When, in 1626. Peter Minuit _purchased the island of Manhattan for the sum of twenty-four dollars_, there was probably no physician there at the time. Undoubtedly the first physician, in what is now New York, was Lamontagne,--a Huguenot, who arrived in 1637, and who seems to have been a man of great capability for his time. It would appear that men of no little eminence left the Old World for the New during the early days of the American colonies, and that the medical services which the early colonists received were on a par with those received by those whom they left behind in their old homes. During the seventeenth century a number of reputable physicians emigrated to this country, among them Dr. John Clark, of Boston, in 1638, whose son and grandson followed him in his profession and became prominent in their chosen calling. In 1644 came Dr. Child, a graduate of Padua, who seems to have been a man of great learning. A number of younger Americans also went abroad to{277} study,--Leyden, Paris, Padua, and the British universities being those most eagerly sought. In Virginia, so early as 1619, the Colonial Assembly discussed the erection of a university or college. In 1637 a public college was established in Cambridge, and in 1638 the Rev. John Harvard left to it his library and half his fortune, after which it was called Harvard College. William and Mary College was chartered in Virginia in 1693. Probably the first lectures in anatomy given in this countrv were those of Giles Firman, which were given previous to 1647 at Harvard College. It was in this early day that arose the custom, continued until very recently, of studying medicine with a preceptor. This was necessary at that time, and until comparatively recently, because of the scarcity of institutions of learning and the expense connected with an education. The form of apprenticeship was often gone through with for a term of years varying from three to seven, during which time the young student performed the most menial duties, had very meagre opportunity for anatomical study, and acquired his knowledge rather by contact with and absorption from his preceptor than in any other way. In this method of teaching the personal element was so pronounced that everything, in fact, depended upon the preceptor, save what natural talent and industry might accomplish, With such meagre opportunities the means for doing were equally scant. Nevertheless, emergency made many of these early American practitioners self-reliant and competent to treat, according to the knowledge of that day, the various accidents then so common. In 1636 the Assembly of Virginia passed a fee-bill for surgeons and apothecaries, fees, however, being often paid in tobacco, powder, lead, wampum, etc. Not a few combined ministry of the body and the soul, and a number of eminent physicians were also preachers of more or less renown,--among them John Rogers, John Fisk, and others.