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]
Catalogue details

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.

    43/70 (page 39)
    “To prevent or take away Sea sickness, Conserve of Wormwood is very proper, but these following Troches I prefer before it. First make paste of Sugar and Gum-Dragagant3 mixed together, then mix therewith [p. 14] a reasonable quantitie of the powder of Cinnamon and Ginger, and if you please a little Musk also, and make it up into Roules of several fashions, which you may gild, of this when you are troubled in your stomach, take and eat a quan¬ tity according to discretion.” Diseases in New England. [In “Rarities” (p. 63, foot-notes 4, 5, 6) Josselyn referred briefly to the “killing” diseases in New England. In “Voyages” he again discourses upon the diseases prevailing among the English in the New-England country, and gives some remedies and the treatment therefor. It will be apparent, as in “Rarities,” that throughout Josselyn’s “Voyages” great stress has been laid upon external medication, and that many substances used therefor are men¬ tioned. It was quite characteristic of early non-professional medication to favor the use of external medicaments to a far greater extent than to resort to the administration of internal medicines. Probably “safety first” had much to do in guiding this preference. Moreover, the “laying on,” whether of hands or substances, has always had the larger appeal to the common people. In considering this part of Josselyn’s narrative, as in “Rarities,” we have only the common names known to him to guide us in determining what some of these diseases were; and even though we have endeavored in the foot-notes to clarify some of the meanings, we must admit that but little certainty has ever been arrived at by anyone concerning the exact types of diseases that prevailed early in New England. One thing is certain, however, that most of them were ravaging and destructive, and may well have been called by any of the names that follow. Plague and pestilence were common appellations by various writers. The confusion of such conditions as typhus and typhoid and plague; Oriental or bubonic plague; plague and yellow fever; plague and black death and black pox; plague and pestilential fevers, and various other terms leave us quite in the dark as to the exact meanings of the names and the types of diseases they represent, as given by the earliest authors. Probably the first known epidemic of great import in New England was that invasion Johnson says that the gillyflowers of his time were 'of such various colors, and also several shapes, that a great and large volume would not suffice to write of every one at large in particular.’ ” Little wonder is it, then, that when Nicholas Leate, the great English gardener, had imported from Poland the large cloves, “yellow sops-in-wine,” that all flowerdom nearly lost their senses for joy. Josselyn links up the old with the new world when he advises the voyageurs to bring with them “Conserves of Roses, Clove-Gillifloivcr,” etc. (Felter.) 2 Currants. (Felter.) 3 Gum Tragacanth, (Felter.)