The emphasis that the contemporary medical men placed upon the purging of the body--the vomiting, sweating, purgings of the bowels, the draining, and the bleeding--cannot be considered irrational or quaint. In the light of observation and common sense, to purge seemed not only reasonable and natural but in accord with orthodox doctrine as well. Observation revealed that illness was frequently accompanied by an excess of fluid or matter in the body, as in the case of colds, respiratory disorders, swollen joints, diarrheas, or the skin eruptions that accompanied such epidemic diseases as the plague or smallpox. Common sense dictated a freeing of the body of the corrupt or corrupting matter; drugs were a means to this end. The use of drugs for vomiting, sweating, and other forms of purging seems excessive in the light of present-day medical knowledge, and at least one seventeenth-century Virginia student of medicine also found such use of drugs by his contemporaries open to criticism. In the opinion of the Reverend John Clayton, Virginia doctors were so prone to associate all drugs with vomiting or other forms of purging that they even thought of aromatic spirits as an inferior "vomitive." He concluded that these physicians would purge violently even for an aching finger: "they immediately [upon examining the patients] give three or four spoonfuls [of _crocus metallorum_] ... then perhaps purge them with fifteen or twenty grains of the rosin of jalap, afterwards sweat them with Venice treacle, powder of snakeroot, or Gascoin's Powder; and when these fail _conclamatum est_." The list of drugs used was extensive and each drug had a considerable literature written about it explaining the various sicknesses and disorders for which it was a curative. Libraries of the Virginia physicians and of the well-to-do laymen usually included a volume or two on the use of drugs. Among the most popular plants, roots, and other natural products were snakeroot, dittany, senna, alum, sweet gums, and tobacco.