an
Institution--is director of communications, American Pharmaceutical
Association, and managing editor, Journal of the American
Pharmaceutical Association._

As one historian has reminded us, "few fields of history have been
more intensively cultivated by successive generations of historians;
few offer less reward in the shape of fresh facts or theories" than
does the American Revolutionary War.[1] This is true to some extent
even in the medical history of the Revolution. The details of the feud
within the medical department of the army have been told and
retold.[2] Even accounts of the drugs employed and pharmaceutical
services have been presented, primarily in the form of biographies and
as reviews of the _Lititz Pharmacopoeia_ of 1778.[3] However,
practically nothing has been published on the actual availability of
medical supplies. Furthermore, the discovery of several significant
but unrecorded account books of private druggists who furnished
sizable quantities of drugs to the Continental Army and a careful
re-evaluation of the unusually significant papers[4] of Dr. Jonathan
Potts, Revolutionary War surgeon, justify a review of the drug
supplies during the early years of the war.

Continental Medicine Chests

As early as February 21, 1775, the Provincial Congress of
Massachusetts appointed a committee to determine what medical supplies
would be necessary should colonial troops be required to take the
field. Three days later the Congress voted to "make an inquiry where
fifteen doctor's chests can be got, and on what terms"; and on March 7
it directed the committee of supplies "to make a draft in favor of
Doct. Joseph Warren and Doct. Benjamin Church, for five hundred
pounds, lawful money, to enable them to purchase such articles for the
provincial chests of medicine as cannot be got on credit."[5]

A unique ledger of the Greenleaf apothecary shop of Boston[6] reveals
that this pharmacy on April 4, 1775, supplied at least 5 of the 15
chests of medicines. The account, in the amount of just over L247, is
listed in the name of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, and shows
that L51 was paid in cash by Dr. Joseph Warren. The remaining L196 was
not paid until August 10, after Warren had been killed in the Battle
of Bunker Hill.

The 15 medicine chests, including presumably the five supplied by
Greenleaf, were distributed on April 18--three at Sudbury and two each
at Concord, Groton, Mendon, St