The Puritan settlers confronted many challenges to their health in the New World. Among them were widespread disease, poor hygiene and sanitation, unbalanced diets, dangerous childbirths, and inadequate and often harmful medical treatments. Although the average New Englander lived longer than his or her counterpart in the southern colonies, by modern standards, life spans were short and infant mortality rates high in seventeenth-century New England.

A Shortage of Doctors

In seventeenth-century England, physicians were expected to possess a medical degree from a university. In New England, only a handful of physicians held an M. D. Those few medical school graduates had earned their degrees in Europe, for there were no medical schools in the American colonies until well into the 1700s.

Physicians with diplomas from Old World universities were in high demand in the towns of Puritan New England. The officials of Newbury, Massachusetts...