The genesis of the American materia medica : including a biographical sketch of "John Josselyn, gent," and the medical and materia medica references in Josselyn's "New-Englands rarities discovered," etc., and in his "Two voyages to New-England," / with critical notes and comments by Harvey Wickes Felter.

  • Felter, Harvey Wickes, 1865-1927.
Date:
[1927]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The genesis of the American materia medica : including a biographical sketch of "John Josselyn, gent," and the medical and materia medica references in Josselyn's "New-Englands rarities discovered," etc., and in his "Two voyages to New-England," / with critical notes and comments by Harvey Wickes Felter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [The materials pertinent to our purpose in Josselyn’s “Rarities” may well be introduced by the following passage concerning the capricious climate of the coast of New England and the effect upon susceptible inhabitants.—F.] “The Sea-Coasts [p. 3] are accounted wholesomest; the East and South winds coming from Sea, produceth warm weather; the Northwest coming over land causeth extremity of Cold, and many times strikes the Inhabitants, both English and Indians, with that sad Disease called there the Plague of the back, but with us Empiema” 4 [ Josselyn gives us little enlightenment in “Rarities” concerning the diseases of New England by reason of his use only of common folk names. In his “Voyages” he names several more, and most of which are evident even from their common names. One is explanatory of “griping of the guts” mentioned below. Of the prevalent diseases he says [p. 63]—F.] : “The Black Pox, the Spotted Feaver, the Griping of the Guts, the Dropsie, and the Sciatica, are the killing diseases in New England.” 5 Josselyn. For the gathering of the larger part of the botanical references and noting them in more modern nomenclature, and for the formulation of medical definitions (where not otherwise noted), and for the historical materials included, the writer alone is responsible. Such material in the text (exclusive of foot-notes) as is not a part of the original books by Josselyn, but is his own, the writer has included in brackets, thus: [F.]. This is only true of the brackets with the initial F. Other matter bracketed is evident. The writer has taken the liberty to place headings (not always in the original) in Caps and Small Caps to introduce the remedies, and has relegated the disorders to a place following the headings. Otherwise these reproductions, from Josselyn, at least, though not fac simile, are literal as to spelling, phraseology and capitalization with those of the literal reprints of “Rarities” and “Vojyages” by William Veazie, of Boston, in 1865. 4 Empyema is pus in any cavity of the body, but when used unqualified refers to pus in the pleural cavity. Pleurisy and pleuro-pneumonia were very common and often fatal diseases among the early colonists. Empyema (then sometimes called “putrid pleurisie”) the result of these was equally common and destructive.— (Felter.) 5 The Black Pox referred to by Josselyn would seem to be the malignant type of variola or smallpox, a disease very common in the early settlement, and from which several deaths are recorded in his “Voyages.” Spotted Fever is a name that has been applied to three disorders: Typhus fever (typhus petechialis), cerebro-spinal meningitis, and Rocky Mountain fever. The name is most commonly applied to the second named. Whether Josselyn’s “Spotted Feaver” was typhus or cerebro-spinal fever is difficult to fix, as the latter was confounded with typhus until the difference was pointed out by Veusseux, of Geneva, in 1805. More¬ over, as Tyson declares, it is even now difficult to distinguish the one from the other. As typhus fever visited America very early, it is probably safe to assume that Josselyn’s malady might well have been the well-spotted cases of typhus. It is equally possible to have been typhoid fever—an early invader of our colonies—and not differentiated from typhus until the last century. While from the thirteenth century on the great epidemics of Europe were cerebro-spinal fever, when not small pox and Oriental plague, and sometimes typhus fever, the cerebro-spinal fever did not occur in known epidemics under its own name in America until 1806, when it invaded Medfield,, Mass.; broke out in Canada in 1807; in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio in 1808, and in New York a>nd Pennsylvania in 1809. (See Tyson, “Practice of Medicine,” for details.) It disappeared