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 306 PERKINS by way of cross examination may therefore lay the foundation of an indictment; and it has been held to be perjury where a party, after being particularly cautioned as to his reply, answered falsely to an interrogatory, put merely with the design of impairing his credit as to that part of the evidence which was immediately material. PERKINS, EUsha, an American physician, the inventor of the metallic tractors, born in Nor- wich, Conn., Jan. 16, 1741, died in New York, Sept. 6, 1799. He was educated by his father for the profession of medicine, and began the practice of it in Plainfield, where he was very successful. About 1796 he invented the metal- lic tractors, consisting of two instruments, one resembling brass and the other steel, but pro- fessedly of a peculiar composition of metals, three inches long and pointed at the ends. They were used chiefly in local inflammations, such as pains in the head, face, teeth, and side, in rheumatism and similar diseases, the points being applied to the part, and then drawn over it in a downward direction for about 20 min- utes. This method of cure was recommended by the faculties of three institutions in the United States. In Copenhagen 12 physicians and surgeons, most of them instructors in the royal Frederick's hospital, began a course of experiments, an account of which was pub- lished in an octavo volume, and gave their opinion in favor of the new system, which they called Perkinism. In London, where the tractors were introduced by Dr. Perkins's son, a Perkinian institution, under the presidency of Lord Rivers, was established, chiefly for the benefit of the poor. The cases of cures published numbered 5,000, and were certified to by 8 professors, 40 physicians and surgeons, and 30 clergymen. The list of persons claimed to have been cured by this remedy amounted to an almost fabulous number ; but a few years after the death of the inventor the tractors fell into neglect almost as speedily as they had become celebrated. Dr. Perkins invented also an antiseptic medicine, and administered it with great success in the low state of dys- entery and ulcerated sore throat. Anxious to test its efficacy against the yellow fever, he went to New York in 1799 during the preva- lence of that disease ; but after four weeks of unremitting toil he himself died of the fever. PERKINS, George Roberts, an American mathe- matician, born in Otsego co., N. Y., May 3, 1812. He was self-educated, and at the age of 18 was employed in the slack water survey of the Susquehanna river. He was a teacher of mathematics in the "Liberal Institute" at Clinton, N. Y., from 1831 to 1838, when he be- came principal of the Utica academy. In 1844, at the opening of the state normal school, he was chosen professor of mathematics, and four years later was elected principal. In 1852 he resigned and superintended the erection of the Dudley observatory. He has published a series of arithmetics (1840-'51) ; " Treatise on Algebra" (1841); "Elements of Algebra" (1844) ; " Elements of Geometry " (1847) ; "Trigonometry and Surveying" (1851); and "Plane and Solid Geometry " (1854). PERKINS, Jacob, an American inventor, born in Newburyport, Mass., July 9, 1T66, died in London, July 30, 1849. He was apprenticed to a goldsmith, and invented a new method of plating shoe buckles. When he was about 21 years of age he was employed by the common- wealth of Massachusetts to make dies for cop- per coinage. Soon afterward he invented a machine for cutting and heading nails at one operation, but through the mismanagement of his partners he was involved in great pecu- niary distress. In bank-note engraving he made most important improvements, substitu- ting steel for copper plates. (See ENGRAVING.) About 1814 he went to Philadelphia and be- came associated with the firm of Murray, Dra- per, and Fairman, bank-note engravers. In 1818 he went to England, accompanied by Mr. Fairman and a number of workmen, and ob- tained a contract for supplying the bank of Ireland with plates, and in partnership with Mr. Heath carried on his business in London for a number of years. He also constructed a gun in which steam, generated at an enormous pressure, was used as the propelling power instead of gunpowder, and instituted experi- ments which demonstrated the feasibility of his plan, though it has been generally con- demned as inapplicable to modern warfare. Balls passed through 11 planks of the hardest deal, each an inch thick, placed some distance apart, and with a pressure of only 65 atmos- pheres penetrated an iron plate a quarter of an inch thick. He screwed to a gun barrel a tube filled with balls, which falling into the barrel by their own weight were discharged at the rate of nearly 1,000 a minute. The expense of working such a gun was calculated at about y^fr part of the cost of the powder required to discharge an equal number of balls by the usual method. Mr. Perkins also invented an instrument called the bathometer, to measure the depth of water, and the pleometer, to mark with precision the speed at which a vessel moves through the water ; and he was the first to demonstrate that water is compressible. PERKINS, Justin, an American missionary, born at West Springfield, Mass., March 12, 1805, died at Chicopee, Mass., Dec. 31, 1869. He graduated at Amherst college in 1829, spent two years in Andover theological seminary, and was for nearly a year tutor in Amherst college. In 1833 the American board desig- nated him to commence a mission to the Nes- torians of Persia, and he was ordained Sept. 8. Soon afterward he sailed with his wife, and, after many difficulties, reached Urumiah in November, 1834. By the aid of a priest he reduced the language of the Nestorians to writing, and translated the whole Bible into the modern Syriac. He also translated other books, and prepared and published a commen-