These inherited prescriptions are often treasured in families, I do not doubt, for many generations.  When I was yet of trivial age, and suffering occasionally, as many children do, from what one of my Cambridgeport schoolmates used to call the “ager,”—­meaning thereby toothache or face-ache,—­I used to get relief from a certain plaster which never went by any other name in the family than “Dr. Oliver.”

Dr. James Oliver was my great-great-grandfather, graduated in 1680, and died in 1703.  This was, no doubt, one of his nostrums; for nostrum, as is well known, means nothing more than our own or my own particular medicine, or other possession or secret, and physicians in old times used to keep their choice recipes to themselves a good deal, as we have had occasion to see.

Some years ago I found among my old books a small manuscript marked “James Oliver.  This Book Begun Aug. 12, 1685.”  It is a rough sort of account-book, containing among other things prescriptions for patients, and charges for the same, with counter-charges for the purchase of medicines and other matters.  Dr. Oliver practised in Cambridge, where may be seen his tomb with inscriptions, and with sculptured figures that look more like Diana of the Ephesians, as given in Calmet’s Dictionary, than like any angels admitted into good society here or elsewhere.

I do not find any particular record of what his patients suffered from, but I have carefully copied out the remedies he mentions, and find that they form a very respectable catalogue.  Besides the usual simples, elder, parsley, fennel, saffron, snake-root, wormwood, I find the Elixir Proprietatis, with other elixire and cordials, as if he rather fancied warming medicines; but he called in the aid of some of the more energetic remedies, including iron, and probably mercury, as he bought two pounds of it at one time.

The most interesting item is his bill against the estate of Samuel Pason of Roxbury, for services during his last illness.  He attended this gentleman,—­for such he must have been, by the amount of physic which he took, and which his heirs paid for,—­from June 4th, 1696, to September 3d of the same year, three months.  I observe he charges for visits as well as for medicines, which is not the case in most of his bills.  He opens the attack with a carminative appeal to the visceral conscience, and follows it up with good hard-hitting remedies for dropsy,—­as I suppose the disease would have been called,—­and finishes off with a rallying dose of hartshorn and iron.

It is a source of honest pride to his descendant that his bill, which was honestly paid, as it seems to have been honorably earned, amounted to the handsome total of seven pounds and two shillings.  Let me add that he repeatedly prescribes plaster, one of which was very probably the “Dr. Oliver” that soothed my infant griefs, and for which I blush to say that my venerated ancestor received from Goodman Hancock the painfully exiguous sum of no pounds, no shillings, and sixpence.