Yet our ancestors knew how to brew good-tasting things. The letter book of Francis Jerdone, of Yorktown, Virginia, records under date 1746, “A receit how to make Burlington’s Universal Balsam.

Balsam Peru 1 oz.
Best Storax 2 oz.
Benjamin, impregnated with sweet Almonds 3 oz.
Alloes Succatrinx ½ oz.
Myrrh Elect ½ oz.
Purest Frankincense ½ oz.
Roots of Angelica ½ oz.
Flowers of St. John Wort ½ oz.
One pint of the best Spirit of Wine.

To be bottled up and Set in the Sun for 20 or 30 days together, to be shaken twice or thrice a day. Take about 30 drops going to bed in Tea made of pennyroyal, Balm or Speer mint.”

This prescription has the great defect of being too good, and might have a tendency to tempt the young to acquire the disease in order to be treated to the remedy. Angelic Snuff was another agreeable medicament, warranted to cure all head troubles and help the palsy, megrims, deafness, apoplexy, and gout. What a pity that only the name of this cure remains to our generation, whose megrims alone would empty so many boxes of the invaluable snuff!

The early settlers could, if they would, have learned some useful lessons in the treatment of disease from the Indians, who at least understood making the skin share the work of the stomach. A primitive, but very effective, way of treating fevers and similar ailments among the natives was by the sweating-oven. The Indian patient would creep into these mounds, under which a fire had been lighted, while the medicine-man poured on water from above, creating a mighty steam, in which the patient would continue till even Indian fortitude could hold out no longer, when he would crawl out, and, rushing down to the nearest stream, plunge headlong into its cold waters. All this process was, of course, performed amid incantations as mysterious to the whites as the phraseology of a modern physician to a savage.

This treatment was more in harmony with modern ideas than the methods which prevailed among the English. When the two Spotswood boys were sent across the sea to Eton, to school, they spent their vacations with their aunt, Mrs. Campbell, who writes to their landlady at the end of their stay: “I am very Sorry, Madam, to send them back with such bad coughs, though I have nursed Jack who was so bad that we were obliged to Bleed him, and physick him, that he is much better. I can’t judge how they got them (the coughs). My son came home with one, and has never been out of the house but once since, and these children have always laid warm, and lived constantly in the house.” These poor little victims of the coddling system would probably have recovered rapidly in the steam-bath of their native Virginia and the fresh air of her pine forests, but instead, they are sent back from one hothouse to another. “I beg,” adds their affectionate, but misguided aunt, “that they may be kept in a very warm room, and take the drops I send every night, and the pectoral drink several times a day, and that they eat no meat or drink anything but warm barley water and lemon juice, and, if Aleck increases, to get Blooded.” It is a great relief, and something of a surprise, to learn that Aleck and his brother John lived to come back to America and figure in the Revolution. Perhaps their recollections of the dosing and “blooding” they received in their youth threw additional energy into their opposition to the oppression of England.

Cupping, leeching, and all sorts of blood-letting were the chief dependence in olden times in all cases of fever. The free use of water, now so universal, would then have been thought fatal. The poor patient dreaded the doctor more than the disease, and often with reason. Anæsthetics, that best gift of science to a suffering world, were unknown, and surgery was vivisection with the victim looking on, conscious and quivering.

The doctor in the Cavalier Colonies was regarded with almost as much suspicion as the parson—as a cormorant, ready and anxious to prey on the community, and to be held in check by all the severities of the law. Virginia in 1657 passed statutes regulating surgeons’ fees. In 1680 physicians were compelled to declare under oath the value of their drugs, and the court allowed them fifty per cent advance on the cost. If any physician was found guilty of neglecting a patient, he was liable to fine and punishment.

In the eighteenth century, still stricter laws were framed, “because of surgeons, apothecaries and unskillful apprentices who exacted unreasonable fees, and loading their patients with medicine.” The fees fixed by this statute are “one shilling per mile and all medicines to be set forth in the bill.” The price for attending a common fracture is set down at two pounds, and double the sum for attending a compound fracture. A university degree entitled the practitioner to higher charges, but its possession was rare. Most doctors were trained up in the offices of older men as apprentices, pounders of drugs, and cleaners of instruments, as the old painters began by preparing paints and brushes for the master.