Customs and Fashions in Old New England Part 23

DOCTORS AND PATIENTS

There lies before me a leather-bound, time-stained, dingy little quarto of four hundred and fifty pages that was printed in the year 1656. Its contents comprise three parts or books. First, "The Queens Closet Opened, or The Pearl of Practise: Accurate, Physical, and Chirurgical Receipts." Second, "A Queens Delight, or The Art of Preserving, Conserving, and Candying, as also a Right Knowledge of Making Perfumes and Distilling the most Excellent Waters." Third, "The Compleat Cook, Expertly Prescribing the most ready wayes, whether Italian, Spanish, or French, For Dressing of Flesh and Fish, Ordering of Sauces, or Making of PASTRY"--pastry in capitals, as is due so distinguished an article and art.

This conjunction of leechcraft and cooking was in early days far from being considered demeaning to the healing art. A great number of the cook-books of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were written by physicians. Dr. Lister, physician to Queen Anne, wrote plainly, "I do not consider myself as hazarding anything when I say no man can be a good physician who has not a competent knowledge of cookery."

The book contains a long, pompous preface, in which it is a.s.serted that these receipts were collected originally for her "distress'd Soveraigne Majesty the Queen"--Henrietta Maria; that they had been "laid at her feet by Persons of Honour and Quality;" and that since false and poor copies had been circulated during her banishment, and the compiler, who fell with the court, was not able to render his beloved queen any further service, he felt that he could at least "prevent all disservices" by giving in print to her friends these true rules. Thus could he keep the absent queen in their minds; and also he could give a fair copy to her, since she had lost her receipts in her flight.

Though Agnes Strickland stated that copies of this Queens Closet Opened are exceedingly rare in England, several are preserved in old New England families, some of them the descendants of colonial physicians; and the book may be shown as a fair example of the methods of practice and composition of prescriptions in colonial and provincial days.

This volume of mine was one of those which were not fated to dwell among "Persons of Honour and Quality" in old England; it crossed the waters to the new land with simpler folk, and was for many years the pocket-companion of an old New England doctor. Two names are carefully written on the inside of the cover of my book, names of past owners: "Edward Talbot, His Book," is in the most faded ink, and "William Morse, His Book, in the y'r 1710, Boston." A musty, leathery smell pervades and exhales from the pages, and is mingled with whiffs of an equally ancient and more penetrating odor, that of old drugs and medicines; for many a journey over bleak hills and lonely dales has the book made, safely reposing at the bottom of its owner's pocket, or lying cheek by jowl with the box of drugs and medicines, and case of lancets in his ample saddlebags.

This country doctor, like others of his profession at the same date, had not studied deeply in college and hospital; nor had he taken any long course of instruction in foreign schools and universities. When he had decided to become a doctor, he had simply ridden with an old, established physician--ridden literally--in a half-menial, half-medical capacity. He had cared for the doctor's horse, swept the doctor's office, run the doctor's errands, pounded drugs, gathered herbs, and mixed plasters, until he was fitted to ride for himself. Then he had applied to the court and received a license to practise--that was all. I doubt not that this book of mine, and perhaps a ma.n.u.script collection of recipes and prescriptions, and a few Latin treatises that he could hardly decipher, formed his entire pharmacop[oe]ia. As he had chanced to inherit a small fortune from a relative, he became a physician of some note; for in colonial days wealth and position were as essential as were learning and experience, to enable one to become a good doctor.

