early settlers; and first, as to the healthfulness of the climate. The
mortality of the season that followed the landing of the Pilgrims at
Plymouth has been sufficiently accounted for. After this, the colonists
seem to have found the new country agreeing very well with their English
constitutions. Its clear air is the subject of eulogy. Its dainty
springs of sweet water are praised not only by Higginson and Wood, but
even the mischievous Morton says, that for its delicate waters “Canaan
came not near this country.” There is a tendency to dilate on these
simple blessings, which reminds one a little of the Marchioness in
Dickens's story, with her orange-peel-and-water beverage. Still more
does one feel the warmth of coloring,--such as we expect from converts
to a new faith, and settlers who want to entice others over to their
clearings, when Winslow speaks, in 1621, of “abundance of roses, white,
red, and damask; single, but very sweet indeed;” a most of all, however,
when, in the same connection, he says, “Here are grapes white and
red, and very sweet and strong also.” This of our wild grape, a little
vegetable Indian, which scalps a civilized man's mouth, as his animal
representative scalps his cranium. But there is something quite charming
in Winslow's picture of the luxury in which they are living. Lobsters,
oysters, eels, mussels, fish and fowl, delicious fruit, including the
grapes aforesaid,--if they only had “kine, horses, and sheep,” he makes
no question but men would live as contented here as in any part of the
world. We cannot help admiring the way in which they took their trials,
and made the most of their blessings.
“And how Content they were,” says Cotton Mather, “when an Honest Man, as
I have heard, inviting his Friends to a Dish of Clams, at the Table gave
Thanks to Heaven, who had given them to suck the abundance of the Seas,
and of the Treasures Hid in the Sands!”
Strangely enough, as it would seem, except for this buoyant
determination to make the best of everything, they hardly appear to
recognize the difference of the climate from that which they had left.
After almost three years' experience, Winslow says, he can scarce
distinguish New England from Old England, in respect of heat and cold,
frost, snow, rain, winds, etc. The winter, he thinks (if there is a
difference), is sharper and longer; but yet he may be deceived by the
want of the comforts he enjoyed at home. He cannot conceive any
climate to agree better with the constitution of the English, not being
oppressed with extremity of heats, nor nipped by biting cold:
“By which means, blessed be God, we enjoy our health, notwithstanding
those difficulties we have undergone, in such a measure as would have
been admired, if we had lived in England with the like means.”
Edward Johnson, after mentioning the shifts to which they were put for
food, says,--
“And yet, methinks, our children are as cheerful, fat, and lusty, with
feeding upon those mussels, clams, and other fish, as they were in
England with their fill of bread.”
Higginson, himself a dyspeptic, “continually in physic,” as he says, and
accustomed to dress in thick clothing, and to comfort his stomach with
drink that was “both strong and stale,”--the “jolly good ale and old,” I
suppose, of free and easy Bishop Still's song,--found that he both could
and did oftentimes drink New England water very well,--which he seems
to look upon as a remarkable feat. He could go as lightclad as any,
too, with only a light stuff cassock upon his shirt, and stuff breeches
without linings. Two of his children were sickly: one,--little misshapen
Mary,--died on the passage, and, in her father's words, “was the first
in our ship that was buried in the bowels of the great Atlantic sea;”
the other, who had been “most lamentably handled” by disease, recovered
almost entirely “by the very wholesomeness of the air, altering,
digesting, and drying up the cold and crude humors of the body.”
Wherefore, he thinks it a wise course for all cold complexions to come
to take physic in New England, and ends with those often quoted words,
that “a sup of New England's air is better than a whole draught of Old
England's ale.” Mr. Higginson died, however, “of a hectic fever,” a
little more than a year after his arrival.
The medical records which I shall cite show that the colonists were not
exempt from the complaints of the Old World. Besides the common diseases
to which their descendants are subject, there were two others, to
say nothing of the dreaded small-pox, which later medical science has
disarmed,--little known among us at the present day, but frequent
among the first settlers. The first of these was the scurvy, already
mentioned, of which Winthrop speaks in 1630, saying, that it proved
fatal to those who fell into discontent, and lingered after their former
conditions in England; the poor homesick creatures in fact, whom we so
forget in our florid pictures of the early times of the little band in
the wilderness. Many who were suffering from scurvy got well when
the Lyon arrived from England, bringing store of juice of lemons. The
Governor speaks of another case in 1644; and it seems probable that the
disease was not of rare occurrence.
