dose and double dose” his creature man.

Should it be objected that the tractors being also created substances ought also to be used, I could ingenuously retort, they were created in America, a country whose natives are Indians, an inferior order of beings to man, as some great philosophers before me have asserted, and who, it is evident, are the only order of creatures, on whom it was intended the tractors should be used.

I have no particular wish to injure Dr Jenner, or I should positively overturn him and all his adherents with my resistless arguments. If I were not willing that he should retain his popularity, I should make it appear that the small-pox was created with the intent of being universally propagated among the human race for the purpose of mortifying female vanity; and Jenner's attempt to extirpate it, by substituting the cow-pox, which ought to have been confined to the quadrupeds, among which it originated, as the tractors ought to have been to the Indians, is the extreme of presumption, and the height of iniquity. I cannot but conceive that our bishops and clergy are very remiss in not endeavoring to dissuade from such enormous, innovating practices.

No man who possesses a heart, certainly none who possesses bowels, can view us reduced to this deplorable condition, and hear this pathetic appeal, without the sincerest commisseration. The eminent services that our profession have rendered mankind, in contributing to avert some of the greatest curses that ever befel the civilized part of the world, are too well known, and have been too frequently acknowledged to be forgotten, ungratefully, in the day of our adversity. The testimony to this effect of the judicious, the humane Addison, ought often to be brought before the public eye.

“We may lay it down as a maxim,” says that intelligent writer, “that when a nation abounds with physicians it grows thin of people. Sir William Temple is very much puzzled to find out a reason why the northern hive, as he calls it, does not send such prodigious swarms, and overrun the world with Goths and Vandals, as it did formerly: but had that excellent author observed that there were no students in physic among the subjects of Thor and Woden, and that this science very much flourishes in the north at present, he might have found a better solution for this difficulty than any of those he has made use of.”

Spectator, No. 21.

This would be abominable. Physicians, in general, are a hale hearty race of men, as, indeed, must be readily conceived from their prudent maxims in regard to the preservation of their own health:—they take no physic. No; they are too well acquainted with its tendency. Now, to starve so sturdy and powerful a body, when his majesty is in want of such subjects to check the ambitious strides of restless Buonaparte, as appears from the king's declaration of this day (May the 16th, 1803,) in preference to letting their miserable patients expire, whom Providence evidently intended should die off, is, I trust, too absurd and unreasonable an idea to be admitted.

The Perkineans have no cause to boast of the extent of their patronage, for the poor tawny reptile chimney-sweepers have of late interested the friends of humanity in their behalf quite as much. Your worships will derive from this circumstance a very pleasant source for sneering at our opponents, which I am sure you will gladly embrace, whenever opportunity presents.

This, gentlemen, is a circumstance of no small moment, and which I trust you will see the necessity of looking at with some seriousness Some of our profession have, to their eternal disgrace, since their retirement on their fortunes, deserted our cause, and are now to be found in the ranks of our enemies. These fellows have the presumption to suggest that their duty to the interests of the community supersedes that which they owe to their old brethren, the unreasonableness of which sentiment I conceive to be self-evident, and therefore shall not trouble myself to prove it. Several have even addressed to the Perkinean Institution communications in favor of the metallic tractors, for publication, three of which are already laid before the public. The first on this list is Mr Lyster, late of Dublin, who having been above twenty years senior surgeon of the Dublin hospital, retired to Bath, where he now seems even to take delight in benefitting the mean and miserable poor, to wanton injury of his own dear brethren. To show the extent of his malice, he has, in his communication to the Perkinean Society, introduced statements of remarkable cures by the tractors; among others one of total blindness of many years duration, in which all medical skill had previously failed; and, to wind up this tale of infamy, he has even ventured to censure, indirectly, my great champion, Dr Haygarth, and to hint that his proceedings were not accompanied with honorable intentions!

