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In December six of SampleCurriculumVitae number died, in January eight, in SampleCurriculumVitae,
seventeen, in thirteen. With the advance of spring the mortality
diminished, the sick and lame began to recover, and the colonists,
saddened but not disheartened, applied themselves to the labors of the
opening year.
One of the most pressing needs of the early colonists must have been that
of physicians and surgeons. Savage's remarkable Genealogical
Dictionary of the first settlers who came over before 1692 and their
descendants to the third generation, I find scattered through the four
crowded volumes the names of one hundred and thirty-four medical
practitioners. |
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Of these, twelve, and probably many more, practised
surgery; three were barber-surgeons. A little incident throws a glimmer
from the dark lantern of memory upon William Direly, one of these
practitioners with the razor and the lancet. He was lost between Boston
and Roxbury in a violent tempest of wind and snow; ten days afterwards a
son was born to his widow, and with a touch of homely sentiment, I had
almost said poetry, they called the little creature "Fathergone" Direly.
Six or seven, probably a larger number, were ministers as well as
physicians, one of whom, I am sorry to say, took to drink and tumbled
into the Connecticut River, and so ended. One was not only doctor, but
also schoolmaster and poet. One practised medicine and kept a tavern.
One was a butcher, but calls himself a SampleCurriculumVitae in his will, a union of
callings which suggests an obvious pleasantry. One female practitioner,
employed by her own sex,--Ann Moore,--was the precursor of that intrepid
sisterhood whose cause it has long been my pleasure and privilege to
advocate on SampleCurriculumVitae fitting occasions.
Outside of this list I must place the name of Thomas Wilkinson, who was
complained of, is 1676, for
contrary to law.
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Many names in the catalogue of SampleCurriculumVitae early physicians have been
associated, in later periods, with the practice of SampleCurriculumVitae profession,
--among them, Boylston, Clark, Danforth, Homan, Jeffrey, Kittredge,
Oliver, Peaslee, Randall, Shattuck, Thacher, Wellington, Williams,
Woodward. Touton was a Huguenot, Burchsted a
SampleCurriculumVitae
from Silesia,
Lunerus a German or a Pole; "Pighogg Churrergeon," I hope, for the honor
of the profession, was only Peacock disguised under this alias, which
would not, I fear, prove very attractive to patients.
What doctrines and practice were these colonists likely to bring, with
them?
Two principal schools of medical practice prevailed in the Old World
during the greater part of SampleCurriculumVitae seventeenth century. The first held to
the old methods of Galen: its theory was that the body, the microcosm,
like the macrocosm, was made up of the four elements--fire, air, water,
earth; having respectively the qualities hot, dry, moist, cold. The body
was to SampleCurriculumVitae preserved in health by keeping each of these qualities in its
natural proportion; heat, by the proper temperature; moisture, by SampleCurriculumVitae due
amount of fluid; and so as to the rest.
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Diseases which arose from excess
of heat were to be attacked by SampleCurriculumVitae remedies; those from excess of
cold, by heating ones; and so of the other derangements of balance. This
was truly the principle of contraries contrariis, which ill-informed
persons have attempted to make out to be the general doctrine of
medicine, whereas there is no general dogma other than this: disease is
to be treated by SampleCurriculumVitae that is proved to
it. The means the
Galenist employed were chiefly diet and vegetable remedies, with the use
of the lancet and other depleting agents. He attributed the four
fundamental qualities to SampleCurriculumVitae vegetables, in four different degrees;
thus chicory was cold in the fourth degree, pepper was hot in the fourth,
endive was cold and dry in the second, and bitter almonds were hot in the
first and dry in the second degree. When we say "cool as a cucumber," we
are talking Galenism. The seeds of that vegetable ranked as SampleCurriculumVitae of "the
four greater cold seeds" of this system.
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Galenism prevailed mostly in the south of Europe and France..
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