her behavior, varied directly with the
nearness and bigness of the passing clouds; the nearer the clouds, the
more anguished her groans. Reason dictated to Clayton that such a
phenomenon stemmed from a cause-effect relationship.

Although the twentieth-century physician would deny the cloud-suffering
association, he would not deny Clayton's propensity for observation and
his attempts to discern relationships. The approach of the better
seventeenth-century Virginia physician can be labeled scientific even
if his facts were few.

DRUGS AND OTHER REMEDIES

No seventeenth-century physician could function without a variety of
drugs (medicines) to dispense. Dr. Pott made special arrangements--for
example--to have a chest of drugs transported with him from England to
America, and the effectiveness of Dr. Bohun's "physicke" drew the
praise of the colonists. Drugs were essential to the physician and a
valuable commodity for export, as well. The subject of drugs must then
include a discussion of their use as medicines and their importance as
items of trade.

A study of the drugs in use and the occasions of their utilization
makes manifest the great part that freeing the body from corrupting
matter played in the treatment of disease. The theorists and clinical
physicians of the century placed such faith in the humoral doctrine
that, on the basis of this predilection, much of the opposition to
cinchona, or quinine, in a period greatly troubled by malaria, can be
explained. Cinchona, discovered in Spanish America and known in
seventeenth-century Europe, had demonstrable effects in the treatment
of malaria but, because it was an additive rather than a purgative,
physicians rejected it on theoretical grounds. Its eventual acceptance
later revolutionized drug therapeutics, but this revolution did not
affect seventeenth-century Virginia.

The emphasis that the contemporary medical men placed upon the purging
of the body--the vomiting, sweating, purgings of the bowels, the
draining, and the bleeding--cannot be considered irrational or quaint.
In the light of observation and common sense, to purge seemed not only
reasonable and natural but in accord with orthodox doctrine as well.
Observation revealed that illness was frequently accompanied by an
excess of fluid or matter in the body, as in the case of colds,
respiratory disorders, swollen joints, diarrheas, or the skin eruptions
that accompanied such epidemic diseases as the pla