A Physick's Guide

A resource you can try! Ancestry.com

wpe4B.jpg (19295 bytes) A Physick's Guide
To Common Diseases And Cures

In early 17th century New England, physicians were few and "remedies" plentiful. Though physicians, apothecaries and surgeons were sent to the colony, meager populations did not readily sustain their accustomed lifestyles and many soon departed. Herbal medicine was still prevalent. Cures were often likely the result of patient stamina and or the ability to survive the prescribed treatment. Ministers, generally better read here and abroad than their townsfolk, were often involved in the process. True to Yankee self-reliance, William Bird in 1728 wrote that it was a place free of those three great scourges of mankind: Priests, Lawyers and Physicians. See Nicholas Culpeper's, The English Physician for additional insight

General Fever & Sickness: Drain the body of "morbific" matter by bleeding. Recommended for fevers, inflammations, a variety of disease conditions and for hemorrhage. Purge the body so as to discharge acrid feces and bile, and thus to create "morbid excitement from the blood vessels to the bowels."

Male Hysterics: A roast chicken and a pint of canary (ardent spirit)

Wounds: gum of white poplar, a balm which will "heale any green wound.

Rattlesnake Bite: Polygala Senega (rattlesnake root)

General Purpose?: a paste made from woodlice (Gov. Winthrop,)

Bladder stones: Saxifrage - a medicine that has the property of dissolving stones in the bladder

Inflamed Body Parts: Make a poultice - a soft, hot, moist substance as of flour, meal, bran, flax seed, or similar substances, and apply to sores, or inflamed parts of the body

Fever Reducer & Painkiller Sedative: Aconite - a medicine made from the dried root of the monkshood

Invigorate Patients' Spirits. Use nauseous medicines such as asafetida, oil of amber, burnt leather and feathers, so as to provide the soul with strong and disagreeable feelings.

Preventing Spread of Disease: Drape "devil's dung" (a foul smelling herb) about a patient's neck.

Preferred Dilutants of Bitter Medicines: Sugar, honey, fruit juices, ardent spirits and wine.

Remove Wrinkles From The Face: Green pine cones

Strengthen Kidneys: kidney beans

Children's Fright: The fangs of wolves strung about the neck.

Multipurpose Cure: Rattlesnake flesh should be fed to the infirm. Rattlesnake gall, mixed with chalk and shaped into "snake ball" to cure a bellyache. Rattlesnake oil to aid frozen limbs.

Multipurpose Cure: Nitre (saltpeter) for measles, colics, sciatica, headache, giddiness, etc. in does of twenty or thirty grains to adults and of three grains in infants.

Heart disease: a concoction of foxglove leaves.

Sources: Salmon, William, Medicina Practica, London, 1707; Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physitian,London, 1652; David Freeman Hawke, Everyday Life In Early America, Harper & Row, 1988; Daniel J. Borstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience, Vintage Press, 1958.