USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume II > Part 24
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53
826
THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
BIBLIOGRAPHY-James Truslow Adams: "The Founding of New England," Boston, 1921. "Revolutionary New England," Bos- ton, 1923. "New England in the Republic," Boston, 1926.
John Spencer Bassett: "A Short History of the United States," New York, 1929.
Albert Bushnell Hart (editor) : "Commonwealth History of Massachusetts" (5 vols.), New York, 1930.
D. Hamilton Hurd (editor) : "History of Essex County" (2 vols. ), Philadelphia, 1888.
Samuel Eliot Morison : "The Maritime History of Massachu- setts," Boston, 1921.
William Drummer Northend : "The Bay Colony," Boston, 1896.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger: "Political and Social Growth of the United States" (2 vols.), New York, 1933.
John Wingate Thornton : "The Landing at Cape Anne," Bo's- ton, 1854.
(A group of Salem men known as "The Club") : "Sketches About Salem People," Salem, 1930.
Medicine and Public Hygiene
CHAPTER XX
Medicine and Public Hygiene By Robert K. Vietor
At the time of the settlement of Essex County, and for many years thereafter, medical science was in an extremely crude state, par- ticularly in the more remote districts. . Most illness was attended to in the home, with the use of well-known household remedies. When outside assistance was required, the nearest clergyman was generally called in, or, when the case demanded it, a midwife. In those days the clergy were, as a group, the best informed and most liberally educated among the colonists. Many of them, in preparing them- selves for life in the new settlements, had studied medicine as well as theology, and were as capable as any to care for the sick. But on the whole, medical facilities were almost completely lacking. Even the most learned physicians knew remarkably little about the causes and proper treatment of disease, while in numerous cases the services of many of the quacks and charlatans who flourished in those days were distinctly injurious.
According to an address presented by Dr. Samuel Abbott Green at Cambridge in 1881,
"the remedies used by the early practitioners of New Eng- land were largely made up 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 some- times excite feelings akin to disgust. An electuary of mil- lepedes looks learned, and sounds as if it might be sweet, but looks are nothing and sound is empty, when we consider that
830
THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
millepedes is the scientific name for sowbugs, so common in the country, under damp, soggy planks. Excretions and secre- tions were employed as curative agents, and had their particu- lar part to play in the treatment of disease. These remedies were prescribed at times by the best physicians two hundred years ago. In England, during this period, the practice of medicine was equally crude. 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."1
Besides the use of medicines, some of which were beneficial, a few injurious, and most harmless though ineffective, the physicians of those times had additional ways of treating sickness. Bleeding was used to relieve a great variety of cases, often weakening the patient enough to make him a certain victim of his particular malady. The extensive bleeding of consumptives, and the practice of shutting up pneumonia and smallpox victims in overheated and unventilated rooms, were general. Indeed, it is only in comparatively recent times that some of these injurious practices have been corrected. It is not surprising that the mortality from disease was very high during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The treatment of illness in the home was not dissimilar in char- acter from the methods used by physicians. Most families had in their possession a medical book of some kind describing the ordinary remedies. A great variety of roots and herbs were employed, many of which had positive medicinal value. Among the herbs brought from England were wormwood, tansy, chamomile, yarrow, dandelion, plan- tain, catnip, and mint, of which several have multiplied so extensively that they are now considered common weeds. A number of indigenous herbs, long used medicinally by the Indians, were also employed as household remedies by the early settlers.
The mystical character imputed by the people of those times to the practice of medicine is shown by some of the remarkable reme- dies described in the household recipe books. A specimen of one of the more bizarre concoctions of a type known to early Essex County housewives, but probably seldom if ever used by them, is found in a
I. "History of Medicine in Massachusetts," by Samuel Abbott Green, M. D., A. Williams and Company, Boston, 1881, p. 21.
831
MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HYGIENE
recipe book published in 1661, "A Treatise of the Choicest Spagyricall Preparations" :2
"The Quintessence of Snakes, Adders, or Vipers .- Take of the biggest and fattest Snakes, Adders, or Vipers which you can get in June or July, cut off their heads, take off their skins and unbowell them, and then cut them into small pieces
LA
7
ESSEX SANITORIUM, MIDDLETON
and put them into a glass of a wide mouth, and set them in a warm Balneo."
