ies; but the list and the manner in which it is made out
are proofs of the good sense and schooling of the surgeon, who, it may
be noted, was in such haste that he neglected all his stops. He might
well be in a hurry, as on the very day upon which he wrote, a great
body of Indians--supposed to be six or seven hundred--appeared before
Hatfield; and twenty-five resolute young men of Hadley, from which town
he wrote, crossed the river and drove them away.

HADLY May 30: 76

Mr RAWSON Sr

What we have recd by Tho: Houey the past month is not the chiefest of
our wants as you have love for poor wounded I pray let us not want for
these following medicines if you have not a speedy conveyance of them I
pray send on purpose they are those things mentioned in my former letter
but to prevent future mistakes I have wrote them att large wee have
great want with the greatest halt and speed let us be supplyed. Sr Yr
Sert WILL LOCHS.

(Endorsed)

Mr. Lockes Letter Recd from the Governor 13 Jane & acquainted ye Council
with it but could not obtaine any thing to be sent in answer thereto. 13
June 1676.

I have given some idea of the chief remedies used by our earlier
physicians, which were both Galenic and chemical; that is, vegetable and
mineral. They, of course, employed the usual perturbing medicines
which Montaigne says are the chief reliance of their craft. There were,
doubtless, individual practitioners who employed special remedies with
exceptional boldness and perhaps success. Mr. Eliot is spoken of, in
a letter of William Leete to Winthrop, Junior, as being under Mr.
Greenland's mercurial administrations. The latter was probably enough
one of these specialists.

There is another class of remedies which appears to have been employed
occasionally, but, on the whole, is so little prominent as to imply a
good deal of common sense among the medical practitioners, as compared
with the superstitions prevailing around them. I have said that I have
caught the good Governor, now and then, prescribing the electuary of
millipedes; but he is entirely excused by the almost incredible fact
that they were retained in the materia medica so late as when Rees's
Cyclopaedia was published, and we there find the directions formerly
given by the College of Edinburgh for their preparation. Once or twice
we have found him admitting still more objectionable articles into his
materia medica; in doing which, I am sorry to say that he could
plead g