Customs and Fashions in Old New England Part 24

"Nota bene. No man can with a good Conscience take a fee or Reward before ye partie receive benefit apparent and then he is not to demand anything but what G.o.d shall putt it into the heart of the partie to give him. A man is not to neglect that partie to whom he had once administered but to visit him at least once a day & to medle with no more than he can well attend."

The account books of other old New England physicians, and other medical books such as "A Treatise of Choice Spagyrical Preparations," show to us that the seventeenth and eighteenth century medicines, though disgusting, were not deadly. We know what medicines were given the colonists on their sea journey hither: "Oil of Cloves, Origanum, Purging Pills, and Ressin of Jalap" for the toothache; a Diaph.o.r.etic Bolus for an "Extream Cold;" Spirits of Castor and Oil of Amber for "Histericall Fitts;" "Seaurell Emplaisters for a broken Shin;" and for other afflictions, "Gascons Powder, Liquorish, Carminative Seeds, Syrup of Saffron, Pectoral Syrups and Somniferous Boluses."

Cod livers were given then as cod-liver oil is given now, "to restore them that have melted their Grease." A favorite prescription was "Rulandus, his Balsam which tho' it smel not wel" was properly powerful, and could be gotten down if carefully hidden in "poudered shuger."

Cotton Mather, who tried his skilful hand at writing upon almost every grave and weighty subject, composed a book of medical advice called the "Angel of Bethesda." It was written when he was sixty years of age, but was never printed; the ma.n.u.script is preserved in the library of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. It begins characteristically with a sermon, and is fantastically peppered with pompous scriptural and cla.s.sical quotations, as was the Mather wont. The ingredients of the prescriptions are vile beyond belief, though, as Mather said in one of his letters, they are "powerful and parable physicks," which are two desirable qualities or attributes of any physic. The book gives an interesting account of Mather's share in that great colonial revolution in medicine--the introduction of the custom of inoculation for the small-pox. His friend, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, of Boston, was the first physician to inaugurate this great step by inoculating his own son--a child six years old. Deep was the horror and aversion felt by the colonial public toward both the practice and pract.i.tioners of this daring innovation, and fiercely and malignantly was it opposed; but its success soon conquered opposition, and also that fell disease, which six times within a hundred years had devastated New England, bringing death, disfigurement, and business misfortunes to the colonists. So universal was the branding produced by this scourge that scarcely an advertis.e.m.e.nt containing any personal description appears in any colonial print, without containing the words, pock-fretten, pock-marked, pock-pitted, or pock-broken.

Through the possibility of having the small-pox to order, arose the necessity of small-pox hospitals, to which whole families or parties resorted to pa.s.s through the ordeal in concert. Small-pox parties were made the occasion of much friendly intercourse; they were called cla.s.ses. Thus in the _Salem Gazette_ of April 22, 1784, after Point Shirley was set aside as a small-pox retreat, it was advertised that "Cla.s.ses will be admitted for Small pox." These cla.s.ses were real country outings, having an additional zest of novelty since one could fully partic.i.p.ate in the pleasures, profits, and pains of a small-pox party but once in a lifetime. Much etiquette and deference was shown over these "physical gatherings," formal invitations were sometimes sent to join the function at a private house. Here is an extract from a letter written July 8, 1775, by Joseph Barrell, a Boston merchant, to Colonel Wentworth: "Mr. Storer has invited Mrs. Martin to take the small-pox in her house; if Mrs. Wentworth desires to get rid of her fears in the same way we will accommodate her in the best way we can.

I've several friends that I've invited, and none of them will be more welcome than Mrs. Wentworth." These brave cla.s.ses took their various purifying and sudorific medicines in cheerful concert, were "grafted"

together, "broke out" together, were feverish together, sweat together, scaled off together, and convalesced together. Not a very prepossessing conjoining medium would inoculation appear to have been, but many a pretty and sentimental love affair sprang up between mutually "pock-fretten" New Englanders.

The small-pox hospitals were of various degrees of elegance and comfort, and were widely advertised. I have found four separate announcements in one of the small sheets of a Federal newspaper. From the luxurious high-priced retreat "without Mercury" were grades descending to the Suttonian, Brunonian, Pincherian, Dimsdalian, and other plebeian establishments, in which the patient paid from fifteen to as low as three dollars per week for lodging, food, medicine, care, and inoculation. At the latter cheap establishment each person was obliged to furnish for his individual use one sheet and one pillow-case--apparently a meagre outfit for sickness, but possibly merely a supplemental one.

