It is entitled "The Angel of Bethesda: an Essay upon the Common Maladies of Mankind, offering, first, the sentiments of Piety," etc., etc., and "a collection of plain but potent and Approved REMEDIES for the Maladies." There are sixty-six "Capsula's," as he calls them, or chapters, in his table of contents; of which, five--from the fifteenth to the nineteenth, inclusive--are missing. This is a most unfortunate loss, as the eighteenth capsula treated of agues, and we could have learned from it something of their degree of frequency in this part of New England. There is no date to the manuscript; which, however, refers to a case observed Nov. 14, 1724.
The divine takes precedence of the physician in this extraordinary production. He begins by preaching a sermon at his unfortunate patient. Having thrown him into a cold sweat by his spiritual sudorific, he attacks him with his material remedies, which are often quite as unpalatable. The ****** and cleanly practice of Sydenham, with whose works he was acquainted, seems to have been thrown away upon him. Everything he could find mentioned in the seventy or eighty authors he cites, all that the old women of both ***es had ever told him of, gets into his text, or squeezes itself into his margin.
Evolving disease out of sin, he hates it, one would say, as he hates its cause, and would drive it out of the body with all noisome appliances. "Sickness is in Fact Flagellum Dei pro peccatis mundi."
So saying, he encourages the young mother whose babe is wasting away upon her breast with these reflections:
"Think; oh the grievous Effects of Sin! This wretched Infant has not arrived unto years of sense enough, to sin after the similitude of the transgression committed by Adam. Nevertheless the Transgression of Adam, who had all mankind Foederally, yea, Naturally, in him, has involved this Infant in the guilt of it. And the poison of the old serpent, which infected Adam when he fell into his Transgression, by hearkening to the Tempter, has corrupted all mankind, and is a seed unto such diseases as this Infant is now laboring under. Lord, what are we, and what are our children, but a Generation of Vipers?"
Many of his remedies are at least harmless, but his pedantry and utter want of judgment betray themselves everywhere. He piles his prescriptions one upon another, without the least discrimination. He is run away with by all sorts of fancies and superstitions. He prescribes euphrasia, eye-bright, for disease of the eyes; appealing confidently to the strange old doctrine of signatures, which inferred its use from the resemblance of its flower to the organ of vision.
For the scattering of wens, the efficacy of a Dead Hand has been out of measure wonderful. But when he once comes to the odious class of remedies, he revels in them like a scarabeus. This allusion will bring us quite near enough to the inconceivable abominations with which he proposed to outrage the sinful stomachs of the unhappy confederates and accomplices of Adam.
It is well that the treatise was never printed, yet there are passages in it worth preserving. He speaks of some remedies which have since become more universally known:
"Among the plants of our soyl, Sir William Temple singles out Five [Six] as being of the greatest virtue and most friendly to health: and his favorite plants, Sage, Rue, Saffron, Alehoof, Garlick, and Elder."
"But these Five [Six] plants may admitt of some competitors. The QUINQUINA--How celebrated: Immoderately, Hyperbolically celebrated!"
Of Ipecacuanha, he says,--
"This is now in its reign; the most fashionable vomit."
"I am not sorry that antimonial emetics begin to be disused."
He quotes "Mr. Lock" as recommending red poppy-water and abstinence from flesh as often useful in children's diseases.
One of his "Capsula's" is devoted to the animalcular origin of diseases, at the end of which he says, speaking of remedies for this supposed source of our distempers:
"Mercury we know thee: But we are afraid thou wilt kill us too, if we employ thee to kill them that kill us.
"And yett, for the cleansing of the small Blood Vessels, and ****** way for the free circulation of the Blood and Lymph--there is nothing like Mercurial Deobstruents."
>From this we learn that mercury was already in common use, and the subject of the same popular prejudice as in our own time.
His poetical turn shows itself here and there :
"O Nightingale, with a Thorn at thy Breast; Under the trouble of a Cough, what can be more proper than such thoughts as these?"...
If there is pathos in this, there is bathos in his apostrophe to the millipede, beginning "Poor sowbug!" and eulogizing the healing virtues of that odious little beast; of which he tells us to take "half a pound, putt 'em alive into a quart or two of wine," with saffron and other drugs, and take two ounces twice a day.
The "Capsula " entitled "Nishmath Chajim " was printed in 1722, at New London, and is in the possession of our own Society. He means, by these words, something like the Archxus of Van Helmont, of which he discourses in a style wonderfully resembling that of Mr. Jenkinson in the "Vicar of Wakefield." "Many of the Ancients thought there was much of a Real History in the Parable, and their Opinion was that there is, DIAPHORA KATA TAS MORPHAS, A Distinction (and so a Resemblance) of men as to their Shapes after Death." And so on, with Ireaeus, Tertullian, Thespesius, and "the TA TONE PSEUCONE CROMATA," in the place of "Sanconiathon, Manetho, Berosus," and "Anarchon ara kai ateleutaion to pan."
One other passage deserves notice, as it relates to the single medical suggestion which does honor to Cotton Mather's memory. It does not appear that he availed himself of the information which he says, he obtained from his slave, for such I suppose he was.
In his appendix to " Variolae Triumphatae," he says,--
"There has been a wonderful practice lately used in several parts of the world, which indeed is not yet become common in our nation.