The other complaint from which they suffered, but which has nearly
disappeared from among us, was intermittent fever, or fever and ague.
I investigated the question as to the prevalence of this disease in New
England, in a dissertation, which was published in a volume with other
papers, in the year 1838. I can add little to the facts there recorded.
One which escaped me was, that Joshua Scottow, in “Old Men's Tears,”
dated 1691, speaks of “shaking agues,” as among the trials to which they
had been subjected. The outline map of New England, accompanying the
dissertation above referred to, indicates all the places where I had
evidence that the disease had originated. It was plain enough that
it used to be known in many localities where it has long ceased to
be feared. Still it was and is remarkable to see what a clean bill of
health in this particular respect our barren soil inherited with its
sterility. There are some malarious spots on the edge of Lake Champlain,
and there have been some temporary centres of malaria, within the
memory of man, on one or more of our Massachusetts rivers, but these are
harmless enough, for the most part, unless the millers dam them, when
they are apt to retaliate with a whiff from their meadows, that sets the
whole neighborhood shaking with fever and ague.
The Pilgrims of the Mayflower had with them a good physician, a man of
standing, a deacon of their church, one whom they loved and trusted, Dr.
Samuel Fuller. But no medical skill could keep cold and hunger and
bad food, and, probably enough, desperate homesickness in some of the
feebler sort, from doing their work. No detailed record remains of what
they suffered or what was attempted for their relief during the first
sad winter. The graves of those who died were levelled and sowed with
grain that the losses of the little band might not be suspected by the
savage tenants of the wilderness, and their story remains untold.
Of Dr. Fuller's practice, at a later period, we have an account in a
letter of his to Governor Bradford, dated June, 1630. “I have been to
Matapan” (now Dorchester), he says, “and let some twenty of those people
blood.” Such wholesale depletion as this, except with avowed homicidal
intent, is quite unknown in these days; though I once saw the noted
French surgeon, Lisfranc, in a fine phlebotomizing frenzy, order some
ten or fifteen patients, taken almost indiscriminately, to be bled in a
single morning.
Dr. Fuller's two visits to Salem, at the request of Governor Endicott,
seem to have been very satisfactory to that gentleman. Morton, the
wild fellow of Merry Mount, gives a rather questionable reason for the
Governor's being so well pleased with the physician's doings. The names
under which he mentions the two personages, it will be seen, are not
intended to be complimentary. “Dr. Noddy did a great cure for Captain
Littleworth. He cured him of a disease called a wife.” William Gager,
who came out with Winthrop, is spoken of as “a right godly man and
skilful chyrurgeon, but died of a malignant fever not very long after
his arrival.”
Two practitioners of the ancient town of Newbury are entitled to special
notice, for different reasons. The first is Dr. John Clark, who is said
by tradition to have been the first regularly educated physician who
resided in New England. His portrait, in close-fitting skull-cap, with
long locks and venerable flowing beard, is familiar to our eyes on the
wall of our Society's antechamber. His left hand rests upon a skull, his
right hand holds an instrument which deserves a passing comment. It is
a trephine, a surgical implement for cutting round pieces out of broken
skulls, so as to get at the fragments which have been driven in, and
lift them up. It has a handle like that of a gimlet, with a claw like
a hammer, to lift with, I suppose, which last contrivance I do not
see figured in my books. But the point I refer to is this: the old
instrument, the trepan, had a handle like a wimble, what we call a brace
or bit-stock. The trephine is not mentioned at all in Peter Lowe's book,
London, 1634; nor in Wiseman's great work on Surgery, London, 1676; nor
in the translation of Dionis, published by Jacob Tonson, in 1710. In
fact it was only brought into more general use by Cheselden and Sharpe
so late as the beginning of the last century. As John Clark died
in 1661, it is remarkable to see the last fashion in the way of
skull-sawing contrivances in his hands,--to say nothing of the claw on
the handle, and a Hey's saw, so called in England, lying on the table
by him, and painted there more than a hundred years before Hey was born.
This saw is an old invention, perhaps as old as Hippocrates, and may be
seen figured in the “Armamentarium Chirurgicum” of Scultetus, or in the
Works of Ambroise Pare.
