Essay by 2016 Arcadia Fellow Theresa McCulla

In 17th- and 18th-century North America, the medical profession developed in tandem with the founding of the American Republic. Through Harvard Library’s vast manuscript and archival collections that document histories of illness, health, and methods of healing, scholars can trace events no less consequential than the expansion of European settlement, the transition from European to American systems of authority, and the establishment of the United States.

Sickness, convalescence, childbirth, contagion, and dying were ubiquitous events in colonial North America. Factors of gender, race, and class influenced the ways in which Americans experienced these events. Thus, manuscript collections held by Harvard can serve the needs of not just historians of medicine but also scholars of urban history, the history of education, the history of capitalism, environmental history, intellectual history, and even military history; as well as researchers studying Native Americans, women, African Americans, and technology.

Practicing Medicine and Being a Patient

Colonial physicians served as important medical and intellectual authorities in frontier communities. Yet they were businessmen, too. In their correspondence and financial account books, physicians recorded the identities and complaints of their patients, the fees they charged for care, and the payments they made for medical and pharmaceutical supplies. These sources can teach the scholar about the nature of daily life in rural and urbanizing New England, the monetary value accorded to medical services, and the prevalence (or irrelevance) of currency.

Seventeenth-century sources, in particular, lend personal detail to the isolation of many early European settlers. Most lived far from physicians and relied on home remedies for both acute and mundane medical problems.[i] In February 1652, Daniell Clarke of Windsor, Connecticut wrote to John Winthrop, the colony’s governor as well as a physician, about his child’s rotting teeth. Clarke described how he had “ript [a tooth] with a smal silver hooke…save one splinter which yet is in and...keeps it from healing.”[ii] Clarke asked if he could bring the child to see Winthrop later that spring. As this letter made clear, individuals like Clarke’s child surely lived with the constant pain of conditions that worsened during long periods of non-treatment. A similar sense of isolation appears in a letter from Richard Odell, of Southampton, Long Island, in the fall of 1652. Odell asked Winthrop for political news as well as medical advice for his daughter. “We heare a great rumor of an insurrection amongst the Indians,” Odell wrote, “but we have no certaine inteligence but by Indians only. I would intreat you to give us some inteligence how matters stand & between the Dutch & the Inglish.”[iii] Odell interacted far more frequently with his Native American neighbors than Europeans, his letter showed. Mid-17th-century colonists like Clarke and Odell respected the medical and political knowledge of figures like Winthrop, yet accessed them only with difficulty.

Numerous manuscript collections show how, as the colonial era progressed, increasing immigration and urbanization allowed for more frequent contact between physicians and patients. Doctors’ account books can help scholars visualize these proliferating relationships. From 1755 to the early 1770s, Boston physician John Perkins visited the household of Mr. Nathaniel Barber more than a dozen times to treat his child, “his Negro,” his son, and others.[iv] A century after Daniell Clarke wrote to John Winthrop in Connecticut, patients like Barber had a much easier time finding physicians in urban centers like Boston. Still, paying for medical care was an expense that could be afforded primarily by members of the growing professional class. The ledger of James Lloyd, a Boston doctor who worked during the same era as Perkins, shows patients who were merchants, lawyers, a wine cooper, chair maker, cabinet maker, rope maker, shop keeper, painter, sail maker, and baker.[v] Their jobs reflected the varied needs of a growing maritime city. Most of these patients could afford to pay Lloyd in cash, and did.

In contrast, other physicians, especially those who practiced in more rural areas of colonial New England, accepted in-kind payments from patients who trafficked in food and agricultural staples rather than currency. Ebenezer Roby, a physician who worked west of Boston in the mid-1700s, accepted salt pork, rye, and labor in exchange for medical care.[vi] Similarly, a physician in Kittery, Maine, in the late 1700s logged payments of “a linnen handkerchief,” brown sugar, butter, and a bushel of “Ingeon meal,” as well as currency.[vii] Additional account books recorded the financial affairs of physicians who operated in Grafton, Massachusetts; Taunton, Massachusetts; Marlborough and Northborough, Massachusetts; Kingston, New Hampshire; Greenwich, New Jersey; and Waterville, Maine, among many other locations, throughout the 1700s.[viii] Researchers can use these records to understand the growing geographic spread of medical professionals as well as the flexible economic systems that prevailed throughout colonial America.

