doctors, and as a result, each family had its own medicine-chest, and its
own recipes and prescriptions handed down from generation to generation,
and brought oftentimes from across the sea. Herbs played an important
part in the pharmacopoeia, both because they were easily obtained, and
because tradition endowed them with mysterious virtues. An old medical
treatise assures its readers that "Nature has stamped on divers plants
legible characters to discover their uses"; that baldness may be cured by
hanging-moss, and freckles by spotted plants. Ragwort, and periwinkle, and
Solomon's Seal all had their special merits; but sage was prime favorite,
and its votary declares it a question how one who grows it in his garden
and uses it freely can ever die. Next to ease of preparation, the prime
requisite of a medicine was strength. Violent purges and powerful doses of
physic or of "The Bark" were always in favor. The simple ailments of
childhood were dosed with such abominations as copperas and
pewter-filings, and these unhappy infants were fed on beverages of
snake-root or soot-tea. One vile compound, common as it was odious, was
_snail pottage_, made of garden shell-snails washed in small beer, mixed
with earth-worms, and then fried in a concoction of ale, herbs, spices,
and drugs.
Yet our ancestors knew how to brew good-tasting things. The letter book of
Francis Jerdone, of Yorktown, Virginia, records under date 1746, "A receit
how to make Burlington's Universal Balsam.
Balsam Peru 1 oz.
Best Storax 2 oz.
Benjamin, impregnated with sweet Almonds 3 oz.
Alloes Succatrinx 1/2 oz.
Myrrh Elect 1/2 oz.
Purest Frankincense 1/2 oz.
Roots of Angelica 1/2 oz.
Flowers of St. John Wort 1/2 oz.
One pint of the best Spirit of Wine.
To be bottled up and Set in the Sun for 20 or 30 days together, to be
shaken twice or thrice a day. Take about 30 drops going to bed in Tea made
of pennyroyal, Balm or Speer mint."
This prescription has the great defect of being too good, and might have a
tendency to tempt the young to acquire the disease in order to be treated
to the remedy. _Angelic Snuff_ was another agreeable medicament, warranted
to cure all head troubles and help the palsy, megrims, deafness, apoplexy,
and gout. What a pity that only the name of this cure remains to our
generation, whose megrims alone would empty so many boxes of the
invaluable snuff!
The early settlers could, if they would, have learned some useful lessons
in the treatment of disease from the Indians, who at least understood
making the skin share the work of the stomach. A primitive, but very
effective, way of treating fevers and similar ailments among the natives
was by the sweating-oven. The Indian patient would creep into these
mounds, under which a fire had been lighted, while the medicine-man poured
on water from above, creating a mighty steam, in which the patient would
continue till even Indian fortitude could hold out no longer, when he
would crawl out, and, rushing down to the nearest stream, plunge headlong
into its cold waters. All this process was, of course, performed amid
incantations as mysterious to the whites as the phraseology of a modern
physician to a savage.
This treatment was more in harmony with modern ideas than the methods
which prevailed among the English. When the two Spotswood boys were sent
across the sea to Eton, to school, they spent their vacations with their
aunt, Mrs. Campbell, who writes to their landlady at the end of their
stay: "I am very Sorry, Madam, to send them back with such bad coughs,
though I have nursed Jack who was so bad that we were obliged to Bleed
him, and physick him, that he is much better. I can't judge how they got
them (the coughs). My son came home with one, and has never been out of
the house but once since, and these children have always laid warm, and
lived constantly in the house." These poor little victims of the coddling
system would probably have recovered rapidly in the steam-bath of their
native Virginia and the fresh air of her pine forests, but instead, they
are sent back from one hothouse to another. "I beg," adds their
affectionate, but misguided aunt, "that they may be kept in a very warm
room, and take the drops I send every night, and the pectoral drink
several times a day, and that they eat no meat or drink anything but warm
barley water and lemon juice, and, if Aleck increases, to get Blooded." It
is a great relief, and something of a surprise, to learn that Aleck and
his brother John lived to come back to America and figure in the
Revolution. Perhaps their recollections of the dosing and "blooding" they
received in their youth threw additional energy into their opposition to
the oppression of England.
Cupping, leeching, and all sorts of blood-letting were the chief
dependence in olden times in all cases of fever. The free use of water,
now so universal, would then have been thought fatal. The poor patient
dreaded the doctor more than the disease, and often with reason.
Anæsthetics, that best gift of science to a suffering world, were unknown,
and surgery was vivisection with the victim looking on, conscious and
quivering.
