Colonial dames also boldly tried their hand at the healing art; the first two, Anne Hutchinson and Margaret Jones, did not thrive very well at the trade. The banishment of the former has oft been told. The latter was hung as a witch, and the worst evidence against her character, the positive proof of her diabolical power was, that her medicines being so simple, they worked such wonderful cures. At the close of King Philip's War the Council of Connecticut paid Mrs. Allyn L20 for her services to the sick, and Mistress Sarah Sands doctored on Block Island. Sarah Alcock, the wife of a chirurgeon, was also "active in physick;" and Mistress Whitman, the Marlborough midwife, visited her patients on snow-shoes, and lived to be seventy-eight years old, too. In the Phipps Street Burying Ground in Charlestown is the tombstone of a Boston midwife who died in 1761, aged seventy-six years, and who, could we believe the record on the gravestone, "by ye blessing of God has brought into this world above 130,000 children." But a close examination shows that the number on the ancient headstone, through the mischievous manipulation of modern hands, has received a figure at either end, and the good old lady can only be charged with three thousand additions to wretched humanity. Negroes, and illiterate persons of all complexions, set up as doctors. Old Joe Pye and Sabbatus were famous Indian healers. Indian squaws, such as Molly Orcutt, sold many a decoction of leaves and barks to the planters, and, like Hiawatha, "Wandered eastward, wandered westward, Teaching men the use of simples, And the antidotes for poisons, And the cure of all diseases." A good old Connecticut doctor had a negro servant, Primus, who rode with him and helped him in his surgery and shop. When the master died, Doctor Primus started in to practise medicine himself, and proved extraordinarily successful throughout the county; even his master's patients did not disdain to employ the black successor, wishing no doubt their wonted bolus and draught. In spite of the fact that everyone and anyone seemed to be permitted, and was considered fitted to prescribe medicine, the colonists were sharp enough on the venders of quack medicines--or, perhaps I should say, of powerless medicines--on "runnagate chyrurgeons and physickemongers, saltimbancoes, quacksalvers, charlatans, and all impostourous empiricks." As early as 1631, one Nicholas Knapp was fined and whipped for pretending "to cure the scurvey by a water of noe worth nor value which he sold att a very deare rate." The planters were terribly prostrated by scurvy, and doubtless were specially indignant at this heartless cheat.