In addition to the diverse finances of colonial New England physicians, Harvard’s archival holdings show how doctors of this era treated an economically and racially diverse range of patients.[ix] In the 1780s, physician David Townsend attended to the medical needs of Massachusetts governor John Hancock, his family, and his “servant,” Eunice.[x] For a fee of two dollars, he also assisted with the labor of Sappho Henshaw, a “black girl.”[xi] While such records may appear to indicate equivalent treatment of white and black patients, researchers should remain attentive to the larger social context, in which people of color were frequently enslaved. A 1775 book of Massachusetts legal precedents makes this clear. There, a judge recorded a suit against a man who had raped the plaintiff’s “negro woman servant named Rose” and made her pregnant. The suit did not revolve around the violent injury to Rose. Rather, the plaintiff declared that he had “suffered much loss & damage & hath wholly been deprived of all service & labor of the said Rose…for nine months.”[xii] The plaintiff valued Rose for the labor she provided, which he was purportedly denied during her pregnancy, rather than as a human of equal value to himself who had suffered a terrible assault. As such an example demonstrates, those who paid for medical treatment for servants or enslaved people may have done so out of economic self-interest rather than generosity. Historians may wish to consult the account books of Thomas Cradock, a physician in late 18th- and early 19th-century Baltimore, to understand similarities and differences among Southern and New England medical practices of the same era.[xiii]

As such examples illustrate, physicians’ careful record-keeping was crucial to their work during their careers and continues to benefit contemporary scholars.

Medical Education and Professionalization

Harvard’s archival records also feature a wealth of information on the history of professionalization among New England physicians and the nature of colonial-era American medical education. Together, these sources chronicle a 150-year transition in North American medicine away from European traditions of knowledge toward practices unique to American society and its environment.

Manuscripts that date to the first decades of European settlement in New England show the persistent influence of British cultural referents. For example, in a 1643 book of medical “receipts” created for Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop, a London physician recommended an ointment to treat gunpowder burns that was composed partly of “Mosse that groweth on an old thackt howse top.”[xiv] Such an ingredient characterized the British landscape of the time, but surely not the homes recently built in the American colonies. The book also featured forms of medical knowledge that would fade during the next century and a half. Many European practitioners of the time advocated remedies that resembled the diseases they were used to heal; this physician recommended a golden-hued drink of saffron, milk, and salt to treat “the Yellow Jaundise.”[xv] Attempting to prevent smallpox by burning a pot of toads to ash and consuming their remains similarly dated this volume to its era.[xvi] These receipts show how early European settlers arrived in North America equipped with a thoroughly European perspective which had not yet begun to adapt to their American surroundings.

Historians could benefit greatly, then, from comparing Winthrop’s 1643 receipt book to similar texts authored throughout and beyond the colonial period.[xvii] Examples include an early 18th-century book of remedies kept by Benjamin Wadsworth, eighth president of Harvard College, in which he recommended grated chocolate to stop a bleeding wound; a mid-18th-century journal of medical conditions and treatments kept by a Boston physician; a 1768 volume of medical recipes and elixirs authored by a Worcester, Massachusetts doctor; a 1780 book of medical preparations maintained by a Boston and New Hampshire physician; and a record of medicinal recipes and patient histories kept by two doctors in Clinton, New York, at the turn of the 19th century.[xviii]

These changing medical receipts can illuminate much more than transformations in the practice of medicine. Around 1780, Harvard-educated physician Cotton Tufts recommended a solution of lime or lemon juice, salt, loaf sugar, and “distilled cordial water,” served in a wine glass, to treat fevers and complaints of the stomach and throat.[xix] Here, the implied availability of lime, lemon, sugar, and even a wine glass testified to Caribbean trade routes and an American consumer culture that had connected the new republic to a world much wider than that known by John Winthrop in 1643. To the benefit of researchers, these digitized receipt books constitute a nearly unbroken thread of historical documentation between the two eras, with myriad potential uses.