The doctor in the Cavalier Colonies was regarded with almost as much
suspicion as the parson--as a cormorant, ready and anxious to prey on the
community, and to be held in check by all the severities of the law.
Virginia in 1657 passed statutes regulating surgeons' fees. In 1680
physicians were compelled to declare under oath the value of their drugs,
and the court allowed them fifty per cent advance on the cost. If any
physician was found guilty of neglecting a patient, he was liable to fine
and punishment.
In the eighteenth century, still stricter laws were framed, "because of
surgeons, apothecaries and unskillful apprentices who exacted unreasonable
fees, and loading their patients with medicine." The fees fixed by this
statute are "one shilling per mile and all medicines to be set forth in
the bill." The price for attending a common fracture is set down at two
pounds, and double the sum for attending a compound fracture. A university
degree entitled the practitioner to higher charges, but its possession was
rare. Most doctors were trained up in the offices of older men as
apprentices, pounders of drugs, and cleaners of instruments, as the old
painters began by preparing paints and brushes for the master.
A modern man of science would smile at the titles of the old medical works
solemnly consulted by our forbears. "A Chirurgicall Booke" sounds
interesting, and "The Universall Body of Physick"; but they are not so
alluring as "The Way to Health, long life and Happiness," nor so
attractive to the ignorant as "The Unlearned Keymiss." Perhaps the
struggling physicians and chirurgians who doctored by these old books and
their common-sense, helped as many and harmed no more than the chemist of
to-day, with his endless pharmacopoeia of coal-tar products, tonics, and
stimulants; or the specialist who, instead of "the Whole Body of Physick,"
devotes himself wholly to a single muscle, or nerve-ganglion.
In spite of the chill of popular disfavor and of the difficulties of
professional training, good and noble men worked on faithfully at the
business of helping the sick and suffering in the colonies. The Maryland
annals tell of a Dr. Henry Stevenson, who built him a house near the York
road so elegant, that the neighbors called it "Stevenson's Folly." If
there was any envy in their hearts, however, it changed to gratitude and
admiration when the small-pox appeared in their midst, and the
large-hearted doctor turned his mansion into a hospital. It is hard for us
who live after the days of Jenner, to appreciate the terror of the word
_small-pox_. In the eighteenth century pitted faces were the rule. Fathers
feared to send their sons to England, so prevalent was the disease there.
An old journal advertises: "Wanted, a man between twenty and thirty years
of age, to be a footman and under-butler in a great family; he must be of
the Church of England, and have had the small-pox in the natural way."
This enlightened Dr. Stevenson, of Stevenson's Folly, made Maryland
familiar with the process of inoculation, which antedated vaccination. He
advertises in _The Maryland Gazette_ of 1765 that he is ready to inoculate
"any gentlemen that are pleased to favor him in that way," and that his
fees are two pistoles for inoculating, and twenty shillings per week
board, the average cost to each patient being £5 14s.
Ryland Randolph writes to his brother at a time when inoculation is still
a new thing: "I wrote to my Mother for her consent to be inoculated for
the small-pox, but since see that she thinks it a piece of presumption.
When you favor me with a line, pray let me have your opinion of it!"
In 1768, we find the authorities at _William and Mary_ resolving "that an
ad. be inserted in the Gazette to inform the Publick that the College is
now clear of small-pox," and a few days later they frame another
resolution that "fifty pounds be allowed to Dr. Carter for his care and
attendance on those afflicted with said disorder at the College."
Meanwhile the colonists had not followed up their good beginning at Mount
Malado. Hospitals had not grown with the growth of the community. Doctors
had none of the advantages of the study of surgery and medicine which are
given by the hospital system, but the sick were tenderly cared for,
nevertheless. In Jefferson's notes on the advantages enjoyed by the
Virginians, he speaks of: "their condition too when sick, in the family of
a good farmer where every member is emulous to do them kind offices, where
they are visited by all the neighbors, who bring them the little rarities
which their sickly appetites may crave, and who take by rotation the
nightly watch over them, without comparison better than in a general
hospital where the sick, the dying and the dead are crammed together in
the same room, and often in the same bed." When we read the accounts of
hospitals in the eighteenth century, antiseptics unknown, and even
ordinary cleanliness uncommon, we can readily agree with the conclusion
that "Nature and kind nursing save a much greater proportion in our plain
way, at a smaller expense, and with less abuse."
