The subscriber having had but very few medicines left in his shop before this order came to hand, will now be able to furnish his friends and customers with every thing fresh and genuine. Gentlemen practitioners, and others, may depend on being supplied at a very low advance.
The final assurance echoes Pasteur’s earlier complaint written his London agents to the effect that “tiss hardly worth our while to import medicines for sale we are Oblige to sell at a low advance on acct of our confounded druggist here....” The “confounded druggist,” William Biers, was having his own difficulties making a living, however, and soon sold out to the partnership of James Carter and Andrew Anderson.
Colonial Williamsburg owns several of Dr. Galt’s account books, including the one for the years 1770 to 1775, before he joined Pasteur. One of the early entries shows a charge against Thomas Glass of ten shillings for “visiting &c.” The corresponding credit entry shows that the bill was paid in cash seven years and five months later! Patients were as lax about paying their doctor’s bills then as now, and although most of Dr. Galt’s patients paid in cash, he also took wood, hay, and oats. On one instance he wrote off a debt with an equal credit “for the Runaway.”
What is surely the most provocative entry occurs opposite February 29, 1772, a Leap Year Day. On that date appears a debit against a Mr. Bowyer of 10 shillings for “attendce in the night.” On the credit side are these words in Galt’s hand: “Twas sewed on by a Girl who I shou’d be happy with.” Does this mean that in three short years the “mutual affection and familiarity of disposition” of John and Judith had worn away? The account book does not answer.
Notice that Galt’s charge of 10 shillings for visiting a patient was the very sum permitted by law in 1736—three and a half decades earlier. For amputating Mr. Parson’s finger and dressing it he charged £3 4s 6d, and the same amount to Mr. Cardwell for “laying open Child’s leg &c.”
There is but a single entry for bleeding, and in this case the patient was a Negro. Dr. Galt, unlike most of his colleagues, seems not to have favored phlebotomy. The great number of entries simply mention visiting, attendance, or advice, with prescriptions by the score of cathartics, emetics, purges, etc.
PASTEUR & GALT
It must have been a source of gratification to John Minson Galt when the well-established Pasteur invited the younger man to become his partner. The announcement of the new firm read as follows:
WILLIAMSBURG, April 15, 1775.
THE Subscribers having this Day entered into Partnership, beg Leave to acquaint the Public in general, and their Friends and Neighbours in particular, that they intend practicing Physic and Surgery to their fullest Extent; and that they intend also, as soon as the Situation of the Times will admit, to keep full and complete Assortments of Drugs and Medicines, which they will endeavour to procure of the very best in Quality, and will take Care to have them fresh by making several Importations in the Year. It is proposed that John M. Galt shall pay his particular Attention to Surgery, to whom our Friends are desired to apply on all such occasions, but will be advised and assisted by W. Pasteur in all difficult Cases. They both desire to make their most grateful Acknowledgments to their Friends and Customers for the many Favours and Civilities they have received, and hope, by this Union, they will be enabled to carry on their Business to the entire Satisfaction of their Friends; as, on their Part, the strictest Assiduity and Attention shall be observed.
PASTEUR & GALT
Only a few days after this announcement appeared, the spark of revolution flared out in both Lexington, Massachusetts, and Williamsburg, Virginia. As it happened, Dr. Pasteur was to play a minor role and a momentary one on the Williamsburg stage. Governor Dunmore’s surreptitious removal of the colony’s gunpowder from the Magazine was detected and there was an immediate reaction from the populace, some under arms. Attending a patient in the Palace, Dr. Pasteur was twice accosted by the Governor and made the bearer of angry messages to the Speaker of the House of Burgesses and “the Gentlemen of the Town.” Should he be attacked, His Lordship blustered, “he would declare freedom to the slaves & reduce the city of Williamsburg to ashes.”