The compound is treated next with various kinds of spirits :
"Then abstract the spirit of Wine, and the Quintessence remaineth at the bottom perfect.
"The quintessence is of extraordinary virtue for the puri- fying of the blood, flesh and skin, and consequently all dis- eases therein. It cures also the falling-sickness, & strengthens
2. Essex Institute Historical Collection," Vol. I, p. 46.
832
THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
the Brain, Sight and Hearing, and preserveth from gray hairs, reneweth Youth, cureth the Gout, Consumption, causeth Sweat, is very good in and against Pestilential infections."
Surely such an efficacious medicine was a great boon to our ances- tors. Among other remedies set forth in this book, which apparently depended on the mystical qualities of its ingredients, was "Aqua Magnanimitatis," a compound of ants, ant's eggs, woodlice, bees, soot, and "Spirit of Wine," which was so "good to stir up Animall spirits" that "John Casmire, Palsegrave of the Rhene, and Seyfrie of Cullen, Generall, against the Turks, did always drinke of it when they went to fight, to increase Magnanimity and Courage, which it did even to admiration." From a modern and slightly cynical point of view, it might seem that the "Spirit of Wine" rather than the various forms of insect life included in the compound was responsible for the unusual magnanimity of John Casmire and General Seyfrie.
That a magical significance should be attached to the cure of illness in those days is not surprising, in view of the usual interpreta- tion of the causative of disease then prevalent. The theory of dis- ease held by Cotton Mather, one of the most learned and intelligent men in the colonies, and presented in "the Wonders of the Invisible World," published in 1693, attributes its causation to the work of the Devil:
66 But shall we mention some of the special woes with which the Devil does usually infest the World! Briefly then; Plagues are some of those woes with which the Devil troubles us. It is said of the Israelites, in I Cor. 10.10, They were destroyed by the destroyer. That is, they had the Plague among them. 'Tis the Destroyer, or the Devil, that scatters Plagues about the World. Pestilential and Contagious Dis- eases, 'tis the Devil who does oftentimes invade us with them. 'Tis no uneasy thing for the Devil to impregnate the air about us with such Malignant Salts as meeting with the Salt, of our Microcosm, shall immediately cast us into the Fermenta- tion and Putrefaction, which will utterly disolve all the Vital types within us; Ev'n as an Aqua Fortis, made with a con- junction of Nitre and Vitriol, Corrodes what it seizes upon. And when the Devil has raised those Arsenical Fumes, which
S33
MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HYGIENE
become Venemous Quivers full of Terrible Arrows, how easily can he shoot the deleterious Miasms into those Juices or Bowels of Mens Bodies, which will soon Enflame them with a Mortal Fire! Hence come such Plagues as that Becsom of Destruction, which within our memory swept away such a Throng of People from one English City in one Visitation; And hence those infectious Fevers, which are but so many Dis- guised Plagues among us, causing Epidemical Desolations."3
For lack of preventative and curative medicine, epidemics swept the land without check, and thousands died during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from diseases now well under control. Small- pox was the most fatal of the epidemic diseases which appeared at frequent intervals, while diphtheria, various malignant fevers, and the ordinary ills of childhood were common. Consumption and the other respiratory diseases were constantly among the most prevalent causes of death.
The periodic scourges of small pox which brought terror and grief to every community in Essex County made a stronger impres- sion than did the ravages of any other malady. The early records are full of instances where measures were taken, usually with little success, to keep the disease out of particular communities.
Even before the first white settlers had arrived in Massachusetts Bay the Indian tribes of the coast and the lower Merrimac Valley were decimated by a pestilence which is generally thought to have been smallpox. Since this disease was new to the Indians, they had not built up the resistance to it that the Europeans, who had been exposed to the disease for generations, had come to possess. Hence, the mortality of the first epidemic was terrible. Cotton Mather wrote of the severity of the scourge :
"The Indians in these Parts had newly, even about a Year or Two before, been visited with such a prodigious Pestilence; as carried away not a Tenth, but Nine Parts of Ten (yea, 'tis said Nineteen of Twenty) among them: So that the Woods were almost cleared of those pernicious Creatures to make Room for a better growth."4
3. "The Wonders of the Invisible World," by Cotton Mather, D. D., John Russell Smith, London, 1862, p. 52.
