The illiteracy of the common people continued to be great, however, and superstition and ignorance held sway over their minds. They were not always willing to accept the innovations and improvements offered, and fines and other punishments were often imposed “to compel the stubborn to submit” to the new order of things. Gradually there came a change. In 1663 Terserius asserts “that in Leksand[6] and mostly in East Dalarna it is counted as a monstrosity, if a boy or girl of ten or eleven years cannot read in a book.” A common gunner on the expedition of the _Katt_ in 1649 kept an interesting journal of the voyage, and several of the soldiers, who had served in New Sweden, sent _written applications_ to the government. Twenty-seven or more out of the forty-eight colonists, who signed the oath of allegiance in New Sweden on June 9, could write. The other nineteen signed only their initials or made their marks. It is therefore certain that a fair number of the early Swedish settlers on the Delaware could not only read but also write, and the illiteracy among them was not larger, perhaps less than among the colonists of other plantations in America. The natural sciences had received little attention in Sweden before 1600, and doctors were almost unknown except at the court. Foreign physicians were gradually invited, however. Medical works were written, and professors were appointed to teach the subject at the University of Upsala; but it took half a century for the science to divorce itself from theology and the Bible, and not before Rudbeck (1630–1702), who as a youth of twenty-two discovered the lymphatic canal, did Sweden produce an investigator of note in this field. The barber masters (barber-surgeons) were here as in other countries the doctors and physicians. They were employed in the navy, in the army and by the people at large. They performed operations and prescribed medicine, which in many cases, however, consisted of incantations and quack cures. V.