the introduction of these remedies, and whatever limits we may assign to the use of these long-trusted mineral drugs, there can be no doubt that the chemical school, as it was called, did a great deal towards the expurgation of the old, overloaded, and repulsive pharmacopoeia.  We shall find evidence in the practice of our New-England physicians of the first century, that they often employed chemical remedies, and that, by the early part of the following century, their chief trust was in the few simple, potent drugs of Paracelsus.

We have seen that many of the practitioners of medicine, during the first century of New England, were clergymen.  This relation between medicine and theology has existed from a very early period; from the Egyptian priest to the Indian medicine-man, the alliance has been maintained in one form or another.  The partnership was very common among our British ancestors.  Mr. Ward, the Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, himself a notable example of the union of the two characters, writing about 1660, says,

“The Saxons had their blood-letters, but under the Normans physicke, begunne in England; 300 years agoe itt was not a distinct profession by itself, but practised by men in orders, witness Nicholas de Ternham, the chief English physician and Bishop of Durham; Hugh of Evesham, a physician and cardinal; Grysant, physician and pope; John Chambers, Dr. of Physick, was the first Bishop of Peterborough; Paul Bush, a bachelor of divinitie in Oxford, was a man well read in physick as well as divinitie, he was the first bishop of Bristol.”

“Again in King Richard the Second’s time physicians and divines were not distinct professions; for one Tydeman, Bishop of Landaph and Worcester, was physician to King Richard the Second.”

This alliance may have had its share in creating and keeping up the many superstitions which have figured so largely in the history of medicine.  It is curious to see that a medical work left in manuscript by the Rev. Cotton Mather and hereafter to be referred to, is running over with follies and superstitious fancies; while his contemporary and fellow-townsman, William Douglass, relied on the same few simple remedies which, through Dr. Edward Holyoke and Dr. James Jackson, have come down to our own time, as the most important articles of the materia medica.

Let us now take a general glance at some of the conditions of the early settlers; and first, as to the healthfulness of the climate.  The mortality of the season that followed the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth has been sufficiently accounted for.  After this, the colonists seem to have found the new country agreeing very well with their English constitutions.  Its clear air is the subject of eulogy.  Its dainty springs of sweet water are praised not only by Higginson and Wood, but even the mischievous Morton says, that for its delicate waters “Canaan came not near this country.”  There is a tendency to dilate