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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    of smallpox which, in 1617, nearly wiped out of existence “the Pawkun- nawkutts and Massachusetts’’ (Mumford, “A Narrative of Medicine in America”). This was three years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Even this diagnosis has been held in doubt by Packard and other good medical historians. That the then-called typhus fever (probably mostly typhoid) pre¬ vailed extensively, as well as occasional occurrences of yellow fever, and more commonly the dysentery; and the pestilential fevers akin to bubonic plague, and epidemic influenza and phthisis, seem fairly well established. But to be able to fathom exactly the diseases and diseased conditions mentioned by Josselyn and his contemporaries is a task all but impossible to accomplish.—F.] [Pp. 183, 184, 185, 186] : “The Diseases that the English are afflicted with are the same that they have in England, with some proper to New-England, griping of the belly4 (accompanied with Feaver and Ague) which turns to a bloody flux, a common disease in the Countrey, which together with the small¬ pox hath carried away abundance of their children, for this the common medi¬ cines amongst the poorer set are Pills of Cotton swallowed, or Sugar and Sallet-oyl boiled thick and made into Pills, Alloes pulverized and taken in the pap of an Apple. I helped many of them with a sweating medicine only. “Also they are troubled with a disease in the mouth5 or throat which hath proved mortal to some in a very short time. Quinsies,6 and Impostumations of the Almonds,7 with great distempers of cold.8 Some of our New-England writers affirm that the English are never or very rarely heard to sneeze or cough, as ordinarily they do in England, which is not true. For a cough or stitch upon cold, Wormwood, Sage, Marygolds, and Crabs-claws boiled in posset-drink and drunk off very warm, is a soveraign medicine. Pleurisies and Empyemas 9 are frequent there, both cured after one and 4 See footnote 5, under Josselyn’s “Rarities.” (Felter.) ^ It is not certain which Josselyn refers to, aphthous ulcerative stomatitis, cancrum oris (noma, a fatal gangrenous disease of the cheek) or cynanche maligna (diphtheria). (Felter.) 6 Suppurative tonsillitis or peritonsillar abscess. (Felter.) 7 Impostumations of the almonds—abscess of the tonsils. Impostume was an old name for an abscess. Imposthume is the correct rendering, meaning a collection of pus in any part of the body; an abscess. Apostem arid aposteme, now obsolete, were once used in the same sense. Josselyn’s terms, impostume and iwpostumations, are either mis-spellings or are corruptions of “imposthume” by leaving out the h. Hooper (Med. Diet., 1850) has it Imposthuma, “a term corrupted from impostem and apostem” (Felter.) . 8 Pr°bably catarrhal influenza, which was quite common in colonial days. Epidemic influenza (la grippe) appeared first in the United States in Massachusetts and Connec¬ ticut in 1627. (Felter.) 9 Pleurisy among the colonists was a very frequent and serious disease, and evi- ent y more often purulent, from the frequent references by various early authors to the empiema (empyema) which followed. Both maladies were frequently fatal, lhe earher authors, vide Josselyn (“Rarities,” p. 3), calls attention to that “sad Disease called there the Plague of the back, but with us Empiema.” (Felter.)