Dr. Clark is said to have received a diploma before he came, for skill
in lithotomy. He loved horses, as a good many doctors do, and left a
good property, as they all ought to do. His grave and noble presence,
with the few facts concerning him, told with more or less traditional
authority, give us the feeling that the people of Newbury, and
afterwards of Boston, had a wise and skilful medical adviser and surgeon
in Dr. John Clark.
The venerable town of Newbury had another physician who was less
fortunate. The following is a court record of 1652:
“This is to certify whom it may concern, that we the subscribers, being
called upon to testify against doctor William Snelling for words by him
uttered, affirm that being in way of merry discourse, a health being
drank to all friends, he answered,
“I'll pledge my friends,
And for my foes
A plague for their heels
And,'----
[a similar malediction on the other extremity of their feet.]
“Since when he hath affirmed that he only intended the proverb used in
the west country, nor do we believe he intended otherwise.
“[Signed] WILLIAM THOMAS.
“THOMAS MILWARD.”
“March 12th 1651, All which I acknowledge, and am sorry I did not
expresse my intent, or that I was so weak as to use so foolish a
proverb.
“[Signed] GULIELMUS SNELLING.”
Notwithstanding this confession and apology, the record tells us that
“William Snelling in his presentment for cursing is fined ten shillings
and the fees of court.”
I will mention one other name among those of the Fathers of the medical
profession in New England. The “apostle” Eliot says, writing in 1647,
“We never had but one anatomy in the country, which Mr. Giles Firman,
now in England, did make and read upon very well.”
Giles Firmin, as the name is commonly spelled, practised physic in this
country for a time. He seems to have found it a poor business; for, in a
letter to Governor Winthrop, he says, “I am strongly sett upon to studye
divinitie: my studyes else must be lost, for physick is but a meene
helpe.”
Giles Firmin's Lectures on Anatomy were the first scientific teachings
of the New World. While the Fathers were enlightened enough to permit
such instructions, they were severe in dealing with quackery; for, in
1631, our court records show that one Nicholas Knopp, or Knapp, was
sentenced to be fined or whipped “for taking upon him to cure the
scurvey by a water of noe worth nor value, which he solde att a very
deare rate.” Empty purses or sore backs would be common with us to-day
if such a rule were enforced.
Besides the few worthies spoken of, and others whose names I have not
space to record, we must remember that there were many clergymen who
took charge of the bodies as well as the souls of their patients, among
them two Presidents of Harvard College, Charles Chauncy and Leonard
Hoar,--and Thomas Thacher, first minister of the “Old South,” author of
the earliest medical treatises printed in the country, [A Brief Rule to
Guide the Common People in Small pox and Measles. 1674.] whose epitaph
in Latin and Greek, said to have been written by Eleazer, an “Indian
Youth” and a member of the Senior Class of Harvard College, may be found
in the “Magnalia.” I miss this noble savage's name in our triennial
catalogue; and as there is many a slip between the cup and lip, one is
tempted to guess that he may have lost his degree by some display of his
native instinct,--possibly a flourish of the tomahawk or scalping-knife.
However this may have been, the good man he celebrated was a notable
instance of the Angelical Conjunction, as the author of the “Magnalia”
calls it, of the offices of clergyman and medical practitioner.
Michael Wigglesworth, author of the “Day of Doom,” attended the sick,
“not only as a Pastor, but as a Physician too, and this, not only in
his own town, but also in all those of the vicinity.” Mather says of the
sons of Charles Chauncy, “All of these did, while they had Opportunity,
Preach the Gospel; and most, if not all of them, like their excellent
Father before them, had an eminent skill in physick added unto their
other accomplishments,” etc. Roger Williams is said to have saved many
in a kind of pestilence which swept away many Indians.
To these names must be added, as sustaining a certain relation to the
healing art, that of the first Governor Winthrop, who is said by John
Cotton to have been “Help for our Bodies by Physick [and] for our
Estates by Law,” and that of his son, the Governor of Connecticut, who,
as we shall see, was as much physician as magistrate.
I had submitted to me for examination, in 1862, a manuscript found among
the Winthrop Papers, marked with the superscription, “For my worthy
friend Mr. Wintrop,” dated in 1643, London, signed Edward Stafford, and
containing medical directions and prescriptions. It may be remembered by
some present that I wrote a report on this paper, which was published
in the “Proceedings” of this Society. Whether the paper was written for
Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts, or for his son, Governor John
of Connecticut, there is no positive evidence that I have been able
to obtain. It is very interesting, however, as giving short and simple
practical directions, such as would be most like to be wanted and most
useful, in the opinion of a physician in repute of that day.
