1830.] Quackery Practice, and St. John Long. 659 



The theory of both is thoroughly gratuitous it assumes the existence of 

 certain humours in the system as the sources of all disease extract these 

 humours, and at once the disease is removed, and the cause of it for 

 ever. But the difference between these worthies and that is a mighty 

 one lies in the mode of extracting. Perkins was content with drawing 

 a couple of pieces of metal, which he called tractors, along the surface 

 of the body ; but Mr. Long smokes the inside to drive the humour to 

 the surface,, and then blisters to force it through the pores. The one was 

 a gentle tickling, that depended for effect on exciting emotion through 

 the imagination the other applies a scorching embrocation that strips 

 off the scarf-skin, and, where the susceptibility is great, tears and cuts to 

 the bone. Perkins's system was all pure fancy, theory, and practice. 

 The principle of galvanism was a novelty in his day the mere contact, 

 of two different metals in some liquid, elicited what has since been 

 proved to be the electric fluid. Perkins caught at this discovery. Two 

 metals applied to the surface of a body, surcharged with a certain 

 vitiated humour, the existence of which he took for granted, might, 

 he conceived seriously, perhaps, at first elicit not the electric, but 

 what was more to his purpose, the morbid fluid. Accordingly, armed 

 with two nice little pieces of metal, and applying one of them to the 

 seat of pain in the patient, he drew the other backwards and forwards 

 over the neighbouring regions, till he finally brought it in contact with 

 the stationary piece, and suddenly the excited and gathered fluid was 

 supposed to vanish into the metals taking with it, of course, the disease. 

 Perkins became at once the general talk of his day ; the mania spread 

 on all sides ; but the delusion gave way, as all charlatanerie must do, to 

 exposure. Dr. Haygarth, of Bath, collected his patients at an hospital ; 

 he produced his tractors, bits of wood, and sealing-wax ; the operation 

 proceeded with due gravity, and numbers affirmed the relief they 

 experienced was wonderful. The hoax was complete it was published, 

 and Perkins slunk back into his native obscurity. 



But Perkins never, that we know of, wrote a book. Long has committed 

 that folly, as if for the express purpose -so full of absurdities is it of 

 exposing his own perfect ignorance of the subjects he presumes to handle. 

 He has neither manner nor method command neither of language nor 

 logic nothing approaching the plausible no power whatever to make 

 the worst appear the better reason. His theory of disease, as he describes 

 it, is simple enough, Heaven knows. He discovers, it does not appear 

 how, that the source of all disease lurks in a certain acrid humour, 

 which pervades the whole frame. Like the caloric of the chemists, it 

 has two states free and latent; while latent, all is well; when active, 

 it manifests its malignity by disease. All diseases spring from it not 

 merely consumptions. It is the source specifically of small-pox, measles, 

 hooping-cough, and c analogous inflammable' disorders. It is equally the 

 cause of insanity of all kinds, gout, tic douloureux, cataract, deafness, 

 cholera morbus, crooked spines of every thing, in short, except, and 

 the author himself points out the exceptions mechanical injury and 

 original malformation. The extraction of this same malign humour 

 constitutes the cure of the disease ; and to extract is the one object of 

 Mr. Long's practice. The effect of course ceases with the removal of 

 the cause. This same humour is a congenital production ; it exists in 

 every individual, and will sooner or later generate disease, till the whole 

 is extracted, or as much as will leave too little behind to make its 



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