Researchers will also note that physicians like Tufts who operated in colonial or Early Republic New England drew from a range of intellectual authorities in their training. Scholars have proven that Native American expertise in indigenous plants, herbs, and their medical uses influenced the practices of European colonists. Yet Native American presence is subtle among archival holdings, which were authored almost entirely by European-American men. In 1801 American-born physician Samuel Stearns published The American Herbal or Materia Medica, in which he expounded on the medical uses of indigenous American flora for readers on both sides of the Atlantic.[xx] But before this point, European medical thought dominated American medical practice. To understand this influence, scholars can peruse cases transcribed by Boston physician James Lloyd in a London hospital in the mid-1700s as well as the 1776 notebook of Benjamin Waterhouse, a founding member of Harvard Medical School, which he filled while attending medical lectures at the University of Edinburgh.[xxi]

Concurrently, though, uniquely American traditions of medical education developed in settings that ranged from mid-18th-century apprenticeships to the founding of Harvard Medical School (HMS).[xxii] The notes of John Warren, another HMS founder, for the first anatomy course he taught at Harvard in 1783, as well as a sketched-out schedule of anatomy lectures that Warren delivered in 1784 and 1785, record the institution’s earliest days, when its student body met in Holden Chapel in Harvard Yard.[xxiii] The notebook of Lyman Spalding preserved the first years of HMS from the student perspective. In 1795, Spalding took notes during lectures given by Benjamin Waterhouse (who had preserved his own notebook two decades earlier) on the history of medicine and blood circulation.[xxiv] Scholars can use texts like these to reconstruct genealogies of medical knowledge that extended from Europe to New England and beyond.

Throughout this long era of intellectual change, the practice of medicine in colonial America was far from standardized or undisputed. Physicians sought to define themselves as a cohesive professional class in the mid-1700s. In doing so, they rejected medical practitioners who lacked formal training, such as women midwives or local healers. Even though such individuals had long been more prevalent in rural areas, physicians began to perceive them as professional and economic threats and derided their work as deceitful.[xxv] At mid-century, New Jersey physicians lobbied the governor to establish a set of professional medical standards.[xxvi] Similarly, Massachusetts physicians of the 1780s founded a professional society in order to “Subvert the wickedness of Quackery & Empiricism which…has been prevalent among us.”[xxvii] Other groups sought to define medical ethics and declare a set list of fees for physicians’ services.[xxviii] Such battles narrowed dramatically the range of medical authority in the new American nation to white male physicians trained in European-influenced schools of thought. Harvard’s archival collections can help scholars show how this history unfolded at the level of local communities.

Confronting Contagion

When American colonists rejected British authority, they accepted a range of political and social challenges, from establishing a new government to managing public health crises. Efforts to prevent, treat, and contain smallpox figure particularly prominently in Harvard’s archival collections. In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson called smallpox “a disease which has always been the terror of this country.”[xxix] Writing to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse in Cambridge about the prospect of eliminating smallpox, Jefferson declared, “I know of no one discovery in medicine equally valuable.”[xxx] Such manuscripts, among many others, help reconstruct the extent to which the threat of contagion weighed heavily on the daily lives of all Americans, even their president.

Harvard’s archival collections also show the extent to which public health affairs were an inherently political issue in colonial North America. Confronting smallpox required the involvement of entire communities. Clergymen and politicians petitioned alternatively for and against inoculation, worrying about the dangers of unregulated, experimental inoculations but fearing the disease itself even more.[xxxi] In these settings, researchers can use collections to understand the many ways in which local governments exerted authority over their citizens: from sending the inoculated or sick into quarantine, as at the “Pesthouse” on Rainsford Island in Boston Harbor, to regulating the travel of people in an area where the disease was active.[xxxii] These efforts occurred during and immediately after years when American colonists had chafed at what they perceived to be authoritarian British rule. Through the lens of smallpox, researchers could explore evolving conceptions of personal freedom, the public good, and the role of government.

Detailed record-keeping systems were critical to physicians and political authorities as they sought to control smallpox.[xxxiii] These, too, can be of great use to scholars. Such volumes tracked the identity of those who had been inoculated, those who had died of the disease, and those who could be certified as healthy.[xxxiv] Aside from providing a detailed catalog of the disease’s tortuous symptoms, they also hint at prevailing confusion about smallpox’s source and the most effective ways to treat it.[xxxv] Physicians and other educated figures believed that poverty, weather, morality, race, or a combination of those factors could tip a person from health into illness or make them immune.[xxxvi] Even Benjamin Waterhouse, an innovator of vaccination with cowpox, taught his students at Harvard Medical School to understand some conditions, such as asthma and poor appetite, as the product of poor character.[xxxvii]

As the colonial era came to a close, scientific acceptance of germ theory awaited not far in the future. Before then, however, the resolution of public health crises like smallpox were as uncertain as the future of the new American government.

