Tractor

[Late or med.L. agent-n. from trahĕre, tract-um to draw: see -OR.]

  1.  pl. (in full (Perkins’s) metallic tractors): Name of a device invented by Elisha Perkins, an American physician (died 1799), consisting of a pair of pointed rods of different metals, as brass and steel, which were believed to relieve rheumatic or other pain by being drawn or rubbed over the skin: see PERKINISM. Obs. exc. Hist.

1798.  C. C. Langworthy (title), A View of the Perkinean Electricity; or, an Inquiry into the Influence of Metallic Tractors.

1801.  E. Darwin, Zoon. (ed. 3), II. 63. With the supposed existence of ghosts or apparitions, witchcraft, vampyrism … and American tractors, such theories … must vanish.

1825.  Southey, Lett. (1856), III. 499. His prayers may cure just as well as tractors or animal magnetism.

1885.  Whittier, Pr. Wks. (1889), II. 314. Jacob Perkins, in drawing out diseases with his metallic tractors, was quite as successful as modern ‘faith and mind’ doctors.

  2.  One who or that which draws or pulls something. a. In general sense.

1856.  Kane, Arct. Expl., I. 149. His limbs … splendid tractors for the sledge.

1880.  Daily Tel., 23 Sept. The introduction of the iron road with its steam-horse for tractor.

  b.  Surg. ‘An obstetric forceps’ (Knight, Dict. Mech., 1877). c. A traction-engine; a locomotive engine of any kind used for traction of loaded wagons, artillery, etc., on ordinary roads, or for drawing gang-ploughs; also, ‘the frame and steel rope by which a gang of plows is drawn across a field by a traction-engine’ (Cent. Dict., Suppl.).

1901.  Daily Chron., 2 Aug., 6/4. These transformers supply the overhead trolley wires, which feed special ‘electrical tractors’ running along the towing-path, and in these tractors the drivers sit and control operations. Ibid. (1902), 29 Oct., 3/4. The County Council has not yet sanctioned the use of the tractor, but it will come before the members for consideration at an early date.

1903.  Motor. Ann., 253. Rhodesia has appealed to motor manufacturers to supply motor-wagons or tractors for use specially in hilly country.

  3.  Geom. (See quot.)

1867.  Cayley, Math. Papers, VII. 73. I use the term ‘tractor’ to denote a line which meets any given lines. Ibid. Four given lines may be directrices (generating lines) of the same hyperboloid, viz. every tractor of any three of the four lines is then a tractor of all the four lines.

  Hence Tractoration, the use of metallic tractors (see 1): also allusively; Tractoring ppl. a., using metallic tractors; Tractorism = tractoration; Tractorist, one who uses metallic tractors; Tractorize v., intr. to use metallic tractors; trans. to get by tractorizing (quot. 1803²); to treat with metallic tractors or similar appliances (quot. 1817); whence Tractorizing vbl. sb. and ppl. a. (All more or less nonce-wds. and Obs.)

1803.  (ed. 2), Fessenden (title), Terrible *Tractoration! A Poetical Petition against Galvanising Trumpery, and the Perkinistic Institution.

1861.  O. W. Holmes, Med. Ess., Pref. (1891), 9. Homœopathy has not died out so rapidly as Tractoration.

1803.  Fessenden, Terrible Tractoration, III. xxv. And you’ll confound the *tractoring folks By Haygarth’s tale.

1802–13.  Bentham, Ration. Judic. Evid., V. 189. The impostures that … have been seen acted on the spiritual and medical theatres: to exorcism, animal magnetism, and *tractorism. Ibid. The operations … of the magnetist, and *tractorist no less so, in the expulsion of non-existent diseases.

1803.  Fessenden (title), A Poetical Petition against *Tractorising Trumpery, and the Perkinistic Institution. Ibid., III. viii. To tractorise away our guineas.

1817.  Monthly Mag., XLIII. 293. Which cures were performed … by tractorizing them with rusty nails.