hen I was yet of trivial age, and
suffering occasionally, as many children do, from what one of my
Cambridgeport schoolmates used to call the "ager,"--meaning thereby
toothache or face-ache,--I used to get relief from a certain plaster
which never went by any other name in the family than "Dr. Oliver."

Dr. James Oliver was my great-great-grandfather, graduated in 1680, and
died in 1703. This was, no doubt, one of his nostrums; for nostrum, as
is well known, means nothing more than our own or my own particular
medicine, or other possession or secret, and physicians in old times used
to keep their choice recipes to themselves a good deal, as we have had
occasion to see.

Some years ago I found among my old books a small manuscript marked
"James Oliver. This Book Begun Aug. 12, 1685." It is a rough sort of
account-book, containing among other things prescriptions for patients,
and charges for the same, with counter-charges for the purchase of
medicines and other matters. Dr. Oliver practised in Cambridge, where
may be seen his tomb with inscriptions, and with sculptured figures that
look more like Diana of the Ephesians, as given in Calmet's Dictionary,
than like any angels admitted into good society here or elsewhere.

I do not find any particular record of what his patients suffered from,
but I have carefully copied out the remedies he mentions, and find that
they form a very respectable catalogue. Besides the usual simples,
elder, parsley, fennel, saffron, snake-root, wormwood, I find the Elixir
Proprietatis, with other elixire and cordials, as if he rather fancied
warming medicines; but he called in the aid of some of the more energetic
remedies, including iron, and probably mercury, as he bought two pounds
of it at one time.

The most interesting item is his bill against the estate of Samuel Pason
of Roxbury, for services during his last illness. He attended this
gentleman,--for such he must have been, by the amount of physic which he
took, and which his heirs paid for,--from June 4th, 1696, to September 3d
of the same year, three months. I observe he charges for visits as well
as for medicines, which is not the case in most of his bills. He opens
the attack with a carminative appeal to the visceral conscience, and
follows it up with good hard-hitting remedies for dropsy,--as I suppose
the disease would have been called,--and finishes off with a rallying
dose of hartshorn and iron.

It is a source of honest prid