The Apothecary in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg

The Apothecary in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg - Being an Account of his medical and chirurgical Services, as well as of his trade Practices as a Chymist

Of the first 225 men sent over from London to settle at Jamestown in 1607 and 1608, seven were practitioners of medicineas it was then practiced: Walter Russell, Gent., was a Doctour of Physicke, which is to say that he had studied at a university and earned a degree in medicine; Thomas Wotton, Will Wilkinson, and Post Ginnat were listed as surgeonschirurgeon as it then appeared; Thomas Field and John Harford bore the label of apothecaries; and the seventh was Tho: Cowper the Barber. Plainly, the Virginia Company of London, numbering several prominent medical men among its backers, wanted its adventurers to the New World to have the best of medical care. Unfortunately for about four of every five settlers in the first few years at Jamestown, the best was not enough to avert wholesale mortality from sickness, Indian arrows, and meere famine. That some of the medical men shared the fate of their patients seems likely in the absence of later information about most of them. Medical theories and practices at the beginning of the seventeenth century were largely those that had prevailed since the time of Galen, a Greek physician who died about two centuries after Christ. According to Galen, the four elements of Aristotelian sciencefire, water, air, and 2 earthcomprised the four major humors of the human body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Blood was held to be moist and warm, phlegm was moist and cool, yellow bile dry and warm, and black bile dry and cold. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 58490
Author: Ford, Thomas K.
Release Date: Dec 17, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English