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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    [Then the author, having attended to general considerations, takes up his outline concerning the natural, medical and surgical (chyrurgical) rarities and gives us our first extended account of matters medical in New England as follows—F.] : [Page 6] “Having given you some short Notes concerning the Country in general, I shall now enter upon the proposed Discovery of the Natural, Physical, and Chyrurgical Rarities; and that I may methodically deliver them unto you I shall cast them into this form: 1. Birds. 2. Beasts. 3. Fishes. 4. Serpents and Insects. 5. Plants, of these, 1. such plants as are common with us. 2. of such Plants as are proper to the country, 3. of such plants as are proper to the Country and have no name known to us, 4. of such Plants as have sprung up since the English Planted and kept Cattle there; 5. of such Garden Herbs (amongst us) as do thrive there, and of such as do not. 6. Of Stones, Minerals, Metals and Earths.” FIRST, OF BIRDS. The Goose [pp. 9-10].—“The Bloody-Flux Cured.” “A Friend of mine of good Quality living sometime in Virginia was sore troubled for a long time with the Bloody-Flux,53 having tryed several Reme¬ dies by the advice of his Friends without any good effect, at last was induced with a longing desire to drink the Fat Dripping of a Goose newly taken from the Fire, which absolutely cured him, who was in despair of ever recovering his health again.” The Gripe [p. 10].—“A remedy for the Coldness and pain of the Stom¬ ach.” from both sides of the Atlantic in 1816, to reappear in France in 1822-3, and has since appeared from time to time in various parts of the world. Griping of the Guts is not so entirely clear, though from the literal meaning of tormina or twisting pain or colic it would point to that ever-common early and fatal disease, dysentery; but, as no alvine passages are mentioned, may it not have been appendicitis or some allied painful and fatal disease? In “Voyages” Josselyn explains more fully a somewhat similar condition—“griping of the belly (accompanied with Feaver and Ague) which turns into a bloody-flux, a common disease in the Countrey, which together with smallpox hath carried away abundance of their children.” This is evidently a debilitating acute inflammatory diarrheal disorder terminating in dysentery, for dysentery and bloody-flux are and have been always synonymous terms. Dunglison (Medical Dictionary) states that “water gripes” was “a popular name for a dangerous disease of infancy, common in England, which does not differ essentially from the cholera infantum of this country.” Dropsie needs no explanation except to note that it, a symptom, was undoubtedly regarded as a disease per se in Josselyn’s time, as it was up to the middle of the nine¬ teenth century. Sciatica, now accepted as a neuritis of the great sciatic nerve, can hardly have been, even in colonial days, a “killing disease.” Some other disorder must have passed cur¬ rent with the laity under that name, or the sciatica have been a concomitant of some fatal disorder, as diabetes, or pressure of malignant growths. 5a Dysentery. (Felter.)