Part 34

“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,'----

“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 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.”