4. "Magnalia," Book I, Chap. II, p. 7.
Essex-53
834
THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
After the beginning of the English settlements, smallpox con- tinued to reduce the Indian population. As late as 1633 Governor Winthrop's journal tells of the ravages of smallpox among the Indians in the vicinity of Lynn :
"December 5. John Sagamore died of the small pox, and almost all his people; above thirty buried by Mr. Maverick of Winnesemett in one day. The towns in the bay took away many of the children, but most of them died soon after.
"James Sagamore of Saugus died also, and most of his folks."5
The white settlers viewed this pestilence among the Indians as a divine retribution for erroneous worship. Strangely enough, as pointed out by Lewis and Newhall in their "History of Lynn," when smallpox struck down members of good Christian families it was then the work of the Devil.
All during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries recurrent epidemics of smallpox swept the towns of Essex County. All classes of people were equally subject to its inroads, and once the disease had entered a community almost nothing could be done to halt it. In some epidemics, nearly everyone who was susceptible to the infection at the time was attacked by the disease. Ordinarily, care was taken to segregate infected persons, but, because of the imperfect condition of sanitation in those days, and the highly contagious character of the disease, measures to prevent its spread had little effect.
An example of the measures taken in the early days to prevent the spread of smallpox is found in a warrant issued by the selectmen of Andover in 1690. It concerned the unfortunate Martha Carrier, born Allen, who was later executed as a witch. In the fall of 1690, Goodwife Carrier and some of her children, recently returned to her mother's house in Andover, were suffering from smallpox, and appar- ently were not taking the usual precautions to prevent the disease from spreading to the neighbors. The warrant reads as follows :
"To Walter Wright, Constable; Whereas it has pleased God to visit those of the widdowe Allen's family which she hath taken into her house with that contagious disease the small-pox, it being as we think part of our duty to prevent the
5. "History of Lynn," Alonzo Lewis and James R. Newhall, Boston, 1865.
835
MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HYGIENE
spreading of sd. distemper we therefore require you in their Majestie's name to warn sd. family not to goe near any house soe as to endanger them by sd. infection nor to come to the public meeting till they may come with safety to others: but what they want let them acquaint you with : which provide for them out of their own estates. Dated the 4: 9, 1690."6
At that time smallpox was raging in several towns, and added to the general anxiety occasioned by the Indian troubles of that year. Haverhill suffered badly, several deaths being reported, and a pest- house was provided on Bradley's Hill. In the next few years there were numerous other examples of the increased attention being given to methods of isolating the disease. In the seaport towns great care was taken to prevent the spreading of smallpox from vessels on which some of the crew or passengers were infected. An early exam- ple of the precautions taken is shown in an order of the selectmen of Salem, issued in 1701 :
"SALEM, June 10, 1701.
To Constable Samuel Wakefield:
In his majesty's name you are hereby required to take Espetial Care to Inform Thomas Marston, Commander of the Brigatine called the 'Yeorke,' that the Authority heere have provided the House yt was formerly ffrancis Muse's neere Skerry's for himself & company to Repair into, for pre- venting the spreading of the Small pox, where they are to remaine till further ordered.
hereof faile not.
Jos. WOLCOTT JEREMIAH NEALE PETER OSGOOD EDWARD FFLINT""
An interesting sequel followed this order. The same day the report "that Thomas Marston's doge is come ashore whereby the people are Indangered of getting the Small pox," caused John Hathorne and John Higginson, justices of the peace, to require Con- stable Wakefield "in his Majestie's name Forthwith to kill, or cause
6. "Historical Sketch of Andover," by Sarah Loring Bailey, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1880.
7. Essex Institute Historical Coll., Vol. XI, p. 238.
836
THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
to be killed the said Doge & Secured under Ground or otherwise, so as that the Danger may be prevented."8
It is notable that, in those days, dogs were considered carriers of smallpox. In this and several other instances, dogs were ordered killed when smallpox threatened. In Marblehead, in 1730, an out- break of smallpox caused an order to be issued that all dogs running at large be killed.