Next on this trio list are Mr Yatman, of Chelsea, and Dr Fuller, of Upper Brook street; the conduct of both of whom is equally, if not more reprehensible than Lyster's. These two also call in the lame, the halt, and the blind, and, as if to spite their brethren who have drugs to sell, cure them with the tractors without fee or reward! Such conduct is so atrocious that if your worships should think proper to have them indicted, and Mr Erskine or Mr Garrow object to defend the cause of such clients, I, counsellor Caustic (remember I am LL. D.) will manage it for you, and, provided I can but get that same jury which decided that captain Macnamara was not accessory to the death of Col. Montgomery, I will procure the defendants to be sent to Botany Bay, or at least as far as Coventry.

To show the barbarity and wantonness of these two men, I will close this note by the following quotation from the letter of one of them, Dr Fuller, who, after a practice of early thirty years in medicine, and by which he has secured his own independence, seems now to amuse himself in undermining those of us who are still dependant. After a statement of a number of great cures by the tractors, and proving, by his own trials on infants, &c. that they do not act on imagination, which Dr Haygarth so laudably attempted to show, he proceeds:—“I derive much satisfaction in noticing among the more liberal and respectable part of my profession an increased favorable opinion of Perkinism, and a readiness to allow of its use among their patients, when proposed by others. To expect more than this, would be to expect more than human nature in its present state will admit. It must be an extraordinary exertion of virtue and humanity for a medical man, whose livelihood depends either on the sale of drugs, or on receiving a guinea for writing a prescription, which must relate to those drugs, to say to his patient, ‘You had better purchase a pair of tractors to keep in your family; they will cure you without the expense of my attendance, or the danger of the common medical practice.’ For very obvious reasons, medical men must never be expected to recommend the use of Perkinism. The tractors must trust for their patronage to the enlightened and philanthropic out of the profession, or to medical men retired from practice, and who 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.” If Dr Fuller were obliged to live in my garret one month, he would sing a different tune.

Besides the advantage of showing how reverently this great philosopher and philanthropist could speak of religion, I am sure I shall render an essential service to agriculturists, by adducing the following quotation. I bring it forward the more readily, as I find that the Board of Agriculture have been so negligent of the interest of that noble art, as not yet to have recommended the universal adoption of this measure.

“There should be no burial places in churches, or churchyards, where the monuments of departed sinners shoulder God's altar and pollute his holy places with dead men's bones. But proper burial places should be consecrated out of towns, and divided into two compartments, the earth from one of which, saturated with animal decomposition, should be taken away once in ten or twenty years for the purposes of agriculture, and sand or clay, or less fertile soil brought into its place.”

Darwin's Phytologia, p. 242.

Here your worships will perceive that there is a prospect, if this advice is followed, that we may enjoy the privilege of eating, instead of drinking our friends, which would be something of an improvement on our idea, communicated in page 58.

Among other speculations also in the cause of humanity, bequeathed us by this friend of man, are the following, which will prove a great consolation to those who have foolishly supposed that the bloodshed and devastation, produced by war, were circumstances which ought to be lamented.

These remarks are published by Dr Darwin, as written under his own observations in the manuscript of his book, by a “philosophical friend,” whom he left in his library. It is supposed, however, that the doctor wrote them himself. At least the sentiments have his sanction.

“It consoles me to find, as I contemplate the whole of organized nature, that it is not in the power of any one personage, whether statesman or hero, to produce by his ill employed activity, so much misery as might have been supposed. Thus, if a Russian army, in these insane times, after having endured a laborious march of many hundred miles, is destroyed by a French army, in defence of their republic, what has happened? Forty thousand human creatures, dragged from their homes and connexions, cease to exist, and have manured the earth; but the quantity of organized matter, of which they were composed, presently revives in the forms of millions of microscopic animals, vegetables, and insects, and afterwards of quadrupeds and men; the sum of whose happiness is, perhaps, greater than that of the harrassed soldier, by whose destruction they have gained their existence! Is not this a consoling idea to a mind of universal sympathy? I fear you will think me a misanthrope, but I assure you a contrary sensation dwells in my bosom; and though I commisserate the evils of all organized beings, “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.”

