Page:Early History of Medicine in Philadelphia - George W Norris.djvu/20

 The persons above mentioned, constituted at this time the principal medical men of the Province. Gabriel Thomas, in his travels through Pennsylvania, published in 1689, remarks: "Of lawyers and doctors I shall say nothing, because the country is very peaceable and healthy." Indeed, in the history of these early times medicine is scarcely mentioned.

Pretenders then, as now, abounded, and by them and old Crones, who drew then* knowledge from the pages of some one of the many meagre and ill-digested Family Advisers of the day, it seems probable that most of the simple ailments of the colonists were treated. One of our earliest poets, in his story of "Whackum," ridicules in a lively manner those quacks who, in spite of the physicians, retained their influence among the illiterate vulgar. The very slight inducements offered to educated medical men to settle in our wilderness may be judged of from an extract from a letter of Charles Gordon, of the neighboring colony of Jersey, to his brother, Dr. John Gordon, of Montrose. It is of the date of