The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV, Part 67

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897, ed; Jewett, C. F. (Clarence F.), publisher
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Boston : Osgood
Number of Pages: 760

USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 67

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1 [See the chapter on " Education " in the present volume. - ED.]

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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

admirable Report on the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts, published in 1846. In 1875 Mr. Emerson published a new edition, elegantly illustrated with colored plates. He died in 1881.

F. W. P. Greenwood was born in Boston in 1797, graduated at Harvard College in 1814, and at the Divinity School in 1817. He was settled at first in Baltimore, and afterward in Boston, where he died in 1843. His fine, sensitive constitution was in harmony with the wonders and beauties of nature, and he made a special study of conchology and botany. Dr. Greenwood was an active and highly esteemed member of the Society of Natural History, and made frequent contributions to its Proceedings.

Silas Durkee was born in Hanover, N. H., in 1798, graduated at Dartmouth Col- lege in 1822, and then studied medicine. He practised his profession in Portsmouth until 1841, when he removed to Boston, where he died in 1878. He devoted the leisure of a full and successful professional life to marine botany and entomology, and was an honorary member of the Natural History Society at Montreal and the State Society of New York.

W. B. O. Peabody was born in Exeter, N. H., in 1799, graduated at Harvard Col- lege in 1816, and at the Divinity School in 1819. He was settled in Springfield in 1820, where he died in 1847. Outside of his profession Dr. Peabody was interested in natural history, and was selected by Governor Everett to make the report upon the ornithology of Massachusetts.

William Oakes was born in Danvers in 1799, graduated at Harvard College in 1820, and at the Law School in 1825. After an experience of two or three years at Ipswich, he left the practice of the law and devoted himself until his death, in 1848, to the study of natural history, and became the most eminent botanist of his day in New England. While in college he received his first impulse towards this study from Pro- fessor Peck. He collected with his own hands specimens of almost every New Eng- land plant, making explorations of the White Mountains in 1830 and again in 1842, and attending to the geology and mineralogy as well as to the botany. He prepared a catalogue of the plants of Vermont for Thompson's History of that State, and in 1848 he published Scenery of the White Mountains, with sixteen plates ; but he was too cautious a student to rush precipitately before the public, and his great legacy to science is his collection of beautiful specimens, with his notes and descriptions, for- ever paying their silent tribute to his zeal and acquisitions.

What is called the Physics of the Globe may be ranked under the head of Physics or of Natural History, according to the way in which the subject is treated. It is only within a few years that systematic observations in meteorology, and often with self-registering instruments, have superseded the desultory labor of amateurs and revealed the law of the winds and the law of storms. Nevertheless, the history of the weather in this vicinity is more complete than for any other place on this continent, and is equalled by that of few places in Europe.

Mr. Thomas Brattle was one of the earliest observers in this field.1 The observa- tions of Winthrop, from 1742 to 1779, of Wigglesworth, from 1782 to 1793, of Web- ber, from 1790 to 1807, supplemented by those of Farrar and Bond, record the tem-

1 Phil. Trans., xl.

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BOSTON AND SCIENCE.

perature and pressure of the air at Cambridge for more than a century. Dr. Enoch Hale's (1790-1848) observations in Boston comprise the period from 1818 to 1848 ; and those of J. P. Hall (1799-1866) extend from 1821 to 1866.1 At Salem Dr. Holyoke (1728-1829) kept a meteorological journal from 1786 to 1821, and with less fulness to 1829.2 If the ordinary march of the atmospheric changes did not escape notice, it is certain that no extraordinary aspect of the sky would pass unheeded. Such were the dark days of 1716, 1780, 1785, and 1819, surpassing in gloom that of 1881. Such were the earthquakes of 1638, 1658, 1663, 1727, and 1755. The last was the occasion of a lecture given by Professor Winthrop in the college chapel. The Rev. Thomas Prince, of the Old South Church, took the same occasion to reprint a sermon which first appeared in connection with the earthquake of 1727. He indulged in some reflections 3 on Mr. Winthrop for diverting the minds of the people, by his physical explanation, from the moral consideration suggested by the extraordinary season. Mr. Winthrop said, in reply, that the season was no more extraordinary when he gave his lecture than when Dr. Prince reprinted his sermon, with an elaborate ap- pendix, - both the sermon and the appendix entering largely, if not deeply, into a material explanation of the event. Professor Williams made a careful study of the twenty-four earthquakes felt in this vicinity during the last century.4