I like to think of the rich and pompous old doctor a-riding out to see his patients, clad in his suit of sober brown or claret color with shining b.u.t.tons made of silver coins. The full-skirted coat had great pockets and flaps, as had the long waistcoat that reached well over the hips. Knee-breeches dressed his shapely legs, while fine silk stockings and buckled shoes displayed his well-turned calves and ankles. On his head he wore a c.o.c.ked hat and wig. He owned and wore in turn wigs of different sizes and dignity--ties, periwigs, bags, and bobs. His portrait was painted in a full-bottomed wig that rivalled the Lord Chancellor's in size; but his every-day riding-wig was a rather commonplace horsehair affair with a stiff eel-skin cue. One wig he lost by a mysterious accident while attending a patient who was lying ill of a fever, of which the crisis seemed at hand. The doctor decided to remain all night, and sat down by a table in the sick man's room. The hours pa.s.sed slowly away. Physician and nurse and goodwife talked and droned on; the sick man moaned and tossed in his bed, and begged fruitlessly for water. At last the room grew silent, the tired watchers dozed in their chairs, the doctor nodded and nodded, bringing his eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, looking around for his wig; while the sick man, who had jumped out of bed in the confusion and captured a pitcher of water, drunk half the contents, and thrown the remainder over the doctor's head, was lying behind the bed curtains laughing hysterically at the ridiculous appearance of the man of medicine. Instant death was predicted for the invalid, who, strange to say, either from the laughter or the water, began to recover from that moment. The terrified physician was uncertain whether he ought to attribute the conflagration of his wig to a violent demonstration of the devil in his effort to obtain possession of the sick man's soul, or to the powerful influence of some conjunction of the planets, or to the new-fangled power of electricity which Dr. Franklin had just discovered and was making so much talk about, and was so recklessly tinkering with in Philadelphia at that very time. The doctor had strongly disapproved of Franklin's reprehensible and meddlesome boldness, but he felt that it was best, nevertheless, to write and obtain the philosopher's advice as to the feasibility, advisability, and the best convenience of having one of the new lightning-rods rigged upon his medical back, and running thence up through his wig, thus warding off further alarming demonstration. Ere this was done the mystery of the explosion was solved. When the doctor's new wig arrived from Boston, he ordered his newly purchased negro servant to powder it well ere it was worn. He was horrified to see Pompey give the wig a liberal sprinkling of gunpowder from the powder-horn, instead of starch from the dredging-box; and the explosion of the old wig was no longer a.s.signed to diabolical, thaumaturgical, or meteorological influences.

Let us turn from the doctor and the wig to the book; let us see what he did when he singed his head and burnt his face. He whipped my little book out of his pocket and turned to page 77; there he was told to make "Oyl of Eggs. Take twelve yolks of eggs and put them in a pot over the fire, and let them stand until you perceive them to turn black; then put them in a press and press out the Oyl." Or he could make "Oyl of Fennel"

if he preferred it. But probably the New England goodwife had on hand one of the dozen astounding salves described in the book, that the doctor had ere this instructed her to make, and in which I trust he found due relief.

One cannot wonder that the sick man craved water, when we read what he had had to drink. He had been given, a spoonful at a time, this "Comfortable Juleb for a Feaver," made of "Barley Water & White Wine each one pint, Whey one quart, two ounces of Conserves of Barberries, and the Juyces of two limmons and 2 Oranges." The doctor had also taken (if he had followed his Pearl of Practice) "two Salt white herrings & slit them down the back and bound them to the soles of the feet" of his patient; and I doubt not he had bled the sufferer at once, for he always bled and purged on every possible occasion.

The Water of Life was also given for fevers, a few drops at a time, and also as a tonic in health.

"Take Balm leaves and stalks, Betony leaves and flowers, Rosemary, red sage, Taragon, Tormentil leaves, Rossolis and Roses, Carnation, Hyssop, Thyme, red strings that grow upon Savory, red Fennel leaves and root, red Mints, of each a handful; bruise these hearbs and put them in a great earthern pot, & pour on them enough White Wine as will cover them, stop them close, and let them steep for eight or nine days; then put to it Cinnamon, Ginger, Angelica-seeds, Cloves, and Nuttmegs, of each an ounce, a little Saffron, Sugar one pound, Raysins solis stoned one pound, the loyns and legs of an old Coney, a fleshy running Capon, the red flesh of the sinews of a leg of Mutton, four young Chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve Eggs, a loaf of White-bread cut in sops, and two or three ounces of Mithridate or Treacle, & as much Muscadine as will cover them all.

Distil al with a moderate fire, and keep the first and second waters by themselves; and when there comes no more by Distilling put more Wine into the pot upon the same stuffe and distil it again, and you shal have another good water. This water strengtheneth the Spirit, Brain, Heart, Liver, and Stomack. Take when need is by itself, or with Ale, Beer, or Wine mingled with Sugar."

