USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 16
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 16
USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 16
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It is not strange such a sentiment should exist in this vicinity, where so much of the spirit of progress in healing has had an abiding place for three hundred years; not, necessarily, to be expressed by a summer resident who happened to be a President of the United States, but alert to catch the promise contained in the words of Dr. Wendell C. Phillips, quoted above. There was a time when people accepted as be- yond question the statement uttered from the pulpits by the early preachers concerning the tortures of the damned and the delights await- ing the righteous, providing they were also the "elect." They were in- clined to agree with the dominie when he said that the ways of God were inscrutible and most people still are, but there is a disposition now to question, if such were the case, how the dominie happened to have so much inside information.
There was a time when the physician had his patients so thoroughly "sold" concerning his infallibility, that they would swallow his prepared remedies or whatever his prescriptions called for, without presuming to question his diagnosis or hesitate about putting into their stomachs what- ever might have been mentioned in the Latin note written to the drug- gist. To ask the opinion of another physician before acting upon what- ever course the first one laid out for him was rank heresy, and, even if he were infidel enough to do such a thing, the ethics of the profession prevented him from gaining any additional information or contrary ex- pression.
It was not many years ago that the Homoeopathic physicians were first recognized by the Allopathic school and allowed to fraternize with
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them in their medical associations. Still fewer have been the years that the Osteopathic practitioners received any tolerance. The Chiropractic physicians are still clamoring for recognition in Massachusetts, but their arguments and proofs fall upon deaf ears. It is the old story of every profession fighting to the limit the introduction of new light or methods.
Benefits of Educational Work-The smaller towns of Plymouth County, as well as Brockton, its only city, and some large towns ap- proaching the number of inhabitants and other conditions which cause them to assume many of the characteristics of a city such as Whitman. Rockland, Plymouth, Middleborough and Bridgewater, recognize that healthy children are a community asset. They spend money freely and expect their officials to give urgent heed to the child welfare problem, so far as conditions make permissible. Health promoting activities exist in most of the towns and it is a county noted for its neatness, and attention given to the teaching and practice of sanitation. All of the towns have a good water supply, if they have any. The small towns, still dependent upon wells, find good water bubbling from the depths and usually the conditions surrounding these wells are carefully guarded in the interest of health and purity, either by the intelligence of the owners or the watchfulness of the authorities.
As the years go by more attention is given to the milk supply, and better records in regard to infant mortality are the encouraging results. Contrary to the opinions held by some, purer food is consumed in cities than in rural districts, as much more attention is given to its care, in- cluding careful refrigeration.
Facilities for the hospitalization of cases of communicable disease are available. Brockton, Plymouth, and some other towns have hospitals of their own and others are soon to have hospitals established. The towns surrounding those mentioned are served by them. There is a county hospital in Hanson and a state hospital in Bridgewater, the lat- ter in connection with the State Farm. Visiting nurse associations exist in the larger towns and school nurses in most of the smaller ones. A generation ago there was a common water pail in the rural schools, filled by scholars who took it to some neighboring well. Between school terms this water pail accumulated dust, perhaps with the remains of the last day's supply of water still standing in it. A tin cup was be- side the pail and from this common cup every scholar drank. This was not a condition peculiar to Plymouth County or any other county. It was a custom taken as a matter of course, but a quarter of a century has educated people out of that form of danger to such an extent that most scholars of the present day do not know it ever existed. The common drinking cup has almost entirely disappeared from school buildings
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throughout the country and entirely so in Plymouth County and pre- sumably in Massachusetts. All towns in Plymouth County give the teaching of health an important place in their school curricula. The school buildings are adequately ventilated, well lighted, have suitable lavatory and toilet facilities and adjacent playgrounds. Plymouth County has for many years had an enviable reputation along these lines. In addition to the education carried on in the public and private schools in the county, much credit is due the Plymouth County Extension Serv- ice for the instruction through the Four-H Clubs for Boys and Girls and the Home Economics Department, along lines of health, good pos- ture, diet and good housekeeping.