Since the first aurora borealis was observed in Boston, Dec. 17, 1719, a record has been kept at Cambridge of similar displays, amounting to about seven hundred; and the theory of Mairan in regard to the periodicity of the Northern Lights has been corroborated.5

A knowledge of the declination of the magnetic needle and its changes is indispensable at sea, and of no small importance on land, especially in a country where the original surveys were made by compass. The observa- tions of Brattle, Winthrop, Williams, Willard, Sewall, Bowditch, and Bond, at Cambridge, Salem, or Boston, have preserved the history of these changes since 1708. Professor Sewall (1734-1804) was an indefatigable observer. "Often in my youth," says Mr. Sydney Willard,6 "I saw Mr. Sewall passing slowly by the President's house, crippled, tottering, and tremulous from debility, steadying himself by the fence, and now and then stopping at the President's to communicate his magnetic observations."

The limits prescribed to this paper make it necessary to omit everything but the names of the scientific men who were born in and around Boston since 1800, but who have finished their work on earth. In many cases their names alone are sufficient to indicate who they were to the present generation. The reputation of not a few is world-wide. All of them were members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, or of the Boston Society of Natural History, or of both. Extended notices of their lives and labors may be found in the publications of these societies. Arranged chronologically, there have been in (1) Mathematics and As- tronomy, Sears C. Walker, Benjamin Peirce, George P. Bond, Joseph Win-

1 Mem. Amer. Acad., vi. 229.

2 Ibid., ii. 89; iv. 361, and i. 107.

Boston Gazette, Jan. 26, 1755.

4 Mem. Amer. Acad., i. 260.

5 Ibid., ix. 101.

6 Memories of Youth, etc., i. 125.

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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

lock, Chauncey Wright, and W. P. G. Bartlett; (2) Physics and Chemistry, Francis Peabody, Joseph H. Abbot, Martin Gay, Henry C. Perkins, Charles T. Jackson, Charles H. Davis, J. H. Temple, and Charles G. Page ; (3) Natural History, James Deane, Amos Binney, A. A. Gould, Charles Picker- ing, J. B. S. Jackson, Louis Agassiz, Francis Alger, Joseph P. Couthouy, John L. Russell, J. W. Bailey, T. M. Brewer, Jeffries Wyman, Henry Bryant, Louis F. de Pourtalès, J. B. Perry, Henry J. Clark, W. I. Burnett, Edwin Bicknell, and R. H. Wheatland.

In reviewing the ground covered by this memorial, the reader will notice that a taste for mathematics and physical science was developed at an earlier period than the love of natural history; but the latter has grown to be a formidable rival. A large part of the work done in science in every field has been accomplished by amateurs otherwise engaged in earning a support. In the last century and before, it was the clergy, - at a later period it was the physicians,-who recruited the ranks of scientific men.

This is a memorial of the dead and not of the living. Even the names will be missed here of veterans in science whose reputation has crossed the ocean and is an honor to the places that can claim them; but happily they still live, and must wait for the appendix which 1930 will bring to these volumes. The coming jubilee is full of promise for science. Acad- emies, societies, observatories, laboratories, museums, libraries, journals, - all stand ready to lend a helping hand. These institutions are memo- rials of the science which is ripe for them and of the intelligent munificence which has endowed them. It would be invidious to name the largest benefactors unless there was room for all. Some have given of their pov- erty; others from their abundance. Praise to those who, when Boston was young, did what they could for science without these advantages ! Discoveries can no longer be made by scratching on the surface of nature ; delicate and costly instruments must be provided. Scientific men will furnish the nerves, if the wealth of the community will supply the sinews. Listen to the words of Washington addressed to the first Congress : "There is nothing that can better deserve your attentive patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in any country the surest basis of public happiness."

Joseph Lovering

CHAPTER X.

MEDICINE IN BOSTON.

BY SAMUEL A. GREEN, M.D., City Physician, and Librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society ;

WITH ADDITIONAL MEMORANDA BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, M.D., Parkman Professor of Anatomy in Harvard University.