Medicine and Women and Medicine and War

Harvard’s libraries hold at least two other subsets of archival collections of great value to researchers: manuscripts that link the histories of medicine and women and medicine and war. Women appear in a wide swath of these records, invariably as patients.[xxxviii] Physicians recorded them primarily in terms of their relationships to men; they were wives, workers, and the possessors of virtue. From 1785 to 1834, physician Austin Flint attended to 1,750 births in and around Leicester, Massachusetts. He identified his patients by their husbands’ names — delivering “Isaac Lamb’s wife” and “John Willson’s wife” in January 1788 — and noted the number of babies born out of wedlock (only slightly more than 1% of his career cases).[xxxix] Certain collections clarify the extent to which women’s virtue, which derived from their chastity before marriage and fidelity within in, held economic as well as social value in colonial America. Marriage offered women steady financial support as well as communal respect, so colonial Americans fought legal battles over allegations of adultery and deceitful courtships.[xl] The questionable paternity of a child could require the involvement of lawyers as well as physicians.[xli] Particularly unique, then, is a 1727 handwritten testimony from Bristol County, Massachusetts, in which Charity Caswell declared Oliver Richmond to be the father of her child.[xlii] “Witness our hands,” wrote the midwife Mary Crosman. She signed the testimony, as did witnesses Sarah Dean and Elisabeth Caswell. Distinct from the great majority of similar sources preserved from this era, the only medical and legal authorities recorded here were women.

While childbirth, smallpox, and a host of other conditions threatened the lives of residents in 17th- and 18th-century North America, violent conflict also prevailed throughout this era. Encounters between Native Americans and European colonists, as well as protracted battles between British, Spanish, French, and American forces, inflicted brutal injuries and created new openings for the spread of disease.[xliii] Several archival collections record these events from the perspectives of physicians, who billed governments for their services, purchased and logged medical supplies to be used at the front, and outfitted far-flung military posts so that they could care for injured soldiers there.[xliv] Many physicians who practiced in New England, in particular, in the late 1700s and early 1800s had begun their careers during the Revolutionary War.[xlv] Frequently their personal papers and memoirs describe their service in the Continental Army.[xlvi] With these kinds of collections, researchers can interpret medical practice as intrinsic to the construction of the new American nation, attempted destruction of Native American communities, and elimination of competing European interests.

Conclusion

The unique social and political contexts of colonial North America are readily apparent in the history of its medicine. Considering major historical events through the frame of medicine lends a uniquely personal, physical dimension to the implications of these events for the everyday lives of Americans during this time.

[i] Winthrop, John, 1606-1676. Papers, 1651-1879 (inclusive), 1651-1663 (bulk), undated. Whitne, Henery, autographed letter signed to John Winthrop; Southold, 1 side (2 pages), 1652 April 22. B MS c56 25, Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard University, Boston, Mass.

[ii] John Winthrop Papers. Clarke, Daniell, autographed letter signed to Hugh Caukin; Windsor, Conn., 1 side (3 pages), 1652 February 11. B MS c56 6, Countway Library of Medicine.

[iii] John Winthrop Papers. Odell, Richard, 2 autographed letters signed to John Winthrop; Southampton, Long Island, 1652 November 16-1653. B MS c56 14, Countway Library of Medicine.

[iv] Perkins, John, 1698-1781. Account book of John Perkins, 1744-1780 (inclusive). B MS b64, Countway Library of Medicine.

[v] Lloyd, James, 1728-1810. Ledger of James Lloyd, 1758-1776 (inclusive). B MS b142.1, Countway Library of Medicine.

[vi] Roby, Ebenezer, 1701-1772. Account book of Ebenezer Roby, 1749-1764 (inclusive). B MS b121, Countway Library of Medicine.

[vii] Peirce, D. (Daniel). Ledgers of Daniel Peirce, 1762-1809 (inclusive). B MS b131.1, Volume 1, Countway Library of Medicine.

[viii] Account book and indices of Timothy Darling, 1754-1775 (inclusive). B MS b109.1. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine; Account books of Job Godfrey, 1773-1869 (inclusive), 1773-1810 (bulk). B MS b141.2. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine; Doctor Daniel Brigham's Book, 1789-1810 (inclusive). B MS b257.1. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine; Daybook of Jacob Hook, 1785-1792 (inclusive). B MS b198.1. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine; Account book of Thomas Ewing, 1776-1785 (inclusive). B MS b139.1. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine; Commonplace book of Moses Appleton, 1791-1815 (inclusive). B MS b149.1. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine; Account book of Lott Cooke, 1793-1810 (inclusive). B MS b255.1. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.

[ix] Account book and indices of Timothy Darling, 1754-1775 (inclusive).