Private agencies, such as visiting nurse associations, many times sponsored by woman's clubs, fraternal organizations and service clubs, play a very important part in the health work in this county. Many of them take a definite interest in the under-nourished and under- privileged child and the rising generation is happy in the possession of such sympathetic friends.
Brockton is well supplied with health promoting activities. The city provides a water system of unusual purity and for many years it has held an enviable record in regard to the purity and cleanliness of its milk supply. This is more or less true throughout Plymouth County. More than thirty years ago the city was supplied with a system of sew- age disposal, which was unique at that time, and proved the best sys- tem for inland cities situated as Brockton was and is. The city carries on a system of garbage collection, the plan being for ashes and paper to. be set out at the curbstone, from which it is taken away by city teams. Each district has a specified day for such disposal of ashes and paper and the garbage is taken from the usual containers in the rear of the houses, encouragement being given to use underground garbage re- ceivers, away from the flies and rats. Housing conditions in the city are generally satisfactory. There are many two-family frame dwellings and flats were being built a few years ago with great rapidity, but in more recent years new dwellings have been more of the one-family and bungalow type.
The population is about twenty-six per cent foreign-born and one per cent are negroes. Through the Cosmopolitan Club and other agencies working with the foreign-born or organizations of the foreign-born themselves, sanitation has been seriously taught with commendable re- sults. The predominating groups among the foreign-born are Cana- dian, Irish, Italian, Lithuanian, Russian and Swedish with a sprinkling of many nationalities, making about twenty-six in all. Since 1919 there has been a zoning law which primarily regulates the sections of the city used for industry and commerce.
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The Health Department of the city has a staff consisting of a clerk and statistician and one assistant, a bacteriologist and milk inspector, who is assisted by two laboratory technicians, a dairy inspector and a clerk, three inspectors of slaughtering, a food inspector, and an inspec- tor of plumbing and sanitation. The Visiting Nurse Association at- tends to the nursing work of the department.
The chairman of the Board of Health and the health officer are physi- cians, employed on a part-time basis, and there is an executive officer who is not a physician. The latter is employed on a full-time basis. The vital statistics are in the hands of the Health Department and the city clerk, the responsibility being divided. Births and deaths are re- ported to the city clerk. Cases of communicable disease are reported directly to the Health Department and burial permits are issued by the Health Department. The records are carefully kept and show that the infant mortality rate has decreased very steadily and remarkably.
There is a tuberculosis dispensary and some patients are cared for at the county hospital, to which the city of Brockton contributes. There are also infant welfare clinics conducted in different parts of the city, a physician and a nurse attending each clinic. The visiting nurses visit all babies on the birth list and render assistance wherever it is required. There is no organized work in behalf of the pre-school child and school examinations are reserved for the fifth grade.
The milk work is in unusually capable hands. Samples are taken at frequent intervals, analyzed bacteriologically and chemically, and fol- low-up field inspections are frequent and thorough. The federal dairy score card system is used in farm inspections. From thirty-seven to fifty per cent of the milk supply is pasteurized and a large percentage of the cows are tuberculin tested. The laboratory is well managed and well equipped and laboratory examinations reach 10,000 a year. Food handling establishments are well supervised and sanitary inspections are frequent and thorough.
The importance of school milk lunches has been felt for many years and in April, 1927, the Lions' Club of Brockton sponsored a plan to fur- nish milk for all the undernourished pupils in the schools who needed milk but were not receiving it, neither at home nor at school. There is also an open-air school for underweights which has had a considerable enrolment and has accomplished good results.
The school health work includes the work of four part-time physi- cians, two full-time nurses, a half-time dentist and a full-time dental nurse. All children are weighed every two months and records sent to their parents. There is a school dental clinic for preventive work and corrective work. Physical education is carried on along broad and wholesome lines. There are ample playgrounds, well supervised.