The epidemic of 1730-31 was particularly severe, in spite of the efforts to prevent its spread. A good account of its ravages is found in the "History of Essex County," edited by D. Hamilton Hurd in the section devoted to Marblehead. In May, 1730, word reached the towns of Essex County that an extremely severe epidemic of smallpox was raging in Boston. The news brought a frenzy of fear throughout the countryside, and the towns took all known precau- tions to keep out the disease. In some communities the roads, par- ticularly those leading from Boston, were fenced, and guards sta- tioned day and night to keep travelers from entering. Negroes and Indians were forbidden to walk the streets after nine in the evening. But the precautions were of no avail in most cases. Marblehead was spared until October, 1730, when a young woman named Hannah Waters was stricken with the disease. The epidemic raged in this town until late in the summer of 1731, by which time all but two of the board of selectmen had died, as well as a large number of towns- people. Though the pestilence was at its worst in Marblehead, other communities suffered to some extent.
After various sporadic appearances of smallpox, a serious epi- demic broke out in Newbury in 1759, which is described, with refer- ence to the treatment used, in Coffin's "A Sketch of the History of Newbury," on page 225:
"During its continuance, the selectmen fenced in the infected district, from the school-house to Emery's Hill, and sent to Boston for physicians and nurses, who, as the custom was then, greatly aggravated the disease, by shutting the sick up in small and heated rooms. About eighty persons had the disorder, of whom, thirty-six, all adults but two, died."
The heavy mortality in this epidemic was unusual, even for those days.
8. Ibid., p. 239.
837
MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HYGIENE
It was about this time that inoculation for smallpox was begin- ning to be used to a considerable extent among the more enlightened classes in Essex County. Inoculation originated in Constantinople about the year 1718, and soon reached the attention of the European medical profession. It was first introduced in New England by Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, of Boston, in 1721. The Mathers, Cotton and Increase, were instrumental in bringing inoculation to the attention of New England physicians.9 A controversy, which went on for years, in some cases involving physical violence, immediately began over the merits of this treatment.
Variolous inoculation, as it was called, was administered with the purpose of making the subject immune from smallpox. It involved infecting the person desiring immunity with the virus of the disease, under conditions which would make recovery likely. Hospitals were provided in secluded places, where the patients were confined during their ordeal. Exercises and diet were prescribed before inoculation to put the patients in the best possible condition to resist the disease, and careful treatment was given after infection. The mortality of the disease when given by inoculation was greatly reduced. When epidemics threatened during the latter half of the eighteenth century, the inoculation hospitals were thronged with people who would rather get immunity by this means than take the chance of catching the infection during the epidemic.
In the Historical Collection of The Essex Institute is found an account of inoculation by Robert Rantoul, of Salem, who underwent the treatment himself as a young man.1ยบ Mr. Rantoul was inoculated by Dr. Joseph Osgood, of Salem, at the hospital at Great Pasture, in 1792, when a serious epidemic of smallpox was in progress in Bos- ton, and threatened to spread to Salem. He was in a "class" of nearly three hundred which crowded the hospital badly. Of that number only three fatalities occurred. Mr. Rantoul had the dis- ease in what was described as a "mild" form, writing, "I might have had one thousand pustules." The treatment afforded the class was uniform until the symptoms of the disease appeared, after which time each case was dealt with according to its particular needs. The first night after inoculation an emetic was administered, followed by
9. "History of Medicine in Massachusetts," pp. 64-65. Essex Institute Historical Coll., Vol. XXXV, p. 304.
IO. Vol. V, p. 195.
838
THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
Glauber's salts the next day. Cathartics were also given the third and fifth days. On these days a diet of Indian meal, boiled in water and sweetened with molasses, was given. On other days bread, puddings, and vegetables were provided. Nitre was given when fever was severe. Exercise was kept up when possible, and patients, even in fever, left warm beds to exercise in the cold air with little clothing. Some of these methods were revolutionary as compared with the general practice of fifty years before, and were responsible for a decrease in mortality after inoculation.
The treatment, of course, was expensive, and only the more wealthy classes could afford it. The people as a whole did not take kindly to inoculation, since they feared that the disease might spread from the smallpox hospitals and endanger the unprotected members of the community. Then again, the superstition and ignorance so general among the people naturally were not conducive to a ready acceptance of the improvements of science. The opposition to inocu- lation in many towns was strong. In a number of communities it was the subject of bitter controversy, and at times was illegal. More than one riot followed the establishment of inoculation hospitals in Essex County towns.
In 1764 an epidemic of smallpox was experienced in several places, at which time a large number of people were inoculated. That year eighteen received the treatment in Gloucester, of whom one died. A hospital for inoculation was erected about that time in the "Great Pasture" at Newburyport. Among those treated were Joseph Mar- quand and Henry Hudson, who were released, by grant of the select- men, after inspection by constables, on May 3, 1764. Some wealthy Newburyporters went to additional expense that year to take their treatment in Boston, where facilities were better. Among them were Joseph Greenough, John Lowell, and Beniah Titcomb.
This particular epidemic spread from Boston, where smallpox was prevalent in the early spring of 1764. In Newburyport pre- cautions were taken to keep the disease from entering either by land or sea. Guards were placed at Thurlow's Bridge on the road to Bos- ton, and were given orders to inspect and fumigate the persons, clothes, and belongings of all who desired to enter Newburyport. Great care was taken to prevent the disease from coming from ves- sels which entered the port, particularly those coming from Boston.
839
MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HYGIENE
Evidence of these precautions is found in a warrant granted to the selectmen March 17, 1764, by Michael Dalton and Daniel Farnham, justices of the peace, "to take possession of Johnson Lunt's sloop and Francis Haskell's sloop lately come from Boston where smallpox is prevalent."11 On April 16, the selectmen ordered all vessels from Boston to go below the half tide rocks and remain there for further orders. Five years later, when another epidemic threatened New- buryport, a smallpox hospital, or pesthouse, was erected on Plum Island, a then isolated strip of sand near the harbor mouth, where the crews of infected vessels were confined.
During the 'seventies smallpox was unusually prevalent in Essex County, and it was during this period that the controversy over inocu- lation was at its height. A serious epidemic occurred in 1773 and 1774, and during the war years, because of troop movements and other unusual circumstances, the disease appears to have been very general.
The epidemic which started in 1773 seems to have been of a par- ticularly virulent nature, and apparently began in Marblehead. Soon after a certain William Mathews returned from a fishing voyage to the Grand Bank, his wife became strangely ill. At first it was thought that she was poisoned by some soap that Mathews had acquired while visiting a French fishing vessel while on his voyage, but the illness turned out to be smallpox. It is likely that he carried the disease, either on his person or belongings, back with him from the Bank. The epidemic spread rapidly. The townspeople were panic stricken, and the usual measures were taken. All dogs were ordered killed, and a pesthouse was provided. In two or three months thirty-one people had succumbed to the disease.
In August, 1773, a hospital for treatment by inoculation, to be erected at Cat Island, was proposed by a group of prominent Mar- blehead men, among whom were Azor Orne, Jonathan Glover, and Elbridge Gerry. The town declined to build it, but offered to allow it to be done as a private enterprise. In September the hospital was opened, and the services of Dr. Hall Jackson, eminent Portsmouth physician, was secured. The Cat Island establishment was very well conducted, and made an excellent record for inoculation.
From its very beginning, however, it was strongly opposed by a large number of the townspeople. They felt that it constituted a
II. "History of Newburyport," Vol. I, p. 39. John James Currier, 1909.
840
THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
constant menace as a source of new infection, and, since but few of them could afford the treatment, it was disliked on personal grounds. As time went on new grievances appeared. It was felt that the boat- men employed to take the discharged patients from the island landed them too near the town, and a number of townspeople retaliated by destroying the boats. Soon after this disturbance four Marblehead men were apprehended while attempting to steal cloth from the hos- pital, or "Castle Pox," as it had come to be known. The towns- people were enraged by this act, which might have spread the disease among them, and the four culprits were seized by a mob. In the time honored way that Marbleheaders treated their local villains, the men were tarred and feathered and dragged through the streets of the town in a cart, to the accompaniment of a fife and five drums. After parading the streets of Marblehead for some time the strange procession continued to Salem. The authorities of the latter town, however, did not allow them to enter, and they turned back to Mar- blehead with their victims. This incident tended to increase the feel- ing against the hospital and against inoculation as well.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.