Every wind that swept the sick-room in those colonial farm houses, brought
balm from the pines, or vigor from the sea. Three thousand miles of
uncontaminated air stretched behind them and before. This pure, balmy,
bracing air cured the sick, and kept the well in health, in spite of
general disregard of hygiene, which prevailed almost universally,
especially in all matters of diet. "We may venture to affirm," exclaims a
horrified Frenchman, fresh from the land of scientific cookery, "that if a
premium were offered for a regimen most destructive to the teeth, the
stomach and the health in general, none could be desired more efficacious
for these ends than that in use among this people. At breakfast they
deluge the stomach with a pint of hot water slightly impregnated with tea,
or slightly tinctured, or rather coloured with coffee; and they swallow,
without mastication, hot bread half-baked, soaked in melted butter, with
the grossest cheese and salt or hung beef, pickled pork, or fish, all
which can with difficulty be dissolved. At dinner, they devour boiled
pastes, called absurdly puddings, garnished with the most luscious sauces.
Their turnips and other vegetables are floated in lard or butter. Their
pastry is nothing but a greasy paste imperfectly baked."
The entire day, according to this cheerful observer, is passed in heaping
one indigestible mass on another, and spurring the exhausted stomach to
meet the strain, by wines and liquors of all sorts. The population who
lived on such a diet, ought to have died young, to point the moral of the
hygienist; but Nature pardons much to those who live in the open air. If
digestions were taxed, nerves remained unstrained. Even in our age of
hurry and bustle, anything like nervous prostration is rare, south of
Mason and Dixon's line. The soft air and the easy life soothe the
susceptibilities, and oil the wheels of existence. It is for these
reasons, perchance, that the records of the burying-grounds in the
Southern colonies show such a proportion of names of octogenarians who had
survived to a ripe old age, in spite of hot breads washed down with hotter
liquors.
These burying-grounds of the old South are robbed of much of the
dreariness of their kind by being generally laid out in close proximity to
the living world, as if the chill of the tomb were beaten back by the
fire-light falling on it from the familiar hearth stone close at hand. It
is a comfort to think of genial Colonel Byrd, who loved so well the good
things of this world, resting under a monument which duly sets forth his
virtues, on the edge of the garden at Westover, beneath an arbor screened
only by vines from the door where he passed in and out for so many years.
Hugh Jones, that conservative son of the church, lamented that the
Virginians did not prefer to lie in the church-yard for their last long
sleep. "It is customary," he says regretfully, "to bury in garden, or
orchards, where whole families lye interred together, in a spot, generally
handsomely enclosed, planted with evergreens, and the graves kept
decently. Hence, likewise, arises the occasion of preaching funeral
sermons in houses where, at funerals, are assembled a great congregation
of neighbors and friends; and if you insist on having the service and
ceremony at church, they'll say they will be without it, unless performed
after their own manner."
Here we have a flash of the spirit of resistance to undue encroachments
from church or state, which flamed up half a century later into open
revolt. There is something touching in this clinging to the home round
which so many memories cluster, in this desire to lay the dead there close
to all they had loved, and when their own time came, to lie down beside
them under the shadow of the old walls which had sheltered their infancy,
and youth, and age.
If the burying-grounds were cheerful, still more so were the funerals.
They partook, in fact, of the nature of an Irish wake. Wine was freely
drunk, and funeral baked meats demolished, while the firing of guns was so
common that many asked by will that it be omitted, as friends to-day are
"kindly requested to omit flowers."
The funeral expenses of a gentleman of Baltimore town in the eighteenth
century were somewhat heavy, as any one may judge from an itemized account
preserved to us, which includes: "Coffin £6 16s, 41 yds. crape, 32 yds.
black Tiffany, 11 yds. black crape, 5-1/2 broadcloth, 7-1/2 yards of black
Shaloon, 16-1/2 yds. linen, 3 yds. sheeting, 3 doz. pairs men's black silk
gloves, 2 doz. pairs women's do., 6 pairs men's blk. gloves (cheaper), 1
pr. women's do., black silk handkerchiefs, 8-1/2 yards calamanco, mohair
and buckram, 13-1/2 yds. ribbon, 47-1/2 lbs. loaf sugar, 14 doz. eggs, 10
oz. nutmegs, 1-1/2 pounds alspice, 20-5/8 gallons white wine, 12 bottles
red wine, 10-3/8 gallons rum." The total cost of these preparations
amounts to upward of fifty pounds sterling, besides the two pounds to be
paid to Dame Hannah Gash and Mr. Ireland for attendance, while ten
shillings additional were allowed for "coffin furniture."
