The most interesting item is his bill against the estate of Samuel Pason of Roxbury, for services during his last illness. He attended this gentleman,--for such he must have been, by the amount of physic which he took, and which his heirs paid for,--from June 4th, 1696, to September 3d of the same year, three months. I observe he charges for visits as well as for medicines, which is not the case in most of his bills. He opens the attack with a carminative appeal to the visceral conscience, and follows it up with good hard-hitting remedies for dropsy,--as I suppose the disease would have been called,--and finishes off with a rallying dose of hartshorn and iron.
It is a source of honest pride to his descendant that his bill, which was honestly paid, as it seems to have been honorably earned, amounted to the handsome total of seven pounds and two shillings.
Let me add that he repeatedly prescribes plaster, one of which was very probably the "Dr. Oliver" that soothed my infant griefs, and for which I blush to say that my venerated ancestor received from Goodman Hancock the painfully exiguous sum of no pounds, no shillings, and sixpence.
I have illustrated the practice of the first century, from the two manuscripts I have examined, as giving an impartial idea of its every-day methods. The Governor, Johannes Secundus, it is fair to remember, was an ******* practitioner, while my ancestor was a professed physician. Comparing their modes of treatment with the many scientific follies still prevailing in the Old World, and still more with the extraordinary theological superstitions of the community in which they lived, we shall find reason, I think, to consider the art of healing as in a comparatively creditable state during the first century of New England.
In addition to the evidence as to methods of treatment furnished by the manuscripts I have cited, I subjoin the following document, to which my attention was called by Dr. Shurtleff, our present Mayor.
This is a letter of which the original is to be found in vol. lxix. page 10 of the "Archives" preserved at the State House in Boston. It will be seen that what the surgeon wanted consisted chiefly of opiates, stimulants, cathartics, plasters, and materials for bandages. The complex and varied formulae have given place to ******r and often more effective forms of the same remedies; but the list and the manner in which it is made out are proofs of the good sense and schooling of the surgeon, who, it may be noted, was in such haste that he neglected all his stops. He might well be in a hurry, as on the very day upon which he wrote, a great body of Indians-- supposed to be six or seven hundred--appeared before Hatfield; and twenty-five resolute young men of Hadley, from which town he wrote, crossed the river and drove them away.
HADLY May 30: 76
Mr RAWSON Sr What we have recd by Tho: Houey the past month is not the cheifest of our wants as you have love for poor wounded I pray let us not want for these following medicines if you have not a speedy conveyance of them I pray send on purpose they are those things mentioned in my former letter but to prevent future mistakes I have wrote them att large wee have great want with the greatest halt and speed let us be supplyed.
Sr Yr Sert WILL LOCHS
(Endorsed Mr. Lockes Letter Recd from the Governor 13 Jane & acquainted ye Council with it but could not obtaine any thing to be sent in answer thereto 13 June 1676 I have given some idea of the chief remedies used by our earlier physicians, which were both Galenic and chemical; that is, vegetable and mineral. They, of course, employed the usual perturbing medicines which Montaigne says are the chief reliance of their craft.
There were, doubtless, individual practitioners who employed special remedies with exceptional boldness and perhaps success. Mr. Eliot is spoken of, in a letter of William Leete to Winthrop, Junior, as being under Mr. Greenland's mercurial administrations. The latter was probably enough one of these specialists.
There is another class of remedies which appears to have been employed occasionally, but, on the whole, is so little prominent as to imply a good deal of common sense among the medical practitioners, as compared with the superstitions prevailing around them. I have said that I have caught the good Governor, now and then, prescribing the electuary of millipedes; but he is entirely excused by the almost incredible fact that they were retained in the materia medica so late as when Rees's Cyclopaedia was published, and we there find the directions formerly given by the College of Edinburgh for their preparation. Once or twice we have found him admitting still more objectionable articles into his materia medica; in doing which, I am sorry to say that he could plead grave and learned authority. But these instances are very rare exceptions in a medical practice of many years, which is, on the whole, very respectable, considering the time and circumstances.
Some remedies of questionable though not odious character appear occasionally to have been employed by the early practitioners, but they were such as still had the support of the medical profession.
Governor John Winthrop, the first, sends for East Indian bezoar, with other commodities he is writing for. Governor Endicott sends him one he had of Mr. Humfrey. I hope it was genuine, for they cheated infamously in the matter of this concretion, which ought to come out of an animal's stomach, but the real history of which resembles what is sometimes told of modern sausages.
There is a famous law-case of James the First's time, in which a goldsmith sold a hundred pounds' worth of what he called bezoar, which was proved to be false, and the purchaser got a verdict against him. Governor Endicott also sends Winthrop a unicorn's horn, which was the property of a certain Mrs. Beggarly, who, in spite of her name, seems to have been rich in medical knowledge and possessions.