T' HE need of a medical. man to accompany the planters of Massachusetts Bay was recognized by the Company from the very outset. At one of its earliest meetings, held in London on March 5, 1628-29, it is recorded that a proposition was made "to Intertayne a surgeon for [the] plantacon," and Mr. Pratt " was ppounded as an abell man " for the place. His given name was John, and after coming to New England he lived at one time in Cambridge. At the same meeting Robert Morley was appointed " to serue as a barber and a surgeon [on all] occasyons belonging to his Calling to aney of this [Company] that are planters, or there seruants." In those days a barber-surgeon attended to the ordinary cases of minor surgery, such as pulling teeth, bleeding, and cupping. This record furnishes the earliest official action taken by the Massachusetts Company to supply the colonists with medical attendance.

Before this time, however, the Puritans in England had been subjected to bitter persecution; and, foreseeing the possibility of an ejectment, a con- siderable number of their ministers had studied medicine. They saw the probable wants of the future, and fitted themselves, as best they could, for any emergency that might arise .in a new settlement. Hence they formed a large proportion of the early physicians of the colony. These Puritan ministers were men of liberal education, and some of them authors of the earliest medical treatises printed in America. It was with them a matter of conscientious duty to heal the body as well as to save the soul. Each one practised in his own flock, and for his fee generally received that which is considered better than money, though not equally current at the counter. Occasionally they took part in the medical controversies of the day, and defended their views with much skill and ability. Cotton Mather speaks of this union of the two professions as an " Angelical Conjunction," and says that " ever since the Days of Luke the Evangelist, Skill in Physick has been frequently professed and practised by Persons whose more de- . clared Business was the Study of Divinity."1

1 Magnalia, book iii., chap. xxvi. p. 151.

528

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

At the period when Massachusetts was settled, medicine was an art rather than a science, and just ready to take a new departure under the guidance of Sydenham. Certain facts about disease were learned by rote, as it were, and the treatment was nearly the same in all cases without regard to the minute symptoms. The public believed in specifics, and remedies were prescribed as if they were infallible or sovereign. Says Shakespeare : -

"The sovereign'st thing on earth Was parmaceti, for an inward bruise."

About this time there were in Europe two schools of medical practice, of which the one was in the habit of prescribing vegetable substances alone, and the other for the most part mineral preparations. The first of these schools was denominated the Galenists, as they were supposed to follow the teachings of Galen; and they might be termed the Botanic doctors of that ·day. The other school adopted the doctrines of Paracelsus, and gave " chemical " medicines, which included mineral substances and a few of the most active vegetable compounds. The supporters of the second school were sometimes called Chemists. There was of course a bitter rivalry between the two sects; and if everything that was said about the one by the other was true, the poor patients had to suffer. It is very likely that the prejudice existing to-day against mineral medicines dates back to this hostility.

An advertisement in the Boston Gazette, June 19, 1744, speaks of " All Sorts of Drugs and Medicines, both Chymical and Galenical," - an allusion to these two schools.

The early physicians of New England, however, do not seem to have entered into this medical controversy, but gave such remedies as they saw fit, without regard to either faction, though they followed a routine practice. The relation of cause and effect was slighted by them, and an air of mys- tery and superstition pervaded the whole domain of therapeutics. The literature of the profession was scanty, and for that reason easily mastered. They had no knowledge of pathology, and but little of anatomy. It must not be forgotten that there were but few regular graduates of medicine in the country for more than a hundred years after its settlement. Dr. William Douglass, a young Scotchman who had just begun practice in Boston, writing to Cadwallader Colden, of New York, under date of Feb. 20, 1720- 21, says that " we abound with Practitioners, though no other graduate than myself. We have fourteen Apothecary shops in Boston. All our Prac- titioners dispense their own medicines." 1

The remedies used by the early practitioners of Massachusetts were made up largely of "simples," as they were called in contradistinction to compounds, and consisted principally of herbs dear to old women, though none the less valuable on that account. Occasionally they strike us as absurd, and sometimes excite feelings akin to disgust. Excretions and secretions

1 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 164.

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MEDICINE IN BOSTON.

were employed as curative agents, and had their particular parts to play in the treatment of disease. These remedies were prescribed at times by the best physicians two hundred years ago. When Charles II. was on his death-bed, according to Macaulay, he was bled largely, and a loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced into his mouth.