This is a fair example of the prevailing advertis.e.m.e.nt of small-pox hospitals, from the _Connecticut Courant_ of November 30, 1767:

"Dr. Uriah Rogers, Jr., of Norwalk County of Fairfield takes this method to acquaint the Publick & particularly such as are desirous of taking the Small Pox by way of Inoculation, that having had Considerable Experience in that Branch of Practice and carried on the same the last season with great Success; has lately erected a convenient Hospital for that purpose just within the Jurisdiction Line of the Province of New York about nine miles distant from N. Y.

Harbour, where he intends to carry said Branch of Practice from the first of October next to the first of May next. And that all such as are disposed to favour him with their Custom may depend upon being well provided with all necessary accomodations, Provisions & the best Attendance at the moderate Expence of Four Pounds Lawful Money to Each Patient. That after the first Sett or Cla.s.s he purposes to give no Occasion for waiting to go in Particular Setts but to admit Parties singly, just as it suits them. As he has another Good House provided near Said Hospital where his family are to live, and where all that come after the first Sett that go into the Hospital are to remain with his Family until they are sufficiently Prepared & Inoculated & Until it is apparent that they haven taken the infection."

Of all the advertis.e.m.e.nts of small-pox hospitals, inoculation, etc., which appear in the newspapers through the eighteenth century, none is more curious, more comic than this from a Boston paper of 1772:

"Ibrahim Mustapha Inoculator to his Sublime Highness & the Janissaries: original Inventor and sole Proprietor of that Inestimable Instrument, the Circa.s.sian Needle, begs leave to acquaint the n.o.bility & Gentry of this City and its Environs that he is just arrived from Constantinople where he has inoculated about 50,000 Persons without losing a Single Patient. He requires not the least Preparation Regimen or Confinement. Ladies and Gentlemen who wish to be inoculated only acquaint him with how many Pimples they choose and he makes the exact number of Punctures with his Needle which Produces the Eruptions in the very Picquers.

Ladies who fancy a favorite Pitt may have it put in any Spot they please, and of any size: not the Slightest Fever or Pain attends the Eruption; much less any of those frightful Convulsions so usual in all the vulgar methods of Inoculation, even in the famous Peter Puffs. This amazing Needle more truly astonishing and not less useful than the Magnetic one, has this property in common with the latter, that by touching the point of a common needle it communicates its wonderful Virtues to it in the same manner that Loadstone does to Iron. And that no part of this extensive Continent may want the Benefit of this Superlatively excellent Method, Ibrahim Mustapha proposes to touch several Needles in order to have them distributed to different Colonies by which means the Small Pocks may be entirely eradicated as it has been in the Turkish Empire."

Generous Ibrahim Mustapha! despite the testimony of the Janissaries and the entire Turkish Empire, I cannot doubt that in your early youth you frequently kissed the Blarney Stone, hence your fluent tongue and your gallant proposition to becomingly decorate with pits the ladies.

Besides the scourge of small-pox, the colonists were afflicted grievously with other malignant distempers,--fatal throat diseases, epidemic influenzas, putrid fevers, terrible fluxes; and as the art of sanitation was absolutely disregarded and almost unknown, as drainage there was none, and the notion of disinfection was in feeble infancy, we cannot wonder that the death-rates were high. Well might the New Englander say with Sir Thomas Browne: "Considering the thousand doors that lead to death, I do thank my G.o.d that we can die but once."

Cotton Mather was not the only kind-hearted New England minister who set up to heal the body as well as the soul of the entire town. All the early parsons seem to have turned eagerly to medicine. The Wigglesworths were famous doctors. President h.o.a.r, of Harvard College, President Rogers, President Chauncey, all practised medicine. The latter's six sons were all ministers, and all good doctors, too. It was a parson, Thomas Thatcher, who wrote the first medical treatise published in America, a set of "Brief Rules for the Care of the Small Pocks," printed as a broadside in 1677. Many of the early parsons played also the part of apothecary, buying drugs at wholesale and compounding and selling medicines to their parishioners. Small wonder that Cotton Mather called the union of physic and piety an "Angelical Conjunction."

