A number of younger Americans also went abroad to{ 277} study,--Leyden, Paris, Padua, and the British universities being those most eagerly sought. In Virginia, so early as 1619, the Colonial Assembly discussed the erection of a university or college. In 1637 a public college was established in Cambridge, and in 1638 the Rev. John Harvard left to it his library and half his fortune, after which it was called Harvard College. William and Mary College was chartered in Virginia in 1693. Probably the first lectures in anatomy given in this countrv were those of Giles Firman, which were given previous to 1647 at Harvard College.
It was in this early day that arose the custom, continued until very recently, of studying medicine with a preceptor. This was necessary at that time, and until comparatively recently, because of the scarcity of institutions of learning and the expense connected with an education. The form of apprenticeship was often gone through with for a term of years varying from three to seven, during which time the young student performed the most menial duties, had very meagre opportunity for anatomical study, and acquired his knowledge rather by contact with and absorption from his preceptor than in any other way. In this method of teaching the personal element was so pronounced that everything, in fact, depended upon the preceptor, save what natural talent and industry might accomplish, With such meagre opportunities the means for doing were equally scant. Nevertheless, emergency made many of these early American practitioners self-reliant and competent to treat, according to the knowledge of that day, the various accidents then so common. In 1636 the Assembly of Virginia passed a fee-bill for surgeons and apothecaries, fees, however, being often paid in tobacco, powder, lead, wampum, etc. Not a few combined ministry of the body and the soul, and a number of eminent physicians were also preachers of more or less renown,--among them John Rogers, John Fisk, and others.
Probably{ 278} the only medical work published in America during the seventeenth century was _A Brief Rule to Guide the Common People of New England how to Treat Them-selves and Others in the Small-pocks or Measels_. This was printed and sold in 1677, by John Foster, of Boston. It was printed upon one side of a single sheet in double columns, and described both of these diseases as due to the blood endeavoring to recover a new form and state.