Article ID: CBB800205506

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

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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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Authors & Contributors
Ernst, Waltraud
Kananoja, Kalle
Zollino, Giorgia
Osamu Nakamura
Parent, André
Jane Freebody
Concepts
Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment
Medicine and society
Therapeutics
Medicine
Science and society
Medical instruments and apparatus
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
20th century
21st century
17th century
Early modern
Places
Italy
France
Europe
Iwakura (Japan)
Atlantic world
South Asia
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