Twenty-eight per cent of the boys and girls between fourteen and
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sixteen years of age are gainfully employed. Some work full time and attend continuation schools.
Nearly half of the births in Brockton occur in hospitals. There is a pre-natal clinic at the Brockton Hospital and more than a hundred pa- tients a year have attended in recent years. The nurses have made some 1,700 visits in these cases. The Brockton Visiting Nurse Associa- tion also holds pre-natal classes, not attended by a physician, at the headquarters of the association. This is a flourishing organization, em- ploying fifteen nurses, who are employed in nearly every type of case, including maternity, obstetrical, surgical and medical, tuberculosis and contagious disease. Infant welfare work is an important branch for the Visiting Nurse Association and some funds for this work and milk for nutrition work conducted in the schools are provided by the Plymouth County Tuberculosis Association.
There are more than sixty shoe factories in Brockton and the skilled shoeworkers receive good wages and have the disposition to live well. The result is evident in more than usually well-kept residential districts, with a preponderance of private homes.
What is true in Brockton, Plymouth County's only city, is also true to a proportionate extent in the other towns, the equipment and admin- istration of the teaching and work being in ratio to the size of the town and natural conditions governing the necessity. Much of Brockton's milk supply is gathered from surrounding towns, several of them in the same county, and the standard demanded for delivery in Brockton becomes the standard for delivery in the towns or for preparation and refrigeration for use in the homes. The Brockton water supply also serves Pembroke, Hanson, Whitman, East Bridgewater, West Bridge- water and parts of other towns through which the service pipes pass. The Brockton Hospital is available and used by several of the towns when hospital cases are to be accommodated.
In several of the towns the selectmen are also members of the board of health. They are carefully selected at the annual town meetings and the county has reason to be thankful for the efficient and intelligent manner in which health matters are supervised and insisted upon by its town officials. Most of the towns have the services of one or more school nurses and, even in the small towns, it is customary to furnish undernourished children in the schools with milk, sometimes in the cold weather, hot chocolate.
The infant mortality and the death rate in Plymouth County as a whole is much less than in most communities, and it is believed to be due in large measure to the educational work done along the line of sanitation and nutrition.
Strangely enough, the first physician to minister to the Pilgrims pro-
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fessionally has never had his name mentioned in any history in the United States and presumably has not appeared in any history printed in the world. He was a regularly educated and recognized physician, according to the standards and customs of his- day, and practiced his profession throughout his lifetime, so far as known, living respected and dying regretted. Dr. Samuel Fuller has always been mentioned as the first physician in New England but the Pilgrims were first under the care of the "Mayflower's" ship's doctor, Giles Heale. His bones and those of the "Mayflower" itself have recently been discovered in Eng- land, the latter by people from Plymouth County.
Once Persecuted Quakers Now Own the "Mayflower"-It was the fancy of Hamlet that
Imperious Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,
but it probably never occurred to the captain and crew of the "May- flower" that sailed down the Thames from London on July 15, 1620, using the old style of reckoning, that the proud vessel of some one hun- dred and eighty tons burden, would be instrumental in starting the free- dom of the world and eventually support a sheltering roof of a prosaic barn in "merrie England," furnishing an abode in which the barn swal- lows do their nesting. Yet these things became true of what was in 1620 one of the larger ships in the merchant service of England. Descen- dants of the Pilgrims three hundred and four years after the pilgrimage, located the building in question and viewed the means of identification of the timbers which safely carried the "Separatists" from Leyden in Holland to Plymouth in Plymouth Colony.