The diseases prescribed for are plague, small-pox, fevers, king's evil,
insanity, falling-sickness, and the like; with such injuries as broken
bones, dislocations, and burning with gunpowder. The remedies are of
three kinds: simples, such as St. John's wort, Clown's all-heal, elder,
parsley, maidenhair, mineral drugs, such as lime, saltpetre, Armenian
bole, crocus metallorum, or sulphuret of antimony; and thaumaturgic or
mystical, of which the chief is, “My black powder against the plague,
small-pox; purples, all sorts of feavers; Poyson; either, by Way of
Prevention or after Infection.” This marvellous remedy was made by
putting live toads into an earthen pot so as to half fill it, and baking
and burning them “in the open ayre, not in an house,”--concerning which
latter possibility I suspect Madam Winthrop would have had something to
say,--until they could be reduced by pounding, first into a brown, and
then into a black, powder. Blood-letting in some inflammations, fasting
in the early stage of fevers, and some of those peremptory drugs with
which most of us have been well acquainted in our time, the infragrant
memories of which I will not pursue beyond this slight allusion, are
among his remedies.
The Winthrops, to one of whom Dr. Stafford's directions were
addressed, were the medical as well as the political advisers of their
fellow-citizens for three or four successive generations. One of them,
Governor John of Connecticut, practised so extensively, that, but for
his more distinguished title in the State, he would have been remembered
as the Doctor. The fact that he practised in another colony, for the
most part, makes little difference in the value of the records we have
of his medical experience, which have fortunately been preserved, and
give a very fair idea, in all probability, of the way in which patients
were treated in Massachusetts, when they fell into intelligent and
somewhat educated hands, a little after the middle of the seventeenth
century:
I have before me, while writing, a manuscript collection of the medical
cases treated by him, and recorded at the time in his own hand, which
has been intrusted to me by our President, his descendant.
They are generally marked Hartford, and extend from the year 1657 to
1669. From these, manuscripts, and from the letters printed in the
Winthrop Papers published by our Society, I have endeavored to obtain
some idea of the practice of Governor John Winthrop, Junior. The learned
eye of Mr. Pulsifer would have helped me, no doubt, as it has done in
other cases; but I have ventured this time to attempt finding my own
way among the hieroglyphics of these old pages. By careful comparison
of many prescriptions, and by the aid of Schroder, Salmon, Culpeper, and
other old compilers, I have deciphered many of his difficult paragraphs
with their mysterious recipes.
The Governor employed a number of the simples dear to ancient women,
--elecampane and elder and wormwood and anise and the rest; but he also
employed certain mineral remedies, which he almost always indicates by
their ancient symbols, or by a name which should leave them a mystery
to the vulgar. I am now prepared to reveal the mystic secrets of the
Governor's beneficent art, which rendered so many good and great as well
as so many poor and dependent people his debtors,--at least, in their
simple belief,--for their health and their lives.
His great remedy, which he gave oftener than any other, was nitre; which
he ordered in doses of twenty or thirty grains to adults, and of three
grains to infants. Measles, colics, sciatica, headache, giddiness, and
many other ailments, all found themselves treated, and I trust bettered,
by nitre; a pretty safe medicine in moderate doses, and one not likely
to keep the good Governor awake at night, thinking whether it might not
kill, if it did not cure. We may say as much for spermaceti, which he
seems to have considered “the sovereign'st thing on earth” for inward
bruises, and often prescribes after falls and similar injuries.
One of the next remedies, in point of frequency, which he was in the
habit of giving, was (probably diaphoretic) antimony; a mild form of
that very active metal, and which, mild as it was, left his patients
very commonly with a pretty strong conviction that they had been taking
something that did not exactly agree with them. Now and then he gave
a little iron or sulphur or calomel, but very rarely; occasionally, a
good, honest dose of rhubarb or jalap; a taste of stinging horseradish,
oftener of warming guiacum; sometimes an anodyne, in the shape of
mithridate,--the famous old farrago, which owed its virtue to poppy
juice; [This is the remedy which a Boston divine tried to simplify. See
Electuarium Novum Alexipharmacum, by Rev. Thomas Harward, lecturer
at the Royal Chappell. Boston, 1732. This tract is in our Society's
library.] very often, a harmless powder of coral; less frequently, an
inert prescription of pleasing amber; and (let me say it softly within
possible hearing of his honored descendant), twice or oftener,--let us
hope as a last resort,--an electuary of millipedes,--sowbugs, if we must
give them their homely English name. One or two other prescriptions,
of the many unmentionable ones which disgraced the pharmacopoeia of the
seventeenth century, are to be found, but only in very rare instances,
in the faded characters of the manuscript.