When a Thomas Jefferson, ancestor of _the_ Thomas Jefferson, died in
Virginia in 1698, his funeral expenses included the items:
To Benj. Branch for a Mutton for the
funerall 60lbs. tobacco.
To Ann Carraway and Mary Harris for
mourning Rings £1
To Sam'll Branch for makeing y{e} coffin 10{s}
For plank for y{e} coffin 2{s} 6{d}
The list of expenses closes with unconscious satire, thus: "Previous
item--to Dr. Bowman for Phisick, 60 lbs. tobacco," showing that every
arrangement for the taking under was complete.
These inventories and wills cast wonderful sidelights on the manners and
customs of "y{e} olden tyme." To our age, accustomed to endless
post-mortem litigation, there is a refreshing simplicity in these old
documents, which seem to take for granted that it is only necessary to
state the wishes of the testator. Richard Lightfoote, ancestor of the
Virginia Lightfoots, who made his will in 1625, "in the first yeare of the
raigne of our Soveraigne Lord King Charles," feeling perhaps a little
fearful of disputes among his heirs, appoints Thomas Jones "to bee
overseer herof, to see the same formed in all things accordinge to my true
meaninge; hereby requestinge all the parties legatees aforenamed to make
him judge and decider of all controversies which shall arise between them
or anie of them." But there is no record that the services of Thomas Jones
were needed as mediator, and when Jane Lightfoote, his wife, makes her
will, she goes about it in a still more childlike and trustful fashion.
She leaves her "little cottage pott" to one, and her "little brasse pan"
to another. No object is too trifling to be disposed of individually. The
inventory of Colonel Ludlow, who departed this life in 1660, is a curious
jumble of things small and large. Here we have "one rapier, one hanger,
and black belt, three p'r of new gloves and one p'r of horn buckskin
gloves, one small silver Tankard, one new silver hat-band, two pair of
silver breeches buttons, one wedding Ring, one sealed Ring, a pcell of
sweet powder and 2 p'r of band strings," besides which is specially
mentioned: "Judge Richardson to y{e} Wast in a picture," valued at fifty
pounds of tobacco. In addition to these, Colonel Ludlow died possessed of
"12 white servants and ten negroes, 43 cattle, 54 sheep and 4 horses."
The favorite testimonial of affection to survivors was the mourning ring
or seal. These gifts figure in almost every will we examine, one
mentioning a bequest of money for the purchase of "thirty rings for
relatives." The keepsakes were carefully cherished, and the survivors in
turn set up the memorial tablet, or carved the tombstone, or presented
some piece of plate to the parish church, to keep fresh the name and
memory of the deceased. In Christ Church, at Norfolk, is an old Alms Bason
marked with a Lion Passant and a Leopard's Head crowned, in the centre a
coat of arms, three Griffins' heads erased, and the inscription:
"The gift of Capt. Whitwell in
memory of Mrs. Whitwell who was
intered in the church at Norfolk,
y{e} 8{th} of March, 1749."
The same church owns a flagon with a crest, "a demi-man ppr-crowned in
dexter three ostrich feathers," given by Charles Perkins as a memorial to
his wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1762.
It was a pleasant thought thus to renew the memory of departed friends by
flagon, and plate, and alms-basin--a wiser way, one feels, than the
carving of long epitaphs on gloomy stones surmounted by skull and
cross-bones. How often, as we read these dreary tributes, we long for some
shock of truth to nature, among all this decorous conventionalism! What
tales these old colonial graveyards might have told us if they would! Here
lie men who, perchance, supped with Shakespeare, or jested with Jonson and
Marlow at _The Mermaid_.