Other professions and callings joined hands with chirurgy and medicine.

Innkeepers, magistrates, grocers, and schoolmasters were doctors. One surgeon was a butcher--sadly similar callings in those days. This butcher-surgeon was not Mr. Pighogg, the Plymouth "churregein," whose unpleasant name was, I trust, only the cacographical rendering of the good old English name Peac.o.c.k.

With all these amateur and semi-professional rivals, it is no wonder that Giles Firmin, who knew how to pull teeth and bleed and sweat in a truly professional manner, complained that he found physic but a "meene helpe" in the new land.

So vast was the confidence of the community in some or any kind of a doctor, and in self-doctoring, that as late as the year 1721 there was but one regularly graduated physician in Boston--Dr. Samuel Douglas; and it may be noted that he was one of the most decided opponents of inoculation for small-pox.

Colonial dames also boldly tried their hand at the healing art; the first two, Anne Hutchinson and Margaret Jones, did not thrive very well at the trade. The banishment of the former has oft been told. The latter was hung as a witch, and the worst evidence against her character, the positive proof of her diabolical power was, that her medicines being so simple, they worked such wonderful cures. At the close of King Philip's War the Council of Connecticut paid Mrs. Allyn 20 for her services to the sick, and Mistress Sarah Sands doctored on Block Island. Sarah Alc.o.c.k, the wife of a chirurgeon, was also "active in physick;" and Mistress Whitman, the Marlborough midwife, visited her patients on snow-shoes, and lived to be seventy-eight years old, too. In the Phipps Street Burying Ground in Charlestown is the tombstone of a Boston midwife who died in 1761, aged seventy-six years, and who, could we believe the record on the gravestone, "by ye blessing of G.o.d has brought into this world above 130,000 children." But a close examination shows that the number on the ancient headstone, through the mischievous manipulation of modern hands, has received a figure at either end, and the good old lady can only be charged with three thousand additions to wretched humanity.

Negroes, and illiterate persons of all complexions, set up as doctors.

Old Joe Pye and Sabbatus were famous Indian healers. Indian squaws, such as Molly Orcutt, sold many a decoction of leaves and barks to the planters, and, like Hiawatha,

"Wandered eastward, wandered westward, Teaching men the use of simples, And the antidotes for poisons, And the cure of all diseases."

A good old Connecticut doctor had a negro servant, Primus, who rode with him and helped him in his surgery and shop. When the master died, Doctor Primus started in to practise medicine himself, and proved extraordinarily successful throughout the county; even his master's patients did not disdain to employ the black successor, wishing no doubt their wonted bolus and draught.

In spite of the fact that everyone and anyone seemed to be permitted, and was considered fitted to prescribe medicine, the colonists were sharp enough on the venders of quack medicines--or, perhaps I should say, of powerless medicines--on "runnagate chyrurgeons and physickemongers, saltimbancoes, quacksalvers, charlatans, and all impostourous empiricks." As early as 1631, one Nicholas Knapp was fined and whipped for pretending "to cure the scurvey by a water of noe worth nor value which he sold att a very deare rate." The planters were terribly prostrated by scurvy, and doubtless were specially indignant at this heartless cheat.

Tides of absurd attempts at medicine, or rather at healing, swept over the scantily settled New England villages in colonial days, just as we have seen in our own day, in our great cities, the abounding success--financially--of the blue-gla.s.s cure, the faith cure, and of science healing. The Rain Water Doctor worked wondrous miracles, and did a vast and lucrative business until he was unluckily drowned in a hogshead of his own medicine at his own door. Bishop Berkeley, in his pamphlet Siris, started a flourishing tar-water craze, which lived long and died slowly. This cure-all, like the preceding aquatic physic, had the merit of being cheap. A quart of tar steeped for forty-eight hours in a gallon of water, tainted the water enough to make it fit for dosing. Perhaps the most expansive swindle was that of Dr. Perkins, with his Metallic Tractors. He was born in Norwich, Conn., in 1740, and found fortune and fame in his native land. Still he was expelled from the a.s.sociation of physicians in his own country, but managed to establish a Perkinean Inst.i.tution in London with a fine, imposing list of officers and managers, of whom Benjamin Franklin's son was one. He had poems and essays and eulogies and books written about him, and it was claimed by his followers that he cured one million and a half of sufferers. At any rate, he managed to carry off 10,000 of good English money to New England. His wonderful Metallic Tractors were little slips of iron and bra.s.s three inches long, blunt at one end, and pointed at the other, and said to be of opposite electrical conditions. They cost five guineas a pair. When drawn or trailed for several minutes over a painful or diseased spot on the human frame, they positively removed and cured all ache, smart, or soreness. I have never doubted they worked wonderful cures; so did bits of wood, of lead, of stone, of earthenware, in the hands of scoffers, when the tractorated patients did not see the bits, and fancied that the manipulator held Metallic Tractors.

