Electricity therapy
Medical quackery has always been a profitable hunting ground for conmen. Electricity was a good hook to draw in the gullible, as it had long been regarded as something of an elemental life-force. After all, it could make disembodied frog's legs move. Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, published in 1818, reflected this impression by having Dr. Frankenstein's patchwork monster brought to life by electricity.
In 1795, an American doctor from Connecticut named Elisha Perkins developed what he called the "Perkins Patent Tractors", which were a pair of rods, one made of iron and one made of brass, that could be used to draw out disease and pain by passing them over one's body. The Connecticut Medical Society loudly condemned the tractors as "delusive quackery", which was saying something considering the medical standards of the time, but the tractors proved popular, and even George Washington bought a set.
Elisha Perkins died of yellow fever in an epidemic in 1799. He may have actually believed in the value of his tractors, though it appears they didn't help much with yellow fever, but his son Benjamin Perkins was clearly a greedier sort, who amassed quite a fortune with the tractors as well as more legitimate business ventures before he died in 1810.
The practice of "tractoration", as it was known, did not live much longer than Benjamin Perkins. Attempts to use tractors in veterinary medicine failed, since animals tend to be more resistant to powers of suggestion than humans and have not the least faith in placebos. Two medical practitioners named Hygarth and Falconer administered the lethal blow to the practice by building duplicates made out of wood that proved every bit as effective.
The Perkins tractors were only faintly electrical in nature, but they led to further interesting medical technologies, such as electric belts and corsets, which incorporated batteries and were in principle able to cure a wide range of ills. They were used through the 19th century and into the 20th, and as late as 1927 a California huckster named Gaylord Wilshire was bringing in the bucks with an AC-powered belt named the I-ON-A-CO.
Incidentally, magnets were also used as elements in cure-all gear, and when radium was discovered late in the 19th century it was actually incorporated into oral medicines, with documented cases of horrifying results.
The plausibility of electrical techno-cures was enhanced by the fact that electrical machinery was actually being put into practical use in medicine. Electrocautery machines proved much more effective than hot irons and other primitive cauterization tools, for example, and in the 20th century all types of valuable medical electronic instruments were developed.
However, as the scope of medical electronics widened, so did the scope of medical electronic frauds. The king of all the medical quacks was Dr. Albert Abrams of San Francisco. Nobody ever approached Dr. Abrams for audacity, and few ever enjoyed such great success.
See also
Referenced By
Magnet therapy | Magnetic healing | Magnetic therapy
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