Thomas Green Fessenden

Thomas Green Fessenden (April 22, 1771 – November 11, 1837) was an American author and editor who worked in England and the United States.

[1][2] Born and raised on the family farm in Walpole, New Hampshire as oldest of nine children,[3] Fessenden graduated from Dartmouth College in 1796.

He studied law in Vermont with Nathaniel Chipman, occupying his leisure in writing humorous poems and other papers for the Farmer's Weekly Museum of Walpole, of which Joseph Dennie was then editor.

The poem, "Terrible Tractoration", was anonymously published in 1803 and satirized the members of the medical profession who opposed the use of the instruments.

Politically aligned with the Federalists, Fessenden was suspicious of democracy and wrote an extended poem criticizing the Democratic-Republican Party.