As years pa.s.sed on various useful medicines became too much the vogue, and were used to too vast and too deleterious an extent, particularly mercury. Many a poor salivated patient sacrificed his teeth to his doctor's mercurial doses. One such toothless sufferer, a carpenter, having little ready money, offered to pay his physician in hay-rakes; and he took a revengeful delight in manufacturing the rakes of green, unseasoned wood. After a few days' use in the sunny fields, the doctor's rakes were as toothless as their maker.

Physicians' fees were "meene" enough in olden times; but sixpence a visit in Hadley and Northampton in 1730, and only eightpence in Revolutionary times. A blood-letting, or a jaw-splitting tooth-drawing cost the sufferer eightpence extra. No wonder the doctor cupped and bled on every occasion. In extravagant Hartford the opulent doctor got a shilling a visit. Naturally all the chirurgeons eked out and augmented their scanty fees by compounding and selling their own medicines, and dosed often and dosed deeply, since by their doses they lived. In many communities a bone-setter had to be paid a salary by the town in order to keep him, so few and slight were his private emoluments, even as a physic-monger.

The science of nursing the sick was, in early days, unknown; there were but few who made a profession of nursing, and those few were deeply to be dreaded. In taking care of the sick, as in other kindnesses, the neighborly instinct, ever so keen, so living in New England, showed no lagging part. For it is plain to any student of early colonial days that, if the chief foundation of the New England commonwealth was religion, the second certainly was neighborliness. There was a constant exchange of kindly and loving attentions between families and individuals. It showed itself in all the petty details of daily life, in a.s.sistance in housework and in the field, in house-raising. Did a man build a barn, his neighbors flocked to drive a pin, to lay a stone, to stand forever in the edifice as token of their friendly goodwill. The most eminent, as well as the poorest neighbors, thus a.s.sisted. In nothing was this neighborly feeling more constantly shown than in the friendly custom of visiting and watching with the sick; and it was the only available a.s.sistance. Men and women in this care and attention took equal part. As in all other neighborly duties, good Judge Sewall was never remiss in the sick-room. He was generous with his gifts and generous with his time, even to those humble in the community. Such entries as this abound in his diary: "Oct. 26th 1702. Visited languishing Mr. Sam Whiting. I gave him 2 b.a.l.l.s of Chockalett and a pound of Figgs." And when Mr. Bayley lay ill of a fever, he prayed with him and took care of him through many a long night, and wrote:

"When I came away call'd his wife into the Next Chamber and gave her Two Five Shilling Bits. She very modestly and kindly accepted them and said I had done too much already. I told her if the State of my family would have born it I ought to have watched with Mr.

Bayley as much as that came to."

To others he gave China oranges, dishes of marmalet, Meers Cakes, Banberry Cakes; and even to well-to-do people gave gifts of money, sometimes specifying for what purpose he wished the gift to be applied.

The universal custom of praying at inordinate length and frequency with sick persons was of more doubtful benefit, though of equally kind intent. One cannot but be amazed to find how many persons--ministers, elders, deacons, and laymen were allowed to enter the sick-room and pray by the bedside of the invalid, thus indeed giving him, as Sewall said, "a lift Heavenward." Sometimes a succession of prayers filled the entire day.

Judge Sewall's friendly prayers and visits were not always welcome.

