unknown, as drainage
there was none, and the notion of disinfection was in feeble infancy, we
cannot wonder that the death-rates were high. Well might the New
Englander say with Sir Thomas Browne: "Considering the thousand doors
that lead to death, I do thank my God that we can die but once."

Cotton Mather was not the only kind-hearted New England minister who set
up to heal the body as well as the soul of the entire town. All the
early parsons seem to have turned eagerly to medicine. The Wigglesworths
were famous doctors. President Hoar, of Harvard College, President
Rogers, President Chauncey, all practised medicine. The latter's six
sons were all ministers, and all good doctors, too. It was a parson,
Thomas Thatcher, who wrote the first medical treatise published in
America, a set of "Brief Rules for the Care of the Small Pocks," printed
as a broadside in 1677. Many of the early parsons played also the part
of apothecary, buying drugs at wholesale and compounding and selling
medicines to their parishioners. Small wonder that Cotton Mather called
the union of physic and piety an "Angelical Conjunction."

Other professions and callings joined hands with chirurgy and medicine.
Innkeepers, magistrates, grocers, and schoolmasters were doctors. One
surgeon was a butcher--sadly similar callings in those days. This
butcher-surgeon was not Mr. Pighogg, the Plymouth "churregein," whose
unpleasant name was, I trust, only the cacographical rendering of the
good old English name Peacock.

With all these amateur and semi-professional rivals, it is no wonder
that Giles Firmin, who knew how to pull teeth and bleed and sweat in a
truly professional manner, complained that he found physic but a "meene
helpe" in the new land.

So vast was the confidence of the community in some or any kind of a
doctor, and in self-doctoring, that as late as the year 1721 there was
but one regularly graduated physician in Boston--Dr. Samuel Douglas; and
it may be noted that he was one of the most decided opponents of
inoculation for small-pox.

Colonial dames also boldly tried their hand at the healing art; the
first two, Anne Hutchinson and Margaret Jones, did not thrive very well
at the trade. The banishment of the former has oft been told. The latter
was hung as a witch, and the worst evidence against her character, the
positive proof of her diabolical power was, that her medicines being so
simple, they worked such wonderful cures. At the close