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Article ID: CBB800205506

Perkins’s Patent Metallic “Tractors”: Development, Adoption, and Early Dissemination of an Eighteenth-Century Therapeutic Fad (2019)

Lanska, Douglas J. (Author)

Journal of the History of the Neurosciences
Volume: 28
Issue: 2
Pages: 122-146

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0964704X.2019.1589830

DOI: 10.1080/0964704X.2019.1589830

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Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment Medicine and society Medical instruments and apparatus Therapeutics 19th century 18th century Galvani, Luigi Perkins, Elisha

The metallick Tractors were patented by Elisha Perkins, a Connecticut physician, in 1796, for the treatment of various ailments, particularly those associated with pain. They were subsequently rapidly and widely disseminated on the basis of testimonials and aggressive marketing tactics. Dissemination was facilitated by endorsements from prominent physicians, politicians, and clergy, by quasi-theoretical explanations of efficacy based on then-current experiments of Galvani and others, and by the apparent simplicity and safety of the procedure. Abandonment of this ineffective therapy was later prompted by the application of blinded placebo-controlled trials using sham devices.

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Article Douglas J. Lanska (2019) Instruments in the History of the Clinical Neurosciences. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences (pp. 93-96). unapi

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