who thus explains it: “The inducements to emigrate, with the large proportion of the colonists, was of a religious nature. They were restive and unhappy under the restrictions and even persecutions which emanated from the bigotry of the Church Establishment of England.” “The Puritan clergy of England were, for more than twenty years prior to the emigration of the first settlers, subjected to the sharpest persecution. Hence, as a precautionary measure in case of an ejectment, a considerable number of clergymen of that period were educated to the medical profession, and not a few were eminent practitioners before they crossed the Atlantic. When these professional men came to form connections in the Colonies, it was found that the small congregations were unable to afford them a comfortable support; hence the necessity and convenience of their resorting to secular avocations.”
Dr. Sewell remarks, in this connection, that “so far were the professions of Divinity and Medicine united that the clergy not only prescribed for the sick, but entered into medical controversies, and wrote practical works on the diseases of the country.” There were several medical works published in America at an early date by divines. A physician as well as a learned clergyman of Boston, Thomas Thatcher, in 1677, published a work entitled, “A Brief Guide in the Smallpox and Measles.” This was soon followed by the work of another clergyman, which bore the title of “A Good Management under the Distemper of the Measles.”[1] The Rev. Benjamin Colman, also of Boston, printed a small pamphlet entitled, “Some Account of the New Method of Receiving the Smallpox, by Grafting or Inoculating.” Nathaniel Williams wrote a pamphlet on the “Method of the Practice in the Smallpox,” published in 1730. And Thomas Howard, in 1732, put forth a treatise upon Pharmacy.[2] Even
- ↑ A Lecture delivered at the opening of the Medical Department of Columbia College, in the District of Columbia, March 30, 1825, by Thomas Sewell, M. D., Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, Washington City. (p. 8.)
- ↑ An Historical Sketch of the state of Medicine in the American Colonies from their first settlement to the period of the Revolution, by John B. Beck, M. D.—Transactions of the New York State Medical Society, 1850.