[x] Townsend, David, 1753-1829. Account book of David Townsend, 1774-1791. B MS b134.1, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xi] Account book of David Townsend, 1774-1791.

[xii] No. 37, Case for Getting the Ptt’s Negro with Child. Parsons, Theophilus, 1750-1813. Precedents book of Massachusetts law, 1775. HLS MS 1091, Harvard Law School Library.

[xiii] Account books of Thomas Cradock, 1786-1818 (inclusive). B MS b199.1. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xiv] For Burning with Gunnpowder or otherwise. Stafford, Ed. (Edward), 1617-. Receipts to cure various disorders for my worthy friend Mr. Winthrop, by Edward Stafford, 1643 May 6. B MS b76, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xv] For the Yellow Jaundise or Jaunders. Receipts to cure various disorders for my worthy friend Mr. Winthrop, by Edward Stafford, 1643 May 6.

[xvi] My Black powder against ye plague, small pox, purples, all sorts of feavers; Poyson; either by Way of prevention, or after Infection. Receipts to cure various disorders for my worthy friend Mr. Winthrop, by Edward Stafford, 1643 May 6.

[xvii] Jackson, James, 1777-1867. Receipt book of James Jackson, 1800-1802 (inclusive). B MS b8.5, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xviii] To stop ye bleeding of a wound. Wadsworth, Benjamin, 1670-1737. Papers of Benjamin Wadsworth. Medical Account Book, 1702-1733. UAI 15.868 Box 4, Harvard University Archives; Perkins, John, 1698-1781. Observations Medical & Chirurgical by John Perkins, 1724-1774 (inclusive). B MS b64.2, Countway Library of Medicine; Dix, Elijah, 1747-1809. Formulary of Elijah Dix, 1768. B MS b61, Countway Library of Medicine; Medical notebook of Samuel Stearns, 1773. H MS b1.1. Harvard Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine; Kittredge, Francis, 1728-1808. Receipt book of Francis Kittredge, 1780. 1.K.1780.1, Countway Library of Medicine; Seth Hastings and Seth Hastings, Jr., commonplace books, medical records, and papers, 1772-1830 (inclusive), undated. H MS c292. Harvard Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xix] Tufts, Cotton, 1732-1815. Receipt book of Cotton Tufts, 1773-1784 (inclusive). B MS b11.1, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xx] Samuel Stearns, The American herbal, or, Materia medica: wherein the virtues of the mineral, vegetable, and animal productions of North and South America are laid open, so far as they are known : and their uses in the practice of physic and surgery exhibited : comprehending an account of a large number of new medical discoveries and improvements, which are compiled from the best authorities with much care and attention, and promulgated for the purpose of spreading medical light and information in America (Walpole, NH: D. Carlisle, for Thomas & Thomas, and the author, 1801)

[xxi] Lloyd, James, 1728-1810. Cases copied by James Lloyd from Mr. Steed, apothecary in Guy’s Hospital, London, 1751-1787 (inclusive). B MS b142.2, Countway Library of Medicine; Waterhouse, Benjamin, 1754-1846. Student notebook of Benjamin Waterhouse, 1776. B MS b122.1, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxii] Hartshorn, John Denison, 1736-1756. Journal of John Denison Hartshorn, 1752-1756 (inclusive). B MS b118.1, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxiii] Lectures upon Anatomy by John Warren, 1783-1785 (inclusive). H MS b3.13. Harvard Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine; Warren, John, 1753-1815. John Warren papers, 1782-1812 (inclusive). H MS c32, Folder 2. Schedule of Warren’s lectures on anatomy. Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxiv] Spalding, Lyman, 1775-1821. Student lecture notes on the Theory & Practice of Physic, and patient case histories, of Lyman Spalding, 1795-1799 (inclusive). B MS b18.4, Countway Library of Medicine; Waterhouse, Benjamin, 1754-1846. Student notebook of Benjamin Waterhouse, 1776. B MS b122.1, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxv] Nathaniel Chamberlin account book, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

[xxvi] Petition to the Governor of the Province of New Jersey, undated. B MS Misc. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxvii] Suffolk Medical Society. Records, 1785-1789 (inclusive). B MS c76.4, Folder 4. Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxviii] Charter of the Confederacy of Physicians, 1780 November 15. B MS Misc. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.; List of medical fees compiled by a committee of the Boston Medical Society, 1785 December 7. B MS Misc. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxix] September 17, 1801. Papers of Benjamin Waterhouse, 1786-1836; Letters from Thomas Jefferson, 1801-1808. H MS c16.2. Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard University, Boston, Mass.

