form of that
very active metal, and which, mild as it was, left his patients very
commonly with a pretty strong conviction that they had been taking
something that did not exactly agree with them. Now and then he gave a
little iron or sulphur or calomel, but very rarely; occasionally, a good,
honest dose of rhubarb or jalap; a taste of stinging horseradish, oftener
of warming guiacum; sometimes an anodyne, in the shape of
mithridate,--the famous old farrago, which owed its virtue to poppy
juice; [This is the remedy which a Boston divine tried to simplify. See
Electuarium Novum Alexipharmacum, by Rev. Thomas Harward, lecturer at
the Royal Chappell. Boston, 1732. This tract is in our Society's
library.] very often, a harmless powder of coral; less frequently, an
inert prescription of pleasing amber; and (let me say it softly within
possible hearing of his honored descendant), twice or oftener,--let us
hope as a last resort,--an electuary of millipedes,--sowbugs, if we must
give them their homely English name. One or two other prescriptions, of
the many unmentionable ones which disgraced the pharmacopoeia of the
seventeenth century, are to be found, but only in very rare instances, in
the faded characters of the manuscript.

The excellent Governor's accounts of diseases are so brief, that we get
only a very general notion of the complaints for which he prescribed.
Measles and their consequences are at first more prominent than any other
one affection, but the common infirmities of both sexes and of all ages
seem to have come under his healing hand. Fever and ague appears to have
been of frequent occurrence.

His published correspondence shows that many noted people were in
communication with him as his patients. Roger Williams wants a little of
his medicine for Mrs. Weekes's daughter; worshipful John Haynes is in
receipt of his powders; troublesome Captain Underhill wants "a little
white vitterall" for his wife, and something to cure his wife's friend's
neuralgia, (I think his wife's friend's husband had a little rather have
had it sent by the hands of Mrs. Underhill, than by those of the gallant
and discursive captain); and pious John Davenport says, his wife "tooke
but one halfe of one of the papers" (which probably contained the
medicine he called rubila), "but could not beare the taste of it, and is
discouraged from taking any more;" and honored William Leete asks for
more powders for his "poore little daughter Gracia