Phytologia, p. 558.

Last words of Dr Darwin. I take no small credit to myself, for being one of the first to bring into notice the latest and the most sublime of this sublime philosopher's sublime speculations. The fountain from which this radiant stream of illumination flows is denominated, among booksellers, The Temple of Nature.

To paint all the writer's conceptions of the mansion on that old lady, and her own most singular qualifications, would be a task even beyond the abilities of a Caustic. Mr Fuseli, however, has painted his conceptions on the occasion, which in one of his designs, appear, so far as I can comprehend him, to be simply these:—In his frontispiece to the work, he represents one beautiful lady pointing at, or rather fumbling about, (somewhat indecently, I must confess) a middle or third breast of another beautiful lady, whom I suppose to be Dame Nature;

This third breast I take to be the painter's emblem of the discoveries of Dr Darwin—implying that their existence is as evident as that a woman has three breasts. But, not to digress; the doctor ascertains that

Temple of Nature, Canto iv.

Some unphilosophical theorists have foolishly supposed that this sweeping plan of Dr Darwin, which that philosopher appears to have introduced, lest “prolific hordes” should “deluge their terraqueous beds,” might as well be deferred till a few of the “superfluous” acres on the earth's surface were reduced to a state of cultivation. I should advise to employ these supernumeraries in navigating polar ices within the tropics, as recommended by the doctor in the Botanic Garden, were I not apprehensive lest I should thereby in some measure, destroy the operation of Saint Pierre's tides. See note on page 70, Canto i.

More last words of Dr Darwin.

“The brow of man erect, with thought elate,
Ducks to the mandate of resistless fate.”
Temple of Nature, Canto iv.

I have exhibited this couplet at all the assemblages of poetizing brethren in Grub street and St Giles's, not omitting the inhabitants of the “Wits' corner, at the Chapter coffee-house, the elevated tenants of the cider cellar in Maiden Lane, and Col. Hanger's knights of the round table,” all of whom agree in acknowledging the elegance and correctness of the metaphor, and that its beauties are so transcendently exquisite, and beyond the ken of mortal eye, as to be perfectly incomprehensible.

“Long o'er the wrecks of lovely life they weep;
Then pleased reflect, to die is but to sleep.”
Temple of Nature, Canto ii.

I suspect that my intimate friend and correspondent Buonaparte, is a full convert to Dr Darwin's doctrine of death and its consequences. For, when he declared to lord Whitworth his determination to invade England, although there were a hundred chances to one in favor of his going to the bottom, he was undoubtedly calculating on a comfortable nap after the fatigues of government.

“Thus, when a monarch or a mushroom dies,
A while extinct the organic matter lies;
But, as a few short hours or years revolve,
Alchymic powers the changing mass dissolve;
Born to new life unnumber'd insects pant,” &c.
Temple of Nature, Canto iv.

It has been a matter of curious inquiry among some of my corresponding garreters, whether this philosopher himself, in the latter stages of his existence, enjoyed much consolation from reflecting that the “organic matter” which entered into his own composition, was about to be employed for the important purpose of giving “new life” to “unnumbered insects.”

“Thus the tall mountains, that emboss'd the lands,
Huge isles of rock, and continents of sands,
Whose dim extent eludes the inquiring sight,
Are MIGHTY MONUMENTS OF PAST DELIGHT.”

These “monuments of past delight,” Darwin says,

Thus taught by this wondrous sage, I trust the friend to humanity will suppose it best to let the poor, infirm and decrepid die off as fast as possible, to “manure the earth,” that the quantity of organized matter of which they were composed, may revive in the forms of millions of microscopic animals, vegetables and insects, make “monuments of past delight,” &c. Therefore it is to be hoped, that the promoters of the Perkinean institution will prove as despicable in respect to numbers, as they are deficient in understanding, especially in comprehending the great and glorious truths of modern philosophy.