The excellent Governor's accounts of diseases are so brief, that we get
only a very general notion of the complaints for which he prescribed.
Measles and their consequences are at first more prominent than any
other one affection, but the common infirmities of both sexes and of all
ages seem to have come under his healing hand. Fever and ague appears to
have been of frequent occurrence.
His published correspondence shows that many noted people were in
communication with him as his patients. Roger Williams wants a little
of his medicine for Mrs. Weekes's daughter; worshipful John Haynes is
in receipt of his powders; troublesome Captain Underhill wants “a little
white vitterall” for his wife, and something to cure his wife's friend's
neuralgia, (I think his wife's friend's husband had a little rather have
had it sent by the hands of Mrs. Underhill, than by those of the gallant
and discursive captain); and pious John Davenport says, his wife “tooke
but one halfe of one of the papers” (which probably contained the
medicine he called rubila), “but could not beare the taste of it, and
is discouraged from taking any more;” and honored William Leete asks for
more powders for his “poore little daughter Graciana,” though he found
it “hard to make her take it,” delicate, and of course sensitive, child
as she was, languishing and dying before her time, in spite of all the
bitter things she swallowed,--God help all little children in the hands
of dosing doctors and howling dervishes! Restless Samuel Gorton, now
tamed by the burden of fourscore and two years, writes so touching an
account of his infirmities, and expresses such overflowing gratitude for
the relief he has obtained from the Governor's prescriptions, wondering
how “a thing so little in quantity, so little in sent, so little in
taste, and so little to sence in operation, should beget and bring forth
such efects,” that we repent our hasty exclamation, and bless the memory
of the good Governor, who gave relief to the worn-out frame of our
long-departed brother, the sturdy old heretic of Rhode Island.
What was that medicine which so frequently occurs in the printed letters
under the name of “rubila”? It is evidently a secret remedy, and, so
far as I know, has not yet been made out. I had almost given it up in
despair, when I found what appears to be a key to the mystery. In the
vast multitude of prescriptions contained in the manuscripts, most of
them written in symbols, I find one which I thus interpret:
“Four grains of (diaphoretic) antimony, with twenty grains of nitre,
with a little salt of tin, making rubila.” Perhaps something was
added to redden the powder, as he constantly speaks of “rubifying” or
“viridating” his prescriptions; a very common practice of prescribers,
when their powders look a little too much like plain salt or sugar.
Waitstill Winthrop, the Governor's son, “was a skilful physician,” says
Mr. Sewall, in his funeral sermon; “and generously gave, not only his
advice, but also his Medicines, for the healing of the Sick, which, by
the Blessing of God, were made successful for the recovery of many.”
“His son John, a member of the Royal Society, speaks of himself as 'Dr.
Winthrop,' and mentions one of his own prescriptions in a letter to
Cotton Mather.” Our President tells me that there was an heirloom of the
ancient skill in his family, within his own remembrance, in the form of
a certain precious eye-water, to which the late President John Quincy
Adams ascribed rare virtue, and which he used to obtain from the
possessor of the ancient recipe.
These inherited prescriptions are often treasured in families, I do
not doubt, for many generations. When I was yet of trivial age, and
suffering occasionally, as many children do, from what one of my
Cambridgeport schoolmates used to call the “ager,”--meaning thereby
toothache or face-ache,--I used to get relief from a certain plaster
which never went by any other name in the family than “Dr. Oliver.”
Dr. James Oliver was my great-great-grandfather, graduated in 1680, and
died in 1703. This was, no doubt, one of his nostrums; for nostrum,
as is well known, means nothing more than our own or my own particular
medicine, or other possession or secret, and physicians in old times
used to keep their choice recipes to themselves a good deal, as we have
had occasion to see.