One other special remedy deserves notice, because of native growth. I do not know when Culver's root, Leptandra Virginica of our National Pharmacopoeia, became noted, but Cotton Mather, writing in 1716 to John Winthrop of New London, speaks of it as famous for the cure of consumptions, and wishes to get some of it, through his mediation, for Katharine, his eldest daughter. He gets it, and gives it to the “poor damsel,” who is languishing, as he says, and who dies the next month,--all the sooner, I have little doubt, for this uncertain and violent drug, with which the meddlesome pedant tormented her in that spirit of well-meant but restless quackery, which could touch nothing without making mischief, not even a quotation, and yet proved at length the means of bringing a great blessing to our community, as we shall see by and by; so does Providence use our very vanities and infirmities for its wise purposes.
Externally, I find the practitioners on whom I have chiefly relied used the plasters of Paracelsus, of melilot, diachylon, and probably diaphoenicon, all well known to the old pharmacopoeias, and some of them to the modern ones,--to say nothing of “my yellow salve,” of Governor John, the second, for the composition of which we must apply to his respected descendant.
The authors I find quoted are Barbette's Surgery, Camerarius on Gout, and Wecherus, of all whom notices may be found in the pages of Haller and Vanderlinden; also, Reed's Surgery, and Nicholas Culpeper's Practice of Physic and Anatomy, the last as belonging to Samuel Seabury, chirurgeon, before mentioned. Nicholas Culpeper was a shrewd charlatan, and as impudent a varlet as ever prescribed for a colic; but knew very well what he was about, and badgers the College with great vigor. A copy of Spigelius's famous Anatomy, in the Boston Athenaeum, has the names of Increase and Samuel Mather written in it, and was doubtless early overhauled by the youthful Cotton, who refers to the great anatomist's singular death, among his curious stories in the “Magnalia,” and quotes him among nearly a hundred authors whom he cites in his manuscript “The Angel of Bethesda.” Dr. John Clark's “books and instruments, with several chirurgery materials in the closet,” were valued in his inventory at sixty pounds; Dr. Matthew Fuller, who died in 1678, left a library valued at ten pounds; and a surgeon's chest and drugs valued at sixteen pounds.'