Frank E. Packard and Fred P. Richmond of Brockton were in 1924 traveling with their wives in England and a story came to them that, somewhere on the "right little, tight little island" was a barn, the roof of which was kept in place by the ribs of the "Mayflower," and the story was that it was in Buckingham County. Accordingly, the Brockton- ians registered at the White Hart and entered into conversation with the genial keeper of the inn concerning the ship which is famous in American history, and its final disposition. It so happened that another guest at the inn was Alan B. Anderson, an English newspaper corres- pondent, who became interested in the quest but was unable to supply the facts. He, however, was resourceful, disposed to assist and inter- ested on his own account. He accompanied the Brocktonians to the old Moat Farm, where he remembered was a barn constructed of ship tim- bers. He explained that there were many such barns in England, as the builders recognized the convenience of using the ribs of vessels, already hewn into shape, which answered the purpose as supports for a roof, were durable and lent a certain charm to the architecture.
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The barn on the old Moat Farm was evidently not the correct barn, for the timbers in use could not by any stretch of the imagination have been the bones of the "Mayflower." Another clue entered into the quest and Messrs. Packard and Richmond operated from the Jordan Hotel, forty miles from London. Nearby was, and is, a barn controlled by the Quakers, and in which they frequently held their meetings. This building might easily be the right one, in the opinion of the Plym- outh County men and women, as the size of the "Mayflower," judging from the meager description which has come down to our time, would have required ribs of similar size. They saw the letters "M A" carved on one of the beams. Another showed twelve distinct charred places, perhaps caused by candles burned by the Pilgrims. Of course the "Mayflower" was used for other voyages than the trip to Plymouth and it is pure surmise to try to identify the marks on the old beams as any- thing which concerned the Plymouth colonists. Mrs. Packard dis- covered a framed relic in the rear of the structure. It was the apprais- ers' report of the "Mayflower" when it was broken up and sold. There have been people in England which have known of the claim concerning the timbers which now look down upon Quaker meetings, forty miles from London, but the fact has never created such an impression in that country as it would among the descendants of the Pilgrims, if such a barn existed in the United States.
There are many other relics of the Pilgrims in England or in Holland, and within recent years considerable attempt has been made to add their story to the many stories of everything connected with them on this side of the ocean. It was a genuine surprise, however, early in 1927, to dis- cover a man whose connection with the Pilgrims must have been in- timate and important, but who had never been heard of by historians, or was left out of the records for some unexplainable reasons. Even as faithful an historian as William Bradford, one of the party, participant in everything which concerned the firstcomers to Plymouth, never set down in his records the contribution to the health, good cheer and gen- eral welfare, which must have come from the ship's doctor. Trying to visualize the size of the "Mayflower" and the number of passengers and crew, with such possessions as were actually brought, with no reference whatever to the ships' loads of things which dealers in antiques and credulous descendants claim and perhaps believe, were on board, it would seem in these days of hygiene, and bacteriologistic complex, that the ship's doctor must have been the busiest man aboard, unless he was the sickest. Anyhow, Dr. Giles Heale is deserving of a place in his- torical records, even though he has long been among the missing.
"Mayflower's" Man Overboard-Many times it has been said that when the "Mayflower" sailed on the return trip to England in April, 1621,
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not one of the passengers accepted the invitation of Captain Jones to re- turn. In February, 1927, something came to light to refute that state- ment, providing one wants to include in the list of passengers one whom William Bradford evidently decided did not belong there. This man was Giles Heale, the man-overboard from the "Mayflower" story, who has been missing so long that it makes the long, lost Charlie Ross seem a recent neighbor.
