This tract is in our Society's library.] very often, a harmless powder of coral; less frequently, an inert prescription of pleasing amber; and (let me say it softly within possible hearing of his honored descendant), twice or oftener,--let us hope as a last resort,--an electuary of millipedes,--sowbugs, if we must give them their homely English name. One or two other prescriptions, of the many unmentionable ones which disgraced the pharmacopoeia of the seventeenth century, are to be found, but only in very rare instances, in the faded characters of the manuscript.
The excellent Governor's accounts of diseases are so brief, that we get only a very general notion of the complaints for which he prescribed. Measles and their consequences are at first more prominent than any other one affection, but the common infirmities of both sexes and of all ages seem to have come under his healing hand.
Fever and ague appears to have been of frequent occurrence.
His published correspondence shows that many noted people were in communication with him as his patients. Roger Williams wants a little of his medicine for Mrs. Weekes's daughter; worshipful John Haynes is in receipt of his powders; troublesome Captain Underhill wants "a little white vitterall" for his wife, and something to cure his wife's friend's neuralgia, (I think his wife's friend's husband had a little rather have had it sent by the hands of Mrs. Underhill, than by those of the gallant and discursive captain); and pious John Davenport says, his wife "tooke but one halfe of one of the papers" (which probably contained the medicine he called rubila), "but could not beare the taste of it, and is discouraged from taking any more;" and honored William Leete asks for more powders for his "poore little daughter Graciana, though he found it "hard to make her take it," delicate, and of course sensitive, child as she was, languishing and dying before her time, in spite of all the bitter things she swallowed,--God help all little children in the hands of dosing doctors and howling dervishes! Restless Samuel Gorton, now tamed by the burden of fourscore and two years, writes so touching an account of his infirmities, and expresses such overflowing gratitude for the relief he has obtained from the Governor's prescriptions, wondering how "a thing so little in quantity, so little in sent, so little in taste, and so little to sence in operation, should beget and bring forth such efects," that we repent our hasty exclamation, and bless the memory of the good Governor, who gave relief to the worn-out frame of our long-departed brother, the sturdy old heretic of Rhode Island.
What was that medicine which so frequently occurs in the printed letters under the name of "rubila"? It is evidently a secret remedy, and, so far as I know, has not yet been made out. I had almost given it up in despair, when I found what appears to be a key to the mystery. In the vast multitude of prescriptions contained in the manuscripts, most of them written in symbols, I find one which I thus interpret:
"Four grains of (diaphoretic) antimony, with twenty grains of nitre, with a little salt of tin, making rubila." Perhaps something was added to redden the powder, as he constantly speaks of "rubifying " or "viridating" his prescriptions; a very common practice of prescribers, when their powders look a little too much like plain salt or sugar.
Waitstill Winthrop, the Governor's son, "was a skilful physician," says Mr. Sewall, in his funeral sermon; "and generously gave, not only his advice, but also his Medicines, for the healing of the Sick, which, by the Blessing of God, were made successful for the recovery of many." "His son John, a member of the Royal Society, speaks of himself as "Dr. Winthrop," and mentions one of his own prescriptions in a letter to Cotton Mather. Our President tells me that there was an heirloom of the ancient skill in his family, within his own remembrance, in the form of a certain precious eye-water, to which the late President John Quincy Adams ascribed rare virtue, and which he used to obtain from the possessor of the ancient recipe.
These inherited prescriptions are often treasured in families, I do not doubt, for many generations. When I was yet of trivial age, and suffering occasionally, as many children do, from what one of my Cambridgeport schoolmates used to call the "ager,"--meaning thereby toothache or face-ache,--I used to get relief from a certain plaster which never went by any other name in the family than "Dr. Oliver."
Dr. James Oliver was my great-great-grandfather, graduated in 1680, and died in 1703. This was, no doubt, one of his nostrums; for nostrum, as is well known, means nothing more than our own or my own particular medicine, or other possession or secret, and physicians in old times used to keep their choice recipes to themselves a good deal, as we have had occasion to see.
Some years ago I found among my old books a small manuscript marked "James Oliver. This Book Begun Aug. 12, 1685." It is a rough sort of account-book, containing among other things prescriptions for patients, and charges for the same, with counter-charges for the purchase of medicines and other matters. Dr. Oliver practised in Cambridge, where may be seen his tomb with inscriptions, and with sculptured figures that look more like Diana of the Ephesians, as given in Calmet's Dictionary, than like any angels admitted into good society here or elsewhere.
I do not find any particular record of what his patients suffered from, but I have carefully copied out the remedies he mentions, and find that they form a very respectable catalogue. Besides the usual simples, elder, parsley, fennel, saffron, snake-root, wormwood, I find the Elixir Proprietatis, with other elixire and cordials, as if he rather fancied warming medicines; but he called in the aid of some of the more energetic remedies, including iron, and probably mercury, as he bought two pounds of it at one time.