If your worships have not read Mr Malthus's Essay on the Principles of Population, I advise you to buy the book immediately, and set yourselves about something like an effort to comprehend its contents. You will there find, I cannot now recollect the page, that population has a tendency to increase in a geometrical ratio, but that subsistence must be limited to an arithmetical ratio. That the world would soon swarm with inhabitants in such a manner that in years of the greatest plenty we should be under the disagreeable necessity of turning anthropophagi, and, like the famous Pantagruel, eat pilgrims with our salad, were not the principle of population restrained by two very useful predominant principles, viz. “VICE and MISERY;” the former of which is happily exemplified in the extravagance and luxury of your worships, and the latter correctly expressed in the poverty of your worships' petitioner. You will likewise find in the same volume, passim, that after war, pestilence, and famine have laid waste a country, there is an immediate increase of births, in consequence of the principle of population being let loose to take its natural operation in replenishing the earth; or, in other words, because there is more elbow room for the survivers. Now, this being correct reasoning, it must be wonderfully wrong to try to keep alive poor folks, who are a dead weight on population, destroy the means of subsistence, prevent early marriages, and, by keeping themselves above ground, stand in the way of their betters.

Please not imagine that I would be understood to recommend this “retort courteous” in the most unqualified sense, or that it be exercised on every occasion. On the contrary, the due performance of it will require no small degree of prudence and discretion. Indeed, I would have you use the poker, or any other violent and weighty arguments of this kind, only when your antagonist happens to be a woman, a child, or some debilitated and cowardly wretch who will submit without any chance of your meeting with unpleasant resistance.

As to the justice of this mode of response, there exists no doubt, and therefore dread no decisions in foro conscientiæ, because the extreme heinousness of your adversaries' provocation will appear from the following consideration. To deprive you of an argument, for which you have sacrificed everything dear to obtain, must, confessedly be regarded as a most outrageous proceeding. Now, this is exactly the case in the present instance; for in your attempt to show that medical men believe and trust in no medicine, the modus operandi of which they do not comprehend, you make a sacrifice of truth, decency, and common sense, the full reward of which sacrifice you ought to enjoy unmolested. That no man can explain how mercury poisons, bark cures an intermittent fever, or opium produces sleep, is confessed by every medical author; and that all these should be used in our practice, without any hesitation, I never heard any person deny, and for this proper and substantial reason; their administration is profitable to the faculty. I have therefore to repeat, that when the Perkinites complain of your rejecting the use of tractors, because their modus operandi cannot be entirely explained, although you adopt the use of drugs, the operation of which is equally or more inexplicable, your sacrifice in support of your ground is so great, that whoever attempts to drive you from such ground deserves to be laid low with the first weapon that comes to hand.

No part of the learned doctor's management, in the anti-Perkinistic cause, merits higher eulogy than this most rational explanation of that most irrational practice. So cogently does an innate principle of equity control me, that I am absolutely coerced to offer, at the shrine of the heroic doctor, my tributary dole of the incense of admiration, for having presented our profession such a powerful knock-me-down argument, wherewith to buffet the common enemy.

The sagacious doctor having published a scientific treatise against the tractors, demonstrating that “they act on the patient's imagination,” Perkins, came out in reply, with all the fury of an Irish rebel, and declared that the doctor deserved to be trounced for not suffering his readers to know, that the tractors pretended to cure infants and brute animals, though numerous cases to that effect had then been published; and in that reply proclaimed that Dr H. purposely endeavored to suppress such facts, that he might, with greater facility, induce the public to swallow the deductions drawn from his magical manœuvres in the Bath and Bristol hospitals. Now, admitting the doctor managed in this way, I am sure he was perfectly right in so doing. The end in view, according to established principles of modern morality, will ever justify the means taken to accomplish that end. In this case, the end in view was most important—nothing less than the downfal of Perkinism, and the consequent aggrandizement of our profession. Should any of our opponents be so captious as to assert, that such principles and such motives of action should not be encouraged in society—that they have a pernicious tendency, and other nonsense of that sort, I must take the liberty to refer them to the first consul of the French republic, whose conduct has ever been modelled according to the principles above stated, and who is certainly the most powerful logician of the age, perfectly able to confound those who shut their eyes against the light of conviction.