Who could doubt that it strengthened the spirit, especially when taken with ale or wine? Plainly here do we see the need of a doctor being a good cook. But what pot would hold all that flesh and fowl, that blooming flower-garden of herbs and posies, that a.s.sorted lot of fruits and spices, to say nothing of the muscadine?

Our ancestors spared no pains in preparing these medicines. They did not, shifting all responsibility, run to a chemist or apothecary with a little slip of paper; with their own hands they picked, pulled, pounded, stamped, shredded, dropped, powdered, and distilled, regardless of expense, or trouble, or hard work. Truly they deserved to be cured. They did not measure the drugs with precision in preparing their medicines, as do our chemists nowadays, nor were their prescriptions written in Latin nor with cabalistic marks--the asbestos stomachs and colossal minds of our forefathers were much above such petty minuteness; nor did they administer the doses with exactness. "The bigth of a walnut,"

"enough to lie on a pen knifes point," "the weight of a shilling,"

"enough to cover a French crown," "as bigg as a haslenut," "as great as a charger," "the bigth of a Turkeys Egg," "a pretty draught," "a pretty bunch of herbs," "take a little handful," "take a pretty quant.i.ty as often as you please"--such are the lax directions that accompany these old prescriptions.

Of course, the remedies given in this book were largely for the diseases of the day. Physicians and parsons, lords and ladies, combined to furnish complex and elaborate prescriptions and perfumes to cure and avert the plague; and the list includes one plague-cure that the Lord Mayor had from the Queen, and I may add that it is a particularly unpleasant and revolting one. A plague swept through New England and decimated the Indian tribes; and though it was not at all like the great plague that devastated London, I doubt not red man and white man took confidingly and faithfully medicines such as are given in this little book of mine: the king's feeble and much-vaunted dose of "White Wine, Ginger, Treacle, and Sage;" Dr. Atkinson's excellent perfume against the Plague, of "Angelica roots and Wine Vinegar, that if taken fasting, your breath would kill the Plague" (it must have been a fearful dose); "Mr.

Fenton's the Chirurgeon's Posset and his Sedour Root."

Cures for small-pox and for gout are many. Varied are the lotions for the "pin and web in the eye;" so many are there of these that it makes me suspect that our forefathers were sadly sore-eyed.

One very prevalent ail that our ancestors had to endure (if we can judge from the number of prescriptions for its relief) was a "cold stomack;"

literally cold, one might think, since most of the cures were by external application. Lady Spencer used a plebeian "greene turfe of gra.s.se" to warm her stomach, with the green side, not the dirt side, placed next the skin. She could scarcely have worn this turf when she was up and around the house, could she? She must have had it placed upon her while she was in bed. Josselyn said in his "New England Rarities"

that, "to wear the skin of a Gripe dressed with the doun on" would cure pain and coldness of the stomach. Thus did like cure like. A "Restorative Bag" of herbs and spices heated in "boyl'd Vinegar" is a.s.serted to be "comfortable." "It must be as hot as can be endured, and keep yourself from studying and musing and it will comfort you much." So it seems you ought not to study nor to muse if your stomach be cold.

Many and manifold are the remedies to "chear the heart," to "drive melancholy," to "cure one pensive," "for the megrums," "for a grief;"

and without doubt the lonely colonists often needed them. We know, too, that "things ill for the heart were beans, pease, sadness, onions, anger, evil tidings, and loss of friends,"--a very arbitrary and unjust cla.s.sification. Melancholy was evidently regarded as a disease, and a much-to-be-lamented one. External applications were made to "drive the worms out of the Brain as well as Dross out of the Stomack." Here is "A pretious water to revive the Spirits:"

"Take four gallons of strong Ale, five ounces of Aniseeds, Liquorish sc.r.a.ped half a pound, Sweet Mints, Angelica, Eccony, Cowslip flowers, Sage & Rosemary Flowers, sweet Marjoram, of each three handfuls, Palitory of the VVal one handful. After it is fermented two or three dayes, distil it in a Limbeck, and in the water infuse one handful of the flowers aforesaid, Cinnamon and Fennel-seed of each half an ounce, Juniper berries bruised one dram, red Rosebuds, roasted Apples & dates sliced and stoned, of each half a pound; distil it again and sweeten it with some Sugarcandy, and take of Ambergreese, Pearl, Red Coral, Hartshorn pounded, and leaf Gold, of each half a Dram, put them in a fine Linnen bag, and hang them by a thread in a Gla.s.se."