Giles Heale was the ship's doctor and Colonel Charles E. Banks came across his signature as a witness to the last will and testament of Wil- liam Mullins, who died in the early spring following the landing of the Pilgrims. Since he returned on the "Mayflower," he may rightfully have been excluded from the list of Plymouth colonists, the same as other members of the "Mayflower" crew, although they all took part in the investigations made by means of the shallop from the "May- flower" and were very useful while they remained, during that first win- ter, with its suffering and toll of death. Heale went back to London and lived and died in "Merry England," missing his chance of being a Forefather and remaining unheard of by his shipmates of the Pilgrim band and their descendants for three centuries. What his record was with the Pilgrims, we have no way of knowing. The "Boston Tran- script" takes it for granted that he was a poor doctor because so many of the Pilgrims died while he was at Plymouth. So was Dr. Samuel Fuller. Why condemn one and honor the other? Presumably those who endured that first winter in Plymouth were either very busily engaged in humane ministrations or among those "on the danger list." We can easily imagine a slacker would have had his head and feet tied together and if that had happened to Giles Heale, he would be on Bradford's records. Colonel Charles E. Banks, who brought Dr. Giles Heale out of obscur- ity, is a retired United States Army officer who has spent years in his- torical research. He brought back with him from London a photo- graph of the nuncupative will of William Mullins, made on his death- bed in Plymouth in February, 1621, in the presence of John Carver, the first governor of Plymouth Colony, chosen the day the Compact was signed in the "Mayflower" cabin in Cape Cod Harbor; Christopher Jones, captain of the "Mayflower;" and Dr. Giles Heale, the "May- flower" surgeon. This he presented to the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Investigation by Colonel Banks showed the apprenticeship of Heale in the Guild of Barber Surgeons of London and his freedom in 1619, the year before he sailed on the "Mayflower." He practiced medicine in London and lived in Drury Lane. The will is in the handwriting of Governor Carver and is in the provincial Probate Court of the County of Surrey.
Plym-10
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Not only were many of the Pilgrims laid low by disease after landing at Plymouth, but there was considerable sickness on board the little vessel tossed about on the broad Atlantic when it was uncertain where it was going but was on its way. Dr. Giles Heale must have been a busy physician on the voyage. It is likely that he officiated at the birth of Peregrine White when the "Mayflower" lay in the harbor. It is evi- dent that he was the physician in charge at the sick bed of William Mul- lins and it may have been at his suggestion that the latter made his will, after being informed by his physician that death was near. So near was death, as a matter of fact, that Mullins was unable to write the will but this was done for him by Governor Carver. The will appears in the handwriting of Carver and, so far as known, it is the only piece of writing still in existence from his 'quill.
Emaciated by the "general sickness," knowing full well his struggle to retain the breath of life would only last a brief time, surrounded by his wife and young children, among them Priscilla, later destined to be- come the wife of John Alden, perhaps Mullins dictated his will to Gov- ernor Carver, in the presence of his physician and Captain Christopher Jones, believing that those who survived until the time of the return of the "Mayflower," would return with it. Knowing that Captain Jones and Dr. Heale would return, if they escaped the "general sickness," may have prompted him to select them as witnesses, believing that the will would be administered in England and the witnesses should be there. It was the first will made in New England, what is legally known as a nuncupative will. It was unsigned. He merely expressed his desires for the distribution of his few belongings and it is probable that the ac- tual language of the will was not written out until after his death. It finally was filed with the Probate records of the Archdeaconry of Sur- rey. The elder children of William Mullins resided at Dorking in that county.
It does not seem especially strange that Bradford did not mention Dr. Heale as one of the Plymouth colonists, as presumably he was em- ployed in the capacity of ship's surgeon by Thomas Weston, a London merchant who was the moving spirit in the emigration and who charter- ed the "Mayflower" for the use of the Pilgrims, acting for his associates, The Merchant Adventurers. Much interest has been aroused in Dr. Heale, nevertheless, since he was first heard of last February, as a sort of Rip Van Winkle of the "Mayflower" who had been sleeping, not twenty years, but three hundred and six. Dr. Heale was the first physi- cian who practiced in New England and Governor Carver wrote the first will, two facts discovered in 1927.
As for this Dr. Heale, there is on record in the parish of St. Giles-in- the-Fields, his own last will and testament, which reads as follows:
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In the Name of God, Amen:
I Giles Heale of the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields in the Countie of Midd(lesex) Chirurgeon beinge infirme and weake of Bodie but Sound and perfect memorye praysed be God doe make and ordaine this my last will and Testament in maner and forme following:
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