Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems — A Reader’s Guide

The Persona of Dr. Christopher Caustic

The title page announces the author as 'Christopher Caustic, M. D., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Aberdeen, and Honorary Member of No Less Than Nineteen Very Learned Societies.' This piling-on of credentials is the first clue that the work is a burlesque. In the preface, Fessenden explains that he wrote the poem at the request of Benjamin Douglas Perkins, the patent holder of the Tractors. Yet the poem itself, as the excerpts show, mocks the very idea of metallic cure-alls. The footnotes are especially revealing: one proposes a method to 'take the animal machine to pieces' and 'botch it together' again, offering to rebuild an old gallant into a 'fine young buck.' The voice is consistently hyperbolic, blending pseudo-scientific detail with absurd promises.

Hudibrastic Verse and Mock-Learned Footnotes

Fessenden adopts the Hudibrastic form—rhyming couplets in iambic tetrameter, popularized by Samuel Butler’s Hudibras—to lampoon the Tractors. The excerpts include a passage where Medea’s rejuvenation of Aeson is rendered in doggerel: 'Medea cut the wither’d weasand / Of superannuated Æson.' The footnotes extend the satire by mixing classical references with contemporary slang, such as 'Bond street beau.' Another footnote describes an 'artificial earthquake' that could launch moons from the northern hemisphere, parodying Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden. The effect is a dense interplay between verse and prose, where the footnotes often carry the punchline.

Satire of Medical and Scientific Hype

The catalog subject 'Perkins, Elisha, 1741-1799' points to the historical figure behind the Tractors, but the excerpts show Fessenden targeting broader credulity. The preface states that the poem aims to 'strip folly of some of its disguises' and expose 'impudent charlatanry.' In the footnotes, the narrator proposes to 'cull hereditary diseases' from the constitution and separate 'pride from an upstart mushroom of a nobleman.' The humor lies in the deadpan delivery of impossible claims. The only obstacle, the narrator laments, is the difficulty of finding a volunteer for dissection. This self-aware absurdity is the core of the satire.

Readers should approach Terrible Tractoration as a performance. The preface and footnotes are as much a part of the satire as the poem itself. Fessenden’s persona as Dr. Caustic allows him to mock both the promoters of medical panaceas and the public that embraces them. The work rewards attention to its layered irony: the author claims to believe in the Tractors while writing a poem that makes them ridiculous. This tension between stated intent and actual content is the key to understanding the book’s humor and its critique of Enlightenment-era optimism.

I came back to that old tractoration poem the other day, and its gentle mockery of certainty made me think of calmer afternoons spent with a different kind of book. There’s a quiet steadiness there, a reminder that healing often moves slower than promised. That contrast felt like a familiar, comfortable thought. The Christian Year — Key Ideas to Explore seems to hold a similar patience, like a leaf pressed between pages.