Think of taking all that trouble to make something to cheer the spirits, when the four gallons of strong ale with spices would have fully answered the purpose, without bothering with the herbs and fruits. I suppose the gold and jewels were particularly cheering ingredients, and perhaps ent.i.tled the drink to its name of precious water. Indeed, it would be cheering to the spirits nowadays to have the precious metals and gems that were so lavishly used in these ancient medicines.

Full jewelled were the works of English persons of quality in the time of the Merry Monarch and his sire. The gold and gems were not always hung in bags in the medicines; frequently they were powdered and dissolved, and formed a large portion of the dose. Like Chaucer's Doctour, they believed that "gold in phisike is a cordial." Dr.

Gifford's "Amber Pils for Consumption" contained a large quant.i.ty of pearls, white amber, and coral, as did also Lady Kent's powder. Sir Edward Spencer's eye-salve was rich in powdered pearls. The Bishop of Worcester's "admirable curing powder" was composed largely of "ten skins of snakes or adders or Slow worms" mixed with "Magistery of Pearls." The latter was a common ingredient, and under the head of "Choice Secrets Made Known" we are told how to manufacture it:

"Dissolve two or three ounces of fine seed Pearl in distill'd Vinegar, and when it's perfectly dissolved and all taken up, pour the Vinegar into a clean gla.s.se Bason; then drop some few drops of oyl of Tartar upon it, and it will call down the Pearl into the powder; then pour the Vinegar clean off softly; then put to the Pearl clear Conduit or Spring water; pour that off, and do so often until the taste of the Vinegar and Tartar be clean gone; then dry the powder of Pearl upon warm embers and keep for your use."

Gold and precious stones were specially necessary "to ease the pa.s.sion of the Heart," as indeed they are nowadays. In that century, however, they applied the mercenary cure inwardly, and prepared it thus:

"Take Damask Roses half-blown, cut off thier whites, and stamp them very fine, and straine out the Juyce very strong; moisten it in the stamping with a little Damask Rose water; then put thereto fine powder Sugar, and boyl it gently to a fine Syrup; then take the Powders of Amber, Pearl, Rubies, of each half a dram, Ambergreese one scruple, and mingle them with the said syrup till it be somewhat thick, and take a little thereof on a knifes point morning and evening."

I can now understand the reason for the unceasing, the incurable melancholy that hung like a heavy black shadow over so many Puritan divines in the early days of New England, as their gloomy sermons, their sad diaries and letters, plainly show. Those poor ministers had no chance to use these receipts and thus get cured of "worms in the brain,"

with annual salaries of only 60, which they had to take in corn, wheat, codfish, or bearskins, in any kind of "country pay," or even in wampum, in order to get it at all. Rubies and pearls and gold and coral were scarce drugs in clerical circles in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay and Plymouth plantations. Even amber and ivory were far from plentiful. We find John Winthrop writing in 1682, "I am straitened, having no ivory beaten, neither any pearle nor corall." Cleopatra drinks were out of fashion in the New World. So Mather and Hooker and Warham were condemned to die with uncheered spirits and unjewelled stomachs.

Another ingredient, unicorns' horns, which were ground and used in powders, must have been difficult to obtain in New England, although I believe Governor Winthrop had one sent to him as a gift from England; and John Endicott, writing to him in 1634, said: "I have sent you Mrs Beggarly her Vnicorns horne & beza stone." Both the unicorn's horn and the bezoar stone were sovereign antidotes against poison. At another time Winthrop had sent to him "bezoar stone, mugwort, orgaine, and galingall root." Ambergris was also too rare and costly for American Puritans to use, though we find Hull writing for golden ambergroose.

Insomnia is not a bane of our modern civilization alone. This little book shows that our ancestors craved and sought sleep just as we do.

Here is a prescription to cure sleeplessness, which might be tried by any wakeful soul of modern times, since it requires neither rubies, pearls, nor gold for its manufacture:

"Bruise a handful of Anis-seeds, and steep them in Red Rose Water, & make it up in little bags, & binde one of them to each Nostrill, and it will cause sleep."

