Page:Early History of Medicine in Philadelphia - George W Norris.djvu/39

 prevailed in Philadelphia in the year 1762, which was communicated to the College of Physicians during the epidemic of 1793. This remained in manuscript till 1865, when, as no description of that epidemic had ever been published, as well as on account of its merits, and as a valuable contribution to our medical history, the tract was judged worthy of publication by that body. He employed mercury freely in all chronic affections, and in diseases of old age he considered small and repeated bleedings as the first of remedies. No physician of his day exerted a more powerful and extensive influence over the practice of medicine in this country than Dr. Redman. "He was faithful and punctual in his attendance upon his patients. In a sick room he possessed the virtues and talents of a specific kind; he suspended pain by his soothing manner, or chased it away by his conversation, which was occasionally facetious, and full of anecdotes, or serious and instructive, according to the nature of the patients' diseases, or the state of their minds. He died in March, 1806, at the age of eighty-six, and until within a few years of his decease, continued to read the latest medical writers, and even warmly embraced some modern doctrines and modes of practice."

A late well-known antiquarian, who had often seen him in