Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699Hughes, Thomas Proctor
History
Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699
Hughes, Thomas Proctor
Medicine -- Virginia; Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
The reasonableness of Clayton's pathology is impressive, but reason did
lead to some bizarre--in the light of present-day medical
knowledge--conclusions. Aware of the value to the scientist of close
observation and of the necessity to reason about these observations,
Clayton was in the finest seventeenth-century scientific tradition.
Observing a lady--for example--suffering from lead poisoning, he noted
that her distress, judging by her behavior, varied directly with the
nearness and bigness of the passing clouds; the nearer the clouds, the
more anguished her groans. Reason dictated to Clayton that such a
phenomenon stemmed from a cause-effect relationship.
Although the twentieth-century physician would deny the cloud-suffering
association, he would not deny Clayton's propensity for observation and
his attempts to discern relationships. The approach of the better
seventeenth-century Virginia physician can be labeled scientific even
if his facts were few.
DRUGS AND OTHER REMEDIES
No seventeenth-century physician could function without a variety of
drugs (medicines) to dispense. Dr. Pott made special arrangements--for
example--to have a chest of drugs transported with him from England to
America, and the effectiveness of Dr. Bohun's "physicke" drew the
praise of the colonists. Drugs were essential to the physician and a
valuable commodity for export, as well. The subject of drugs must then
include a discussion of their use as medicines and their importance as
items of trade.
A study of the drugs in use and the occasions of their utilization
makes manifest the great part that freeing the body from corrupting
matter played in the treatment of disease. The theorists and clinical
physicians of the century placed such faith in the humoral doctrine
that, on the basis of this predilection, much of the opposition to
cinchona, or quinine, in a period greatly troubled by malaria, can be
explained. Cinchona, discovered in Spanish America and known in
seventeenth-century Europe, had demonstrable effects in the treatment
of malaria but, because it was an additive rather than a purgative,
physicians rejected it on theoretical grounds. Its eventual acceptance
later revolutionized drug therapeutics, but this revolution did not
affect seventeenth-century Virginia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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