Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/924

NAME PEIRCE 902 PEIRSON He was a man of considerable property for those days, owning, for instance, shares in a privateer and in two fishing schooners which sailed in and out of the Piscataqua. When- ever the fishermen came in with a cargo of fish, he would superintend the unloading, charge for his time and skill, as well as for food and rum for the captain and crew. He also owned a farm, which seems to have been tilled almost wholly by his patients in return for medical services. He owned wood lots from which the wood was cut by patients every spring and piled into his barns every fall. His cattle and sheep were "pastured out" on the fields of patients, at so much a month. In a word, for years he carried on an enormous business in medicine, merchan- dise and produce on a basis of barter, he being the physician-in-charge and his patients pay- ing him in produce, labor, merchandise, but rarely in cash. Scattered along the thousand pages of his old books we read many old charges, a few of which may here find insertion. A widow with the surname of Philadelphia always has visits to herself charged to "Your Ladyship," but the rank thus suggested dim- inishes when on the credit side we see these visits paid "by washing," or "by the son digging potatoes" in the doctor's fields. On the one side we read of the attentions given at the birth of a son, and on the credit "by your shingling my porch and mending the garden fence." Dr. Peirce was a forgetful man, and for months at times his books would remain un- posted. Once we read of "To two visits made to you when you were living at home," but not charged until the settlement of the father's estate twenty years later. If he forgot what was due to himself, he was strict to give credit to his patients, as in this way: "By work on my 'mash' two days, not entered at the time, two years ago." If at the time of settlement he owed the patient, he invariably wrote beneath the account: "I owe you the sum of fourteen shillings to be taken out in medical services." He charged a father for two visits to a child and then years later adds : "To two lots of medicine forgotten at the time of visit to your child." As a speller Dr. Peirce was dreadfully de- fective, though spelling was then at a low ebb. But what can we think of "Spinin, Howin, Halin, Sain, digin, Spinin TOE, spinin Linnen"? The nearest he ever got to the name of "Chisholm," was plain "Chism." "Duzzen, Hetters (heaters), biscates, macrel," and so on were frequent humorous blunders on his books. Here is something queer, "To a quart of rum and to a pint of rum which your wife pretended to BORROW but never paid any attention to." A certain patient paid for services in the shape of a "Nice Apple Tree," which Dr. Peirce at once caused to be planted by the man who brought it. A child is born to a certain family not connected with the Sheafes, yet he says "The child is more than 3/4 Sheafe." Peirce was published to Olive, daughter of Rishworth and Abigail Gerrish Jordan, Sep- tember 20, 1765, and probably married her soon after. On her death he married Ruth, daughter of Dr. Sargent, of New Castle, or his widow. He had nine children who were well brought up. They wore home-spun suits and occasionally were treated to leather "britches." Their schooling was paid for by patients, and only once in their lives did one of them go to a "Summer Camp" and even that was at the expense of some otherwise unpaying patient. Peirce was a devout man. When his parents or relations died he noted down their departure for a better land and emphasized their decent burial. When his wife died, he mentions the sad fact simply yet bravely. As for himself when his time came he died sud- denly, August 25, 1803, and let us hope that after his years of medical practice he received that same decent burial which he had given I to his relations gone before him. James A. Sp.ldinc. Facts compiled from "Old Eliot," by Dr. J. L. M. Willis. Eliot. Maine, and from Dr. Pierce's "Leigers" extending from 1755 to 1801. Peirson, Abel Lawrence (1794-1853) Abel L. Peirson, for many years the lead- ing surgeon of Essex County, Massachusetts, and the first to publish a "Report of Private Surgical Operations Performed with Ether Anesthesia," was a descendant of John Pear- son, or Pierson, who settled in Rowley, Massa- chusetts, in 1643. and the son of Samuel Peir- son, of Biddeford, Maine, being born in that town, November 25. 1794. Entering Harvard College as a sophomore in 1809, he graduated in 1812, and at once began to study medicine with Dr. James Jack- son (q. v.), four years later taking his M. D. from Harvard. Vassalboro, Maine, was the place of his early practice, but he remained there less than a year and a half, removing to Salem, Massachusetts, early in 1818, for a larger field and to be in closer touch with the