ect_, floating in the air, taken in with the breath,
where it either poisons or propagates its kind, so as to produce
disease.( 4)

Besides much in general, Peter Smith's book contains about ninety
prescriptions for the cure of as many diseases or forms of disease,
to be compounded generally from now well-known medicine, roots,
herbs, etc., some of them heroic, others quaint, etc. He did not
recommend dispensing wholly with the then universal practice of
bleeding patients, but he generally condemned it.

About the year 1780, from New Jersey, he commenced his wandering,
emigrating life, with his wife and _some_ small children. He
lingered a little in Virginia, in the Carolinas, and settled for
a time in Georgia, and all along he sought out people from whom he
could gather knowledge, especially of the theory and practice of
medicine. And he preached, possibly in an irregular way, the
Gospel, as a devout Baptist of the Old School, a denomination to
which he was early attached. Not satisfied with his Georgia home,
"with its many scorpions and slaves," he took his family on horseback,
some little children (twin babies among them) carried in baskets
suitable for the purpose, hung to the horns of the saddle ridden
by his wife, and thus they crossed mountains, rivers, and creeks,
without roads, and not free from danger from Indians, traversing
the woods from Georgia through Tennessee to Kentucky, intending
there to abide. But finding Kentucky had also become a slave State,
he and his family, bidding good-by to Kentucky "headticks and
slavery," in like manner emigrated to Ohio, settling on Duck Creek,
near Columbia (Old Baptist Church), now within the limits of
Cincinnati, reaching there about 1794. He became, with his family,
a member of this church, and frequently preached there and at other
frontier places, but still pursuing the occupation of farming, and,
though perhaps not for much remuneration, the practice of medicine.
In 1804 he again took to the wilderness with his entire family,
then grown to the number of twelve children, born in the "Jerseys"
or on the line of his march through the coast or wilderness States
or territories. He settled on a small and poor farm on Donnels
Creek, in the midst of rich ones, where he died, December 31, 1816.
It seems from his book (page 14) (published while he resided at
his last home), that he did not personally cease his wanderings
and search for medical knowledge, as he says