Here rest gallants who closed round the royal standard on the fatal field
of Marston Moor, or danced at Buckingham Palace with the free and fair
dames of the merry court of Charles Second after the Restoration; but not
a word of all this appears on the stones that represent them. Their
epitaphs plaster them over with all the Christian virtues, and obscure
their individuality as completely as the whitewash brushes of Cromwell's
soldiers obliterated the dark, quaintly carved oak of the cathedrals. _De
mortuis nil nisi bonum_ makes churchyard literature very dull reading,
when it should be the most interesting and instructive in the world. Had
the stones set forth the lives of those who rest beneath, we might learn
much of such a man as Sir George Somers, whose strange experiences on the
_Sea-Venture_ and his adventures on the Bermudas make me want to know more
of him. I want to know what caused the trouble between him and Gates; how
he built his cedar ships; how he looked, and walked, and talked; and what
manner of man he was, all in all. Instead of gratifying my innocent
curiosity, his tombstone in Whitchurch, where he is buried, puts me off
with a florid verse of poor poetry, and I am little better helped when I
turn to the records of the island where he died. Here Capt. Nathaniel
Butler, "finding accidentally" (so runs the old chronicle) "a little
crosse erected in a by-place amongst a great many of bushes, understanding
there was buried the heart and intrailes of Sir George Somers, hee
resolved to have a better memory of so worthy a Souldier than that. So,
finding also a great Marble Stone brought out of England, hee caused it to
bee wrought handsomely, and laid over the place, which he invironed with a
square wall of hewen stone, tombe-like, wherein hee caused to be graven
this epitaph he had composed, and fixed it on the Marble Stone and thus it
was:
"In the year 1611
Noble Sir George Summers went hence to Heaven
Whose noble, well-tried worth that held him still imploid
Gave him the knowledge of the world so wide.
Hence 't was by heavens decree that to this place
He brought new guests and name to mutual grace.
At last his soule and body being to part,
He here bequeathed his entrailes and his heart."
Even this gives us more information about the dead than most of the
epitaphs. They are composed, as a rule, with Jonsonian elaborateness, and
might as well be set up over Rasselas, as over those they commemorate.
On the tomb of President Nelson of his Majesty's Council, in the old York
churchyard, a pompous inscription announces: "Reader, if you feel the
spirit of that exalted ardor which aspires to the felicity of conscious
virtue, animated by those consolations and divine admonitions, perform the
task and expect the distinction of the righteous man!" The "_distinction
of the righteous_" is a delightful phrase, and sets forth the instinctive
belief of the Cavalier in aristocracy in heaven.
A Latin inscription was regarded as an appropriate tribute to the learning
of the deceased, who, had his ghost walked o' nights, might have needed to
brush up his classics to make quite sure of what his survivors were
saying about him.
In happy contrast to the frigidity of these epitaphs wherein the dead
languages bury their dead, is the verse written by his son over the
"Hon{ble} Coll. Digges," who died in 1744:
"Diggs, ever to extremes untaught to bend
Enjoying life, yet mindful of its end
In thee the world an happy mingling saw
Of sprightly humor and religious awe."
How it warms our hearts to find the word _humor_ on a gravestone! It takes
the chill out of death itself, and inspires us with the hope that this
most lovable of traits may stand as good a chance of immortality as Faith,
Hope, or Charity.
A brief and business-like epitaph written over Mistress Lucy Berkeley,
declares that "She left behind her 5 children viz. 2 Boys and 3 Girls. I
shall not pretend to give her full character; it would take too much room
for a Grave-stone. Shall only say she never neglected her duty to her
Creator in publick or private. She was charitable to the poor, a kind
Mistress, Indulgent Mother, and Obedient Wife."
For a parallel to this matron who neglected no duty, "publick or private,"
we must seek the tomb of a maiden. On the crumbling stone the tribute
still survives, and tells that
"In a Well grounded Certainty of an
Immortal Resurrection
Here lyes the Remains of Elizabeth
the Daughter of
John and Catharine Washington
She was a Maiden
Virtuous without Reservedness
Wise without Affectation
Beautiful without Knowing it
She left this life on the Fifth day of
Feb{r} in the Year MDCCXXXVI in the
Twentieth Year of her age."
One more epitaph of the Colonial Cavaliers I must quote in full, because
it alone, of all I have studied, does give a picture of the man who lies
under it. If it praises him too much, it is to be set down to his credit
that one who knew him well believed it all; and I for one wish peace to
the dust of this gallant old mariner who sailed the seas in colonial days.
Here he lies, sunk at his moorings, "one who never struck his flag while
he had a shot in the locker; who carried sail in chace till all was blue;
in peace whose greatest glory was a staggering top-sail breeze; in war to
bring his broadside to bear upon the enemy, and who, when signals of
distress hove out, never stood his course, but hauled or tacked or wore
to give relief, though to a foe; who steered his little bark full fifty
annual cruises over life's tempestuous ocean and moored her safe in port
at last; where her timbers being crazy, and having sprung a leak in the
gale, she went down with a clear hawse. If these traits excite in the
breast of humanity that common tribute to the memory of the departed--a
sigh--then traveller as thou passest this wreck, let thine be borne upon
the breeze which bends the grassy covering of the grave of _Old Job
Pray_."