But to revert to the doctor's treatise, and Perkins's impudent replication. The man who could raise the very old gentleman himself, by the legitimate powers of necromancy, was not so easily defeated. Accordingly he returns to the charge in another edition—admits the existence of the numerous cases on infants, horses, &c. but lays them all level with the following unanswerable argument.—“The proselytes of Perkinism having been driven from every other argument, have, as a last resource, alleged that the patent metallic tractors have removed the disorders of infants and horses. Even this flimsy pretence is capable of a satisfactory refutation. In these cases it is not the patient, but the observer, who is deceived by his own imagination!!!” See Haygarth's book, page 40. Mirabile dictu!

The celebrated story of the lady's ecchymosis comes handed down to your worships by five successive reporters. The lady incog. who makes so conspicuous a figure in Dr Haygarth's narration, told another lady, who told a medical friend of Dr H. who told Dr Caustic, who tells your worships this important anecdote. Now, as “in the multitude of counsellors there is safety,” so in a multitude of reporters there is certainty. But to the story; which I shall give in the language of Dr H.'s medical friend aforesaid.

“ A lady informed me, that a lady of her acquaintance, who had great faith in the efficacy of the tractors, on seeing a small ecchymosis, about the size of a silver penny, at the corner of the eye, desired to try on it the effect of her favorite remedy. The lady, who was intended to be the subject of the trial, consented, and the other lady produced the instruments, and, after drawing them four or five times over the spot, declared that it changed to a paler color; and on repeating the use of them a few minutes longer, that it had almost vanished, and was scarcely visible, and departed in high triumph at her success. I was assured by the lady who underwent the operation, that she looked in the glass immediately after, and that not the least visible alteration had taken place!!” (From Haygarth's book, page 40.)

I had determined to exert my influence in all the medical societies, that the above case be read at the opening of each meeting, until there should not be left of the tractors, in this island, “a wreck behind.” But a far better plan of Dr H. himself has precluded the necessity of this measure, which was to announce in all the advertisements of his book in the public papers, that “it explains why the disorders of infants and horses are said to have been cured by the tractors.” See his daily advertisements in the papers.

Indeed, I am at a loss which to admire most, the pretty fanciful relation above cited, which is all the new edition of the doctor's treatise against the tractors contains to justify the assertion in the advertisements before mentioned, or his singular skill in constructing such a fabric on this foundation. Did I possess the talents of the doctor in the advertising department, I should announce this my pithy performance to the public, by publishing in all the papers, that the price of the tractors was, in consequence of Dr Caustic's opposition, fallen to the price of old iron, and Perkins's pamphlets having been proscribed by physicians, were condemned, and actually burnt by the hangman on execution-day, at the Old Bailey, in the presence of every individual of the college of physicians, and half the citizens of London.

I would beg leave to add to this incomparable Haygarthian demonstration an argument of my own, which I think is not less powerful. It is impossible that these tractors should perform any real cure, as they act solely on the imagination either of the patient or the operator. But cures performed by the power of imagination must be imaginary cures, that is, no cures at all.

It is not true, as some sagacious coffee-house politicians have asserted, that madame Hoax (or more correctly double Hoax) is the wife of a Chinese Mandarin, settled on the mountains of the Moon, in Abyssinia, for the purpose of ascertaining the influence of imagination in the cure of diseases. No, gentlemen, she is a baroness of true English breed, more sturdy than a Semiramis, a Penthesilea, or a Joan of Arc, and will prove, in our cause, a championess of pre-eminent prowess. Should your worships wish for further acquaintance with this lady, which in my opinion would be for your mutual advantage, you will take the trouble to inquire at my garret, No. 299, Dyot street, St Giles's (having removed from my former place of residence, third floor, 327, Grub street, with a view of being nearer my friend, Sir Joseph, in Soho square) and her address shall be at your service.