John Winthrop, the founder of Boston and Governor of Massachusetts, was well versed in medicine; but his public services to the colony were so marked that his minor ministrations among friends and neighbors are thrown into the background. The venerable - Cotton says of him just before his death, that he had been a " Help for our Bodies by Physick, for our Estates by Law." 1

His son, John Winthrop, Jr., for some years an inhabitant of Massachu- setts and afterward Governor of Connecticut, was a noted physician.2 He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of London, and an accomplished scholar. He had a large correspondence with scientific men, from which many interesting facts are gathered about medicine in the early history of the colony. A third generation of the family, represented in the person of Wait Winthrop, a son of John, Jr., was also proficient in the profession. In Cotton Mather's sermon preached at his funeral, Nov. 7, 1717, there is an "Epitaphium," from which the following is an extract: -

MEDICINÆ Peritus ;

Qui Arcanis vere Aureis, et Auro preciosioribus potitus ; Quæque et Hippocratem et Helmontium latuerunt, Remedia panacæasque Adeptus ; Invalidos omnes ubicunque sine pretio sanitati restituit ; Et pene omnem Naturam fecit Medicam.

Among those who came over in Winthrop's fleet was Richard Palgrave, a physician, from Stepney, London. He settled in Charlestown, though neither himself nor his wife was ever connected with the church in that town. Their ecclesiastical relations were always with Boston, where those of their children who were born in this country were baptized. He lived about twenty years after coming to New England.

Another passenger in the same fleet was William Gager, one of the deacons of the Charlestown Church, whom Governor Dudley styles "a right godly man, skilful chyrurgeon," but who unfortunately died soon after his arrival.

Another among the early settlers of Massachusetts who practised medi- cine was Giles Firmin, Jr., who came to this country in 1632. His father - " a godly man, an apothecary of Sudbury in England," according to Winthrop - arrived here about the same time; and in some accounts the two have been confounded from the similarity of their names. It is very likely that the elder Giles was a medical practitioner. The son did not long remain in Boston, but soon returned to England; coming again, however, to these shores a few years subsequently. He had studied for a while at the

1 Magnalia, book ii., chap. iv. p. 15.

VOL. IV. - 67.

2 See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., February, 1862.

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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

University of Cambridge, and was learned in medicine. He is the first man known to. have taught in New England this branch of science, and he seems to have left a professional imprint on the minds of his students. A little later he removed to Ipswich, where he was widely known as a success- ful physician. His practice does not appear to have been a lucrative one, for he writes to Winthrop some years afterward : "I am strongly sett upon to studye divinitie, my studies else must be lost; for physick is but a meene helpe."1 Subsequently he carried this plan into execution, and studied theology; after which he returned to England, where he was ordained, and settled as a rector. Nevertheless he continued to practise his early pro- fession.

The Apostle Eliot, under date of Sept. 24, 1647, writes to Mr. Shepard, the minister of Cambridge, and expresses the desire that -

" Our young Students in Physick may be trained up better than yet they bee, who have onely theoreticall knowledge, and are forced to fall to practice before ever they saw an Anatomy made, or duely trained up in making experiments, for we never had but one Anatomy in the Countrey, which Mr. Giles Firman (now in England) did make and read upon very well, but no more of that now." 2

An " anatomy" is the old name for a skeleton, and Mr. Firmin may be considered, in point of time, the first medical lecturer in the country. His instruction must have been crude, and comprised little more than informal talks about the dry bones before him; but even this might be a great help to the learners. At any rate it seems to have excited an interest in the sub- ject, for the recommendation is made, at the session of the General Court beginning Oct. 27, 1647, a few weeks later than the date of Eliot's letter, that -

"We conceive it very necessary y such as studies phisick, or chirurgery, may have liberty to reade anotomy, and to anotomize once in foure yeares some malefac- to', in case there be such as the Courte shall allow of." 3

Charles Chauncy, that stern Puritan, President of Harvard College, and also Leonard Hoar, who succeeded him in the presidency, were regular graduates of medicine at Cambridge in England. Chauncy left six sons, all of whom were educated at Harvard College and became preachers. "They had," says Cotton Mather, "an Eminent Skill in Physick added unto their other Accomplishments; which, like him [their father], they used for the Good of many; as, indeed, it is well known that, until Two Hundred Years ago, Physick in England was no Profession distinct from Divinity."4 John Rogers, the fifth president of the college, was also a practitioner of medicine. Hoar was. the first president who was a graduate of the institution, but Rogers was an earlier graduate who became its president afterward.

