Elisha Perkins

[2] When the American Revolutionary War broke out, Elisha Perkins served as a surgeon for the Continental Army during the Battle of Bunker Hill in the Siege of Boston.

[3][4][5][6][7] During the late 18th century, the progression of medicine due to the Enlightenment increased the consumer demand for new therapies, such as therapeutic devices and inventions.

The Connecticut Medical Society condemned the tractors as "delusive quackery", and expelled Perkins from membership on the grounds that he was "a patentee and user of nostrums".

[11] In October 1799, an advertisement in The Times said that "The tractors, with every necessary direction for using them in Families, may be had for 5 guineas the set, of Mr. Perkins, of Leicester Square; or of Mr. Frederic Smith, Chemist & Druggist, in the Haymarket".

[13] Aylmer Bourke Lambert, a British botanist, is on record as having written in January 1800 to Richard Pulteney of Blandford (now Blandford Forum), in the English county of Dorset, as follows: "I breakfasted with Sir Joseph [Banks] on Monday morning who is recovered from the Gout and in high Spirits.

"[14] Shortly before his death Elisha Perkins also invented purported antiseptic medicine and used it for dysentery and sore throat.

In 1799, Dr. John Haygarth conducted a test in which he treated five rheumatic patients with wooden tractors that were made to resemble the metallic ones.

In 1803, Thomas Green Fessenden published his poem "Terrible Tractoration" in favor of Perkins and as a satire on other physicians.

In 1932, Morris Fishbein commented that "[u]nfortunately no one has yet been able to determine whether Elisha Perkins was merely a somewhat deluded physician or actually a great impostor.