[xxx] July 25, 1801. Papers of Benjamin Waterhouse, 1786-1836; Letters from Thomas Jefferson, 1801-1808.

[xxxi] Colman, Benjamin, 1673-1747. Correspondence from Benjamin Colman to an unidentified recipient, 1721 July 25. B MS Misc., Countway Library of Medicine; Petition to the Select Men of the Town of Beverly from the Citizens of Beverly, (Mass.), 1792 October 27. B MS Misc. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxxii] Holyoke, Edward Augustus, 1728-1829. Correspondence from Edward Augustus Holyoke to Susanna Holyoke, 1792 September 28. MC 384, Countway Library of Medicine; Clark, John, 1698-1768. Bill from John Clark to Boston (Mass.), 1745 December 8. B MS Misc., Countway Library of Medicine; Cutler, William. Notification from William Cutler to the selectmen of Cambridge, Massachusetts, that Dr. Philip Brukowitz and wife were inhabiting his father’s house in Cambridge, 1758 April 25. 1.Kup.1, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxxiii] Jeffries, John, 1745-1819. Kine Pox, 1775-1802 (inclusive). B MS b1.3, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxxiv] Boston (Mass.). Overseers of the Poor. Smallpox inoculation orders issued by Boston (Mass.) Overseers of the Poor, 1792-1793 (inclusive). 1.Ku.14, Countway Library of Medicine; Little, David, 1740-1805. Smallpox account from David Little against the town of Newbury, 1794 February 3. B MS Misc., Countway Library of Medicine; Hartley, Thomas, d. 1765. Smallpox inoculation certificate for William Peirse, 1764 December 17. B MS Misc., Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxxv] Jeffries, John, 1745-1819. Small Pocks, 1775-1779 (inclusive). B MS b1.2, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxxvi] John Jeffries, Small Pocks, 1775-1779; Papers of Benjamin Waterhouse, 1786-1836; Small pox, [Lecture], Sept. 1809. H MS c16.4. Harvard Medical Library in the Countway Library of Medicine; Yellow Fever. Observations Medical & Chirurgical by John Perkins, 1724-1774.

[xxxvii] Papers of Benjamin Waterhouse, 1786-1836 (inclusive); Record of smallpox vaccination for the Waterhouse children, [18--]. H MS c16.4. Harvard Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine; Papers of Benjamin Waterhouse, Small pox, [Lecture].

[xxxviii] Extracts from a Treatise on lying in women & their Management by Charles White in the hand of Henry Phelps, circa 1785. B MS Misc. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xxxix] Flint, Austin, 1760-1850. Account of the women delivered by Austin Flint, 1785-1834 (inclusive). B MS Misc., Countway Library of Medicine.

[xl] No. 32, Case for Words. Precedents book of Massachusetts law, 1775; No. 36, Case for getting the Ptt with child. Precedents book of Massachusetts law, 1775.

[xli] Correspondence from Thomas Crafts to Samuel Partridge, 1786 January 14. B MS Misc. Boston Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.

[xlii] Midwife's testimony, Bristol Co. Massachusetts, 1727. Small Manuscript Collection, Harvard Law School Library.

[xliii] Account book of Ebenezer Roby, 1749-1764.

[xliv] Account of horse hire and subsistence by Robert Ellis, 1709 June 24-September 22. B MS Misc. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.; An Invoice of a Chest of Medicines Fitted on the Province & Delivered to Robert Ellis, 1709 August 30. B MS Misc. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.; Hartshorn, John Denison, 1736-1756. John Denison Hartshorn papers, 1754-1786 (inclusive), undated. Hartshorn, John Denison, d. 1756, Contents of chests, A.MS.D, 1755 June. B MS c50 4, Countway Library of Medicine.; Correspondence from Samuel Fontanelle to Major General Williamson, 1765 September 1. B MS Misc. Boston Medical Library, Countway Library of Medicine.

[xlv] Buswell, Lemuel. Medical bill from Lemuel Buswell to the colonies of North America, 1776 June 17. H MS Misc., Countway Library of Medicine.

[xlvi] Waldo, Albigence, 1750-1794. Papers of Albigence Waldo, 1768-1793 (inclusive), undated. Waldo, Albigence, 1750-1794, A.MS.; Pomfret, Conn., 4 sides (10 pages), circa 1785. B MS c21 20, Countway Library of Medicine.