Elisha Cooke was a prominent physician as well as a politician of this

1 Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers, 3 General Court Records, ii. 176.

4 Cotton Mather's Magnalia, book iii., chap. etc., p. 109.

2 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv. 57. xxiii. p. 140.

531

MEDICINE IN BOSTON.

period.1 He was born in Boston, Sept. 16, 1637, and graduated at Harvard College in the class of 1657, being one of the first natives of the town that studied medicine. While esteemed as a physician, his reputation is based more on his labors in connection with the body politic than the body phys- ical. He died Oct. 31, 1715, having filled many public positions of trust and honor.

John Dunton, who came to New England in the spring of 1686, wrote home some interesting letters which were published. They contain consid- erable gossip about men and things in the colony at that time, and refer in particular to two Boston physicians. Dr. Thomas Oakes - a brother of President Oakes, and a graduate of Harvard College - Dunton calls " the greatest Æsculapius of the Countrey," and says that -

" His wise and safe Prescriptions have expell'd more Diseases and rescu'd Lan- guishing Patients from the Jaws of Death, than Mountebanks and Quack-Salvers have sent to those dark Regions : And on that score, Death has declar'd himself his Mortal Enemy : Whereas Death claims a Relation to those Pretenders to Physick, as being both of one Occupation, viz. : that of Killing Men." 2

In speaking of Dr. Benjamin Bullivant, afterward Governor Andros's attorney-general,3 he writes that -

" His Skill in Pharmacy was such, as rendered him the most compleat Pharmaco- pean, not only in all Boston, but in all New England ; and is beside, as much a Gen- tleman as any one in all the Countrey." ... "He is as intimate with Gallen and Hypocrates (at least ways with their works), as ever I have been with you, Even in our most Familiar Converse. And is so conversant with the great variety of Nature, that not a Drug or Simple can Escape him ; whose Power and Vertues are known so well to him, he needs not Practise new Experiments upon his Patients, except it be in desperate Cases, when Death must be expell'd by Death. This also is Praise-worthy in him, That to the Poor he always prescribes cheap, but wholesome Medicines, not curing them of a Consumption in their Bodies, and sending it into their Purses ; nor yet directing them to the East-Indies to look for Drugs, when they may have far better out of their Gardens." 4

The opportunities for successful imposition in the treatment of disease were unusually favorable in the early days of the colony; and the quacks were not slow to avail themselves of the chances. During the first winter at Boston, the court of assistants fined Nicholas Knopp five pounds

. for takeing vpon him to cure the scurvey by a water of noe worth nor value, which he solde att a very deare rate, to bee imprisoned till hee pay his ffine or giue securytie for it, or els to be whipped and shalbe lyable to any mans accon of whome hee hath receaued money for the sd water." 5

The record, however, does not state which dose he took in the way of punishment; but as three pounds of the fine were subsequently remitted, it

1 [See Vols. I. and II., Index. - ED.]

4 The Publications of the Prince Society, iv.

2 The Publications of the Prince Society, iv. 93. 94-96.

8 [See Vol. II., Index. - ED.] General Court Records, i. 67.

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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

is fair to infer that he was not whipped. If we now had as wise legislation in regard to medicine, there would be less quackery in the community. By a law passed a few years later, regulating the precedence of passengers in ferry-boats, preference was given to public personages, and to " Physitians, Chirurgeons, and Midwives."

The colonial authorities appear to have taken steps, at an early day, to guard against the introduction of infectious and contagious diseases from foreign ports. An order was passed by the General Court, at the session beginning in March, 1647-48, which established a strict quarantine over all vessels coming from the West India Islands. It prohibited the landing of persons or goods from such vessels, until the council saw fit to decree other- wise. At that time "ye plague or like in[fectious] disease "- perhaps yellow fever - was raging in some of these islands, and this fact was the cause of the order. During the session beginning May, 1649, one year afterward, it is recorded that -

"The Courte doth thinke meete, that the order, concerning the stoping of West India ships at the Castle should hereby be repealed seeing it hath pleased God to stay the sicknes there." 1

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The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV, Part 67

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897, ed; Jewett, C. F. (Clarence F.), publisher Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Boston : Osgood Number of Pages: 760

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897, ed; Jewett, C. F. (Clarence F.), publisher
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Boston : Osgood
Number of Pages: 760