[Medicine]: [Quackery]:

$750 · Offered by William Reese Company

A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND SUFFERINGS OF LEONARD TRASK, THE WONDERFUL INVALID. A curious account of the life of Leonard Trask (1805–1861), who suffered serious spinal injury and subsequent deformity following a fall from a horse: "About the year 1833, while Mr. T. was riding on horseback through a neighboring town, a 'luckless hog,' in the highway, hearing the approach of a horseman, took fright, and as is often the case with that perverse animal, to flee from danger took the opposite direction from a place of safety, and rushed directly under the horse's feet. The affrightened horse, as a matter of course, stumbled and plunged, throwing his rider directly over his head. Mr. T. was thrown with great force upon the ground, receiving the full force of the fall upon his neck and shoulders" (pp.14-15). In the years that followed, his neck and spine began to curve and he began to bow forward, a condition now known as ankylosing spondylitis, which was exacerbated by further accidents in 1840 and 1853. Trask's condition stymied doctors, and the present pamphlet details an array of torturous treatments, such as blistering, cupping, and bleeding. "Being tired of enduring the treatment of physicians of the 'regular practice,' which was only adding pain and torture to the suffering he already endured....Mr. T. had recourse to Dr. J.W. Smith, alias J.W. Kittridge, of the Thompsonian mode of practice." This is almost certainly a reference to the Thomsonian movement, an alte

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