Governor John Winthrop was versed in medicine and his son, John, Jr., and his grandson Wait Winthrop, both were proficient in the profession. With Winthrop came Richard Palgrave and William Gager, both physicians, and two years later arrived Giles Firman, Jr., whose father was "a godly man, an apothecary of Sudbury in England." Giles, Jr., studied at the University of Cambridge and later settled at Ipswich, Mass., where he practiced medicine, but found it "a meene helpe" and later studied theology and eventually was ordained rector of Shalford, co. Essex, England. Toward the end of the century there were two physicians practicing in Boston, Dr. Thomas Oakes and Dr. Benjamin Bullivant, of whom Dunton, the London bookseller gossiped in his "Letters Written from New England."[69] [69] _Prince Society Publications_, IV, Boston, 1867. Of Oakes he wrote that-- "His wise and safe Prescriptions have expell'd more Diseases and rescu'd Languishing Patients from the Jaws of Death, than Mountebanks and Quack-Salvers have sent to those dark Regions." Concerning Dr. Bullivant he commented that-- "His Skill in Pharmacy was such, as rendered him the most compleat Pharmacopean, not only in all Boston, but in all New England ... to the Poor he always prescribes cheap, but wholesome Medicines, not curing them of a Consumption in their Bodies, and sending it into their Purses; nor yet directing them to the East Indies to look for Drugs, when they may have far better out of their Gardens." Doctor John Clarke, said to have been a younger son of a good family in the north of England, with a collegiate education, and late of London, was granted a four-hundred acre farm in the town of Newbury, in January, 1638, and September 28th, following, the town also granted that "Mr. Clarke in respect of his calling should be freed and exempted from all public rates either for the country or the towne so long as he shall remayne with us and exercise his calling among us." He exercised his calling in Newbury until 1647, when he removed to Ipswich and two or three years later settled in Boston where he died in 1664. Soon after removing to Boston he invented a stove "for the saving of firewood & warming of howses," which the Great and General Court confirmed for a term of three years. Nothing further is known of this invention and the fireplace persisted until recent times. When Doctor Clark removed from Newbury he was followed by Dr. William Snelling who seems to have been a merry fellow in times of drinking healths. On an occasion during the winter of 1651 he drank to his friends in the following toast,-- "I'll pledge my friends, And for my foes, A plague for their heels And a pox for their toes,"