allowed fifty per cent advance upon the value of the medicines administered to the plaintiff, his patient, and such a sum for his visits and advice as they were decided to be worth.[1] Thirty years later, he was permitted to obtain an hundred per cent upon the full value of his drugs as sworn to in court.[2] These drugs represented a considerable variety of preparations, which it appears the physicians were only too ready to give, however slight the indisposition. A very popular course in the case of the most common disease of the country, ague and fever, seems to have been to prescribe first, several spoonfuls of crocus metallorum, and then for the purpose of purging, fifteen to twenty grains of rosin of jalap; this was followed by Venice treacle, powder of snakeroot or Gascoin’s powder.[3] Powders, ointments, plasters, and oils were among the medicines most generally used.
The items in a bill of Dr. Haddon of York for the performance of an amputation have been preserved. They included one highly flavored and two ordinary cordials, three ointments for the wound, an ointment precipitate, the operation of letting blood, a purge per diem, two purges electuaries, external applications, a cordial and two astringent powders, phlebotomy, a defensive and a large cloth. Dr. Haddon prescribed on another occasion a purging glister, a caphalick and a cordial electuary, oil of spirits and sweet almonds, a purging and a cordial bolus, purging pills, ursecatory, and oxymell. His charge for six visits after dark was a hogshead of tobacco weighing four hundred pounds.[4] In a case of cancer which Dr.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, pp. 109, 110. An instance of this in actual practice is preserved in the Records of Middlesex County, original vol. 1680-1694, orders July 4, 1687.
- ↑ Ibid., vol. III, p. 103.
- ↑ Clayton’s Virginia, p. 6, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1657-1662, p. 212, Va. State Library.