After visiting sick Mr. Brattle the Judge writes, but without any resentment, "he plainly told me that frequent visits were prejudicial to him, it provok'd him to speak more than his strength would bear, would have me come seldom." And on September 20, 1690, he met with this reception:

"Mr. Moody and I went before the others came to neighbor Hurd who lay dying where also Mr. Allen came in. Nurse Hurd told her husband who was there and what he had to say; whether he desir'd them to pray with him; He said with some earnestness, Hold your tongue, which was repeated three times to his wives repeated entreaties; once he said Let me alone or Be quiet (whether that made a fourth or was one of the three do not remember) and, My Spirits are gon.

At last Mr. Moody took him up pretty roundly and told him he might with some labour have given a pertinent answer. When we were ready to come away Mr. Moody bid him put forth a little Breath to ask prayer, and said twas the last time had to speak to him; At last ask'd him, doe you desire prayer, shall I pray with you. He answered, Ay for G.o.ds sake and thank'd Mr. Moody when had done. His former carriage was very startling and amazing to us. About one at night he died. About 11 o'clock I supposed to hear neighbor Mason at prayer with him just as my wife and I were going to bed."

One cannot but feel a thrill of sympathy for poor, dying Hurd on that hot September night, fairly hectored by pious, loud-voiced neighbors into eternity; and can well believe that many a colonial invalid who lived through mithridate and rubila, through sweating and blood-letting, died of the kindly and G.o.dly-intentioned praying of his neighbors.

XV

FUNERAL AND BURIAL CUSTOMS

The earliest New Englanders had no religious services at a funeral. Not wishing to "confirm the popish error that prayer is to be used for the dead or over the dead," they said no words, either of grief, resignation, or faith, but followed the coffin and filled the grave in silence. Lechford has given us a picture of a funeral in New England in the seventeenth century, which is full of simple dignity, if not of sympathy:

"At Burials nothing is read, nor any funeral sermon made, but all the neighborhood or a goodly company of them come together by tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his grave, and then stand by him while he is buried. The ministers are most commonly present."

As was the fashion in England at that date, laudatory verses and sentences were fastened to the bier or herse. The name herse was then applied to the draped catafalque or platform upon which the candles stood and the coffin rested, not as now the word hea.r.s.e to a carriage for the conveyance of the dead. Sewall says of the funeral of the Rev.

Thomas Shepherd: "There were some verses, but none pinned on the Herse."

These verses were often printed after the funeral. The publication of mourning broadsides and pamphlets, black-bordered and dismal, was a large duty of the early colonial press. They were often decorated gruesomely with skull and crossbones, scythes, coffins, and hour-gla.s.ses, all-seeing eyes with rakish squints, bow-legged skeletons, and miserable little rosetted winding-sheets.

A writer in the _New England Courant_ of November 12, 1722, says:

Of all the different species of poetry now in use I find the Funeral Elegy to be most universally admired and used in New England. There is scarce a plough jogger or country cobler that has read our Psalms and can make two lines jingle, who has not once in his life at least exercised his talent in this way. Nor is there one country house in fifty which has not its walls garnished with half a Score of these sort of Poems which praise the Dead to the Life.

When a Puritan died his friends conspired in mournful concert, or labored individually and painfully, to bring forth as tributes of grief and respect, rhymed elegies, anagrams, epitaphs, acrostics, epicediums, and threnodies; and singularly enough, seemed to reserve for these gloomy tributes their sole attempt at facetiousness. Ingenious quirks and puns, painful and complicate jokes (printed in italics that you may not escape nor mistake them) bestrew these funeral verses. If a man chanced to have a name of any possible twist of signification, such as Green, Stone, Blackman, in doleful puns did he posthumously suffer; and his friends and relatives endured vicariously also, for to them these grinning death's-heads of rhymes were widely distributed.

It was with a keen sense of that humor which comes, as Sydney Smith says, from sudden and unexpected contrast, that I read a heavily bordered sheet ent.i.tled in large letters, "A Grammarian's Funeral." It was printed at the death of Schoolmaster Woodmancey, and was so much admired that it was brought forth again at the demise of Ezekiel Cheever, who died in 1708 after no less than seventy years of school-teaching. I think we may truly say of him, teaching at ninety-three years of age,

"With throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar."

For the consideration and investigation of Browning Societies, I give a few lines from this New England conception of a Grammarian's Funeral.