of the drugs.

Moliere, in his seventeenth-century satires on the European medical
profession, ridicules the excessive use of the clyster. The popularity
of the phlebotomy then is attested to by the notoriety of this
technique today. (Rare is the schoolboy who does not think that George
Washington was bled to death.) There is no reason to doubt that the
clyster and phlebotomy enjoyed as wide usage in colonial Virginia as in
Europe, but the evidence surviving to prove this assumption is slight.

Dr. Blanton, the historian of medicine, could find only meager
references to the use of clyster (or glyster) and he sums them up as
follows:

Among the effects of Nathaniel Hill was '1 old syringe.' In York
County records we find that Thomas Whitehead in 1660 paid Edmond
Smith for '2 glysters.' George Wale's account to the estate of
Thomas Baxter in 1658 included a similar charge. George Light in
1657 paid Dr. Mode fifty pounds of tobacco for 'a glister and
administering.' John Clulo, Francis Haddon and William Lee each
presented bills for similar services.

The survival of such meager evidence for what was probably a common
practice indicates the difficulties confronting the historian of
medicine. Nor has Dr. Blanton been able to find, as a result of his
research, any more evidence of phlebotomy although, again, its
utilization must have been widespread. Blanton sums up his evidence for
bleeding as follows:

Dr. Mode's bill to George Light includes 'a phlebothany to Jno
Simonds' and 'a phlebothany to yr mayd.' Dr. Henry Power twice bled
Thomas Cowell of York County in 1680, and Patrick Napier twice
phlebotomized 'Allen Jarves, deceased, in the cure of a cancer of
his mouth.' Colonel Daniel Parke in 1665 rendered John Horsington a
bill for 'lettinge blood' from his servant; and we find Dr.
Jeremiah Rawlins and Francis Haddon engaging in the same practice.

The horoscope often determined the proper time for bleeding and
notations have been found in an early American Bible recommending the
days to, and not to, bleed. Although medicine today looks askance at
astrological medicine and bloodletting, it remains difficult to explain
the widespread popularity of such practices unless the patients enjoyed
some beneficial results, psychological or physical.

Drug therapeutics, clysters, and bloodletting did by no means exhaust
the seventeenth-century physician's treatments an