Dr. John Perkins who practised in Boston during the first half of the eighteenth century, is said to have gone to London for two year's study but his medical notebooks show that in his Boston practise he prescribed for scrofula, syrup made of sow bugs drowned in white wine. Castile soap boiled in strong beer he used as a remedy for a "heavy load at the Stomac." For numb palsy he prescribed "a bath of absinthe in _urina hominis_, used hot," and his cure for a nervous weakness of the eyes was "shaving the head." He noted that "Widow Alcock [died] of a hot bread supper. Jus. Billings did so of eating Brown Bread for breakfast, a Thing he never used before," and Reverend McGee's wife died by eating a supper of roast chickens at 13 days after childbirth and drinking strong beer flip on it. "Wonderful that in learned and elevated situations among ye great, should be such ignorance."
"Samuel Bent, Goldsmith, tender constitution and lax nerves, upon a change of a linnen for a woolen cap to sleep in was affected with a running of Bloody Water from ye nose, which staunched when he wore linnen.
"Nathaniel Parkman's Daughter, scrophulously affected, had a blow on the Head, on which the scrophula immediately left her and Chorea St. Viti succeeded and followed her every Spring till she turned consumptive and died."[70]
[70] Sprague, "Some Aspects of Medicine in Boston" (_Old-Time New England_, Vol. XIII, p. 14.)
Doctor Perkins was quite modern in some of his theories. He entered in his notebook--
"Exercise is good [for pains in the stomach] in young girls and others that use a sedentary life. So Sarah Bergers was cured by learning country dances.
"Wheat, ye Shoemaker, was cured [of hemorrhoids] by taking to ye portering with a wheelbarrow."
Doctor Ball of Northboro had a medicine called, "Receipt for the Scratches. One Quart fishworms, washed clean; one pound hog's lard stewed together, filtered through a strainer and add one-half pint oil of turpentine; one-half pint good brandy. Simmer it well and it is fit for use."[71]
Obstetrics at that period was also a jolly pastime, as the doctor and his volunteer assistants were regaled by a special brew known as "groaning beer" and by freshly baked "groaning cakes."