I am now preparing a most awful tragedy for Drury lane theatre (Mr Sheridan's approbation being already obtained) to be entitled and called, the Dreadful Downfal of Terrible Tractorizing Confounded Conjuration; in which I propose to introduce a new song, that I have no doubt will be so celebrated as to be the theme of every ballad-singer in the metropolis. I cannot forbear anticipating some small share of that applause, which I have reason to suppose will be piled on Dr Caustic, as soon as he is publicly known as the author of such an inimitable production, by obliging your worships with a part of the chorus to the song aforesaid.

This song is to be set to music by Mr Kelly in his very best style of pathos, sublimity, and crotchets, and to be delightfully demi-semi-quavered to the admiring audience by Mrs Billington. Then, if box, pit, and gallery, should not, una voce, Nick Bottom-like, cry, “Encore! Encore! Let her roar! Let her roar! Once more, once more! Let the squeak and the squall be swelled to a bawl, Dr Caustic will find the door! Find the door! And never go there any more!!

This stanza contains a legendary tale, which I dare say is as true, as that which commemorates a notable exploit of St Dunstan in seizing old satan, one dark night in the tenth century, and wringing the nose of his infernal majesty with a pair of red-hot blacksmith's pincers, which made him roar and scold at such a rate, that he awakened and terrified all the good people of Glastenbury and its neighborhood.

An old lady of my acquaintance was actually advised by an ingenious son of Galen, an apothecary, resident a few miles north of London, to swallow tractors for an internal complaint. If our profession were to follow this laudable example, and force their patients to swallow them for pills, and then give the public a judicious detail of the terrible consequences, ending with the death of the patients, Perkinism would sink into that contempt in the estimation of the public which it justly deserves.

That is, in the United States of America, among Indians and Yankees. You will find, gentlemen, much to the purpose relative to the state of science, where Perkinism originated, in the Monthly Magazine, of January, 1803, under the title of “Animadversions on the present state of literature and taste in the United States, communicated by an English gentleman lately returned from America.” This gentleman gives information that the Americans are wretchedly “behind-hand in science with the Britains.” Indeed, those transatlantic younkers ought, in half a century, to have established universities and other seminaries of learning, at least as old and respectable as those of Oxford and Cambridge, and which should have graduated as many students and produced as many great men. As to the parsimonious spirit of Americans in encouraging science (which this gentleman animadverts upon with laudable indignation) it ought truly to be exclaimed against by us Englishmen, for the weighty reason following: Great Britain, “from time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary” (as judge Blackstone says) hath starved some of her first poets; such for instance as Butler, Otway, Chatterton, Dryden, Savage, &c. &c. &c. &c. consequently (according to the same author) she ought to enjoy the exclusive “customary privilege” of inflicting the horrors of starvation on the sons of the muses: but it must be granted, for the honor of British munificence, that the scientific Herschel, in the decline of life, as a reward for immortalizing his present majesty, by inscribing Georgium Sidus in the great folio of the heavens, is allowed the enormous pension of 80l. per annum!!

This instance of liberality, in rewarding merit, has caused me to suspend my animadversions relative to patronage afforded men of real science in Great Britain, till I can discover whether it be the absolute determination of my countrymen to starve doctor Caustic.

And must, of course, be a most terrible wild beast.—Ladies and gentlemen may form a tolerable idea of the enormity of Perkinism, by viewing the skeleton of a mammoth now exhibiting in Pall Mall, in the very place where lately were to be seen those terrible caricatures of the devil, &c. under the appellation of Fuseli's Milton Gallery.

This manifesto, you will please to recollect, is the language of gentlemen physicians. Now it is well known that you possess a privilege, sanctioned by long and invariable practice, if not founded on act of parliament, to enforce your sentiments by certain energetic expressions, which, in the mouths of people of less consequence, would be considered as very vulgar, and nearly allied to profane swearing. And since your worships ever most manfully exercise this privilege to the full extent of its limits, the present manifesto would have been extremely inapposite and unnatural, had not an ornament of this kind been introduced.