Thomas K. Ford

“ The mortar and pestle, traditional symbol of the apothecary’s calling and often used as the sign of his shop, was to be found in Williamsburg shops in many sizes and materials. The largest recorded was a bell-metal mortar and iron pestle belonging to Dr. Thomas Wharton and weighing 168 pounds. Wharton also owned a large marble mortar and pestle, two small ones of marble, and a “Porphrey Stone & Muller.” Later in the century, as the medical profession learned that toxic quantities of metal dust could come from the use of metal mortars, ceramic and glass became widely used. ”

“ Pasteur, in his own turn, had at least two apprentices who later practiced in Williamsburg. The second, Robert Nicolson, shortly moved his apothecary shop and medical practice to Yorktown, thereby taking himself out of this narrative. His predecessor, John Minson Galt, remained in Williamsburg and in the medical profession until 1808. Like Dr. Gilmer, who educated his own son, George Gilmer, Jr., in medicine, John Minson Galt launched two of his sons into medicine via apprenticeship. ”

“ A son of Samuel Galt, the silversmith, John Minson Galt was apprenticed at the age of 14 to William Pasteur, who himself had just set up shop and was only half a dozen years older. The apprenticeship appears to have lasted a full term of seven years. It was followed by two years of medicine in London. There the young man studied the theory and practice of physic under Dr. Hugh Smith, midwifery under Dr. Colin McKenzie, and surgery, anatomy, and operations at St. Thomas’s Hospital. ”

“ Although Virginia was the only colony to set medical fees by law, the practice of legislative price fixing in other areas of the economy was as common in colonial America as it was in England. In Virginia, to be specific, not only prices and quantities but in some cases even qualities of goods and services offered to the public by tavernkeepers, shoemakers, millers, and ferrymen were regulated by law. The economic philosophy and terminology of laissez faire were among the alien isms imported after 1776. ”

“ Surely human and animal excreta, mashed-up insects, and the like, which were not uncommon in London prescriptions, could not have been more curative than rattlesnake root and ginseng, whose praises were sung by the famous William Byrd II:
The Earth has never produced any vegetable so friendly to man as Ginseng. ”

“ Being learned men, they would not stoop to the indignity of such menial work as performing surgical operations or compounding medicines. The former was the province of the surgeon or barber-surgeon, the latter was the specialty of the apothecary. ”

“ Dr. