History of medicine in Massachusetts : a centennial address delivered before the Massachusetts Medical Society at Cambridge, June 7, 1881.

  • Samuel Abbott Green
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of medicine in Massachusetts : a centennial address delivered before the Massachusetts Medical Society at Cambridge, June 7, 1881. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    A CENTENNIAL ADDRESS. 21 mcstic rcmcdioR for common com])laints, and few were the faniilie.s that did not possess some old book containing manuscript receipts for ordinary ailments. The remedies used by the early practitioners of 'New England were largely made up of simples, as they were called, in contradistinction to com- pounds, 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. An electuary of millepedes looks learned, and sounds as if it might be sweet j but looks are nothing and sound is empty, when we consider that lyiillepedes is the scientific name for sowbugs, so common in the country, under damp, soggy planks. Excre- tions and secretions were employed as curative agents, and had their particular parts to play in the treatment of disease. These remedies were 23rescribed 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. In The Boston Gazette, or, Weekly Adver- tiser, December 18, 1753, is a long communica- tion, covering two pages of the newspaper, setting forth Examples of Qreat Medicines drawn from unpi'omising Bodies.''^ It is made up of extracts from a work published at Oxford, England, in the
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