So aniseed bags were used in earlier days for a purpose very different from our modern one; if your nineteenth century nose should refuse to accustom itself to having bags hung on it, you can "Chop Chammomile & crumbs of Brown Bread smal and boyl them with White Wine Vinegar, stir it wel and spred it on a cloth & binde it to the soles of the feet as hot as you can suffer it." And if that should not make you sleepy, there are frankincense-perfumed paper bags for your head, and some very pleasant things made of rose-leaves for your temples, and hard-boiled eggs for the nape of your neck--you can choose from all of these.

They had abounding faith in those days. Several of the prescriptions in "The Queen's Closet" are to cure people at a remote distance, by applying the nostrums to a linen cloth previously wet with the patient's blood. They had plasters of power to put on the back of the head to draw the palate into place; and wonderful elixirs that would keep a dying man alive five years; and herb-juices to make a dumb man speak. The following suggestion shows plainly their confiding spirit:

"To Cure Deafnesse. Take the Garden Dasie roots and make juyce thereof, and lay the worst side of the head low upon the bolster & drop three or four drops thereof into the better Ear; this do three or four dayes together."

"Simpatheticall" medicines had a special charm for all the Winthrops, and that delightful but gullible old English alchemist, Sir Kenelm Digby, kept them well posted in all the newest nonsense.

In a medical dispensatory of the times the different varieties of medicines used in New England are enumerated. They are leaves, herbs, roots, barks, seeds, flowers, juices, distilled waters, syrups, juleps, decoctions, oils, electuaries, conserves, preserves, lohocks, ointments, plasters, poultices, troches, and pills. These words and articles are all used nowadays, except the lohock, which was to be _licked up_, and in consistency stood in the intermediate ground between an electuary and a syrup. These terms, of course, were in the Galenic practice. In "The Queen's Closet" all the physic was found afield, with the exception of the precious metals and one compound, rubila, which was made of antimony and nitre, and which was in special favor in the Winthrop family--as many of their letters show. They sent it and recommended it to their friends--and better still, they took it faithfully themselves, and with most satisfactory results.

There was also one mineral "oyntment" made of quicksilver, verdigris, and brimstone mixed with "barrows grease," which was good for "horse, man, or other beast." Alum and copperas were once recommended for external use. The powerful "plaister of Paracelsus," also beloved of the Winthrops, was not composed of mineral drugs, as might be supposed, but was made of herbs, and from the ingredients named must have been particularly nasty smelling as well as powerful.

The medicine mithridate forms a part of many of these prescriptions; it does not seem to be regarded as an alexipharmic, but as a soporific. It is said to have been the cure-all of King Mithridates. I will not give an account of the process of its manufacture; it would fill about three pages of this book, and I should think it would take about six weeks to compound a good dose of it. There are forty-five different articles used, each to be prepared by slow degrees and introduced with great care; some of them (such as the rape of storax, camel's hay, and bellies of skinks) must have been inconvenient to procure in New England.

Mithridates would hardly recognize his own medicine in this conglomeration, for when Pompey found his precious receipt it was simple enough: "Pound with care two walnuts, two dried figs, twenty pounds of rice, and a grain of salt." I think we might take this _c.u.m grano salis_.

Queer were the names of some of the herbs; alehoof, which was ground-ivy, or gill-go-by-ground, or haymaids, or twinhoof, or gill-creep-by-ground, and was an herb of Venus, and thus in special use for "pa.s.sions of the heart," for "amorous cups," which few Puritans dared to meddle with. The blessed thistle, of which one scandalized old writer says, "I suppose the name was put upon it by them that had little holiness themselves." Clary, or clear-eye, or Christ's-eye, which latter name makes the same writer indignantly say, "I could wish from my soul that blasphemy and ignorance were ceased among physicians"--as if the poor doctors gave these folk-names! The crab-claws so often mentioned was also an herb, otherwise known as knight's-pond water and freshwater-soldier. The mints to flavor were horsemint, spearmint, peppermint, catmint, and heartmint.

The earliest New England colonists did not discover in the new country all the herbs and simples of their native land, but the Indian powwows knew of others that answered every purpose--very healing herbs too, as Wood in his "New England's Prospects" unwillingly acknowledges and thus explains: "Sometimes the devill for requitall of their worship recovers the partie to nuzzle them up inn thier devilish Religion." The planters sent to England for herbs and drugs, as existing inventories show; and they planted seeds and soon had plenty of home herbs that grew apace in every dooryard. The New Haven colony pa.s.sed a law at an early date to force the destruction of a "great stinking poisonous weed," which is said to have been the _Datura stramonium_, a medicinal herb. It had been brought over by the Jamestown colonists, and had spread miraculously, and was known as "Jimson" or Jamestown weed.

Josselyn gives in his "New England's Rarities" an interesting list of the herbs known and used by the colonists. Cotton Mather said the most useful and favorite medicinal plants were alehoof, garlick, elder, sage, rue, and saffron. Saffron has never lost its popularity. To this day "saffern tea" is a standing country dose in New England, especially for the "jarnders." Elder, rue, and saffron were English herbs that were made settlers here and carefully cultivated; so also were sage, hyssop, tansy, wormwood, celandine, comfrey, mallows, mayweed, yarrow, chamomile, dandelion, shepherd's-purse, b.l.o.o.d.y dock, elecampane, motherwort, burdock, plantain, catnip, mint, fennel, and dill--all now flaunting weeds. Dunton wrote, with praise of a Dr. Bullivant, in Boston, in 1686, "He does not direct his patients to the East Indies to look for drugs when they may have far better out of their gardens."

There is a charm in these medical rules in my old book, in spite of the earth-worms and wood-lice and adders and vipers in which some of them abound (to say nothing of other and more shocking ingredients). In surprising and unpleasant compounds they do not excel the prescriptions in a serious medical book published in Exeter, New Hampshire, as late as 1835. Nor is Cotton Mather's favorite and much-vaunted ingredient _millepedes_, or sowbugs, once mentioned within. All are not vile in my Queen's Closet--far from it. Medicines composed of Canary wine or sack, with rose-water, juice of oranges and lemons, syrup of clove-gillyflower, loaf sugar, "Mallago raisins," nutmegs, cloves, cinnamon, mace, remind me strongly of Josselyn's New England Nectar, and render me quite dissatisfied with our modern innovations of quinine, antipyrine, and phenacetin, and even make only pa.s.sively welcome the innocuous and uninteresting h.o.m.o[eo]pathic pellet and drop.

Many other dispensatories, guides, collections, and records of medical customs and concoctions, remain to us even of the earliest days. We have the private receipt-book of John Winthrop, a gathering of choice receipts given to him in ma.n.u.script by one Stafford, of England. These receipts have been printed in the Collections of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society for the year 1862, with delightful notes by Dr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, and are of the same nature as those in the Queen's Closet. Here is one, which was venomous, yet harmless enough:

"My black powder against ye plague, small-pox, purples, all sorts of feavers, Poyson; either by way of prevention or after Infection.

In the Moneth of March take Toades, as many as you will, alive; putt them into an Earthen pott, so yt it be halfe full; Cover it with a broad tyle or Iron plate, then overwhelme the pott, so yt ye bottome may be uppermost; putt charcoals round about it and over it and in the open ayre not in an house; sett it on fire and lett it burne out and extinguish of itself; when it is cold take out the toades; and in an Iron morter pound them very well; and searce them; then in a Crucible calcine them; So againe; pound them & searce them again. The first time they will be a brown powder, the next time blacke. Of this you may give a dragme in a Vehiculum or drinke Inwardly in any Infection taken: and let them sweat upon it in their bedds: but let them not cover their heads; especially in the Small-Pox. For prevention half a dragme will suffice."

I do not know what meteorological influence was a.s.signed to the month of March; perhaps it was chosen because toads would be uncommonly hard to get in New England during that month.

All the medicines in Dr. Stafford's little collection were not, however, so unalluring, and were, on the whole, very healing and respectable. He prescribed nitre, antimony, rhubarb, jalap, and spermaceti, "the sovereignest thing on earth--for an inward bruise;" and he also culled herbs and simples in vast variety. He gave some very good advice regarding the conduct of a physician, the latter clause of which might well be heeded to-day.