Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/295

NAME CUTTER 273 CUTTER of £120 in silver, a parsonage, and a woodlot. He did his best to teach his flock in a church abounding in cracks through which the air circulated freely. He had the good fortune to marry Dorothy Bradbury of Newburyport, and they had four children. After a year or two his creed began to be "offensive" to his people, the church sat "uneasy" beneath his theology, and he was asked to resign. Im- mediately upon leaving the pulpit he studied medicine and practised it steadily the rest of his life. His legible handwriting caused his election as town agent and he often attended the General Court of Massachusetts. As Indian agent he compiled a vocabulary of words in the Pequot and Ossipee languages, and made himself in this way a man of great public value. When the expedition against Louisburg was determined upon, he was chosen captain and surgeon, and sailed with Col. Moulton's York regiment in March, 1745. His medical serv- ices during the campaign were highly com- mended, and after the capture of the fortress, he was left in charge as commanding officer and surgeon in chief. The autumn of 1745 was sickly with fever, which became epidemic in February, 1746, and in March Dr. Cutter fell its victim, leaving considerable property; one son inheriting a thousand acres of wood- land and seventy sovereigns. Amongst the curious documents of the town of North Yarmouth, belonging to this era, are those relating to the parson's woodlot, which one would think Mr. Cutter would have given up when he resigned his pastorate. But the people had not paid his salary, and he held on to the lot. Moreover, as an original settler he was entitled to a lot and until the town made over one to him he kept the one allotted to the parson. His widow failed to bring the town to a settlement, and whilst waiting for a decree, cut off all the timber. This, then, is a brief record of the first Dr. Ammi Ruhamah Cutter. James A. Spalding. Cutter Genealogy. Baxter: "Documentary History of Maine." Cutter, Ammi Ruhamah (1735-1820) Celebrated for his medical services in the Colonial and Revolutionary Wars, Ammi Ruhamah Cutter, son of Ammi Ruhamah Cutter (1705-1746). was born in North Yar- mouth, in the District of Maine. March 15, 1735, O. S., and graduated at Harvard in the class of 1752. Whilst in college he made the acquaintance of a number of young men from Portsmouth, particularly that of John Went- worth, afterward Sir John, Governor Royal of New Hampshire, with whom he remained intimate for Hfe and to whom he was per- sonal physician, until the Governor was exiled to HaUfax during the Revolution. These col- lege boys suggested to Cutter to study medicine with Dr. Clement Jackson from Hampton, New Hampshire, who had lately established himself in practice in Portsmouth. A letter from Wentworth to Cutter as early as 1754 speaks of him as "Doctor." If such pre- cociousness causes surprise, we may recall another item from Wentworth to Cutter which reads to this effect : "The college is full of boys from 11 to 14 discussing original sin and actual transgression." Dr. Cutter's first case, a negro, consulted him September 21, 1755, as he mentions in his diary : "I removed nine bits of bone from the leg of a wounded negro. I did it all myself." He was appointed surgeon in Rogers' Rangers, and in 1776 marched with Col. Meserve's Regiment against Ticonderoga. The experience gained in this campaign was abundant but it was unpleasant, for his duty was not only to care for the sick and wounded with insufficient equipment, but to cook for them in miserable field hospitals, especially in one at a famous place, which in his diary he invariably spells, "Sarahtoga." The year of 1757 found Dr. Cutter attached to the second Louisburg expedition, which proved a failure. Whilst making ready for this in New York Dr. Cutter saw soldiers impressing sailors in the streets, borrowed money for a medicine chest and drugs, and worked incessantly at five shillings a day. Re- turning to New York after the disastrous expedition, Cutter marched with the troops to Albany, but soon went on sick leave and we find him in North Yarmouth once more for, on the 14th of January. 1758, his mother made him a present of books once belonging to his father, amongst which may be noted Blackmore's "On Spleen and Vapors," and Fuller's "Dispensatory." Pepperell's expedition against Louisburg, the third, by the way, being soon ready, Dr. Cutter joined as surgeon, and sailing on the snow Halifax-.* arrived off Louisburg, June 10, 1758, saw a hundred men drowned in landing through the surf, and remained on active duty till the place surrendered. Smallpox became epidemic ; 92 out of 108 in the company had the disease; the other 16 acted as nurses; 2 became blind, and finally Dr. Cutter fell ill himself. Gradually convalescing, he reached Portsmouth and November 2, 1758, was and a trysail astern.)
 * (A snow was a vessel of that era with two masta