tic 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 pride to his descendant that his bill, which
was honestly paid, as it seems to have been honorably earned, amounted
to the handsome total of seven pounds and two shillings. Let me add that
he repeatedly prescribes plaster, one of which was very probably the
"Dr. Oliver" that soothed my infant griefs, and for which I blush to say
that my venerated ancestor received from Goodman Hancock the painfully
exiguous sum of no pounds, no shillings, and sixpence.

I have illustrated the practice of the first century, from the two
manuscripts I have examined, as giving an impartial idea of its
every-day methods. The Governor, Johannes Secundus, it is fair to
remember, was an amateur practitioner, while my ancestor was a professed
physician. Comparing their modes of treatment with the many scientific
follies still prevailing in the Old World, and still more with the
extraordinary theological superstitions of the community in which they
lived, we shall find reason, I think, to consider the art of healing
as in a comparatively creditable state during the first century of New
England.

In addition to the evidence as to methods of treatment furnished by the
manuscripts I have cited, I subjoin the following document, to which
my attention was called by Dr. Shurtleff, our present Mayor. This is a
letter of which the original is to be found in vol. lxix. page 10 of the
"Archives" preserved at the State House in Boston. It will be seen
that what the surgeon wanted consisted chiefly of opiates, stimulants,
cathartics, plasters, and materials for bandages. The complex and varied
formulae have given place to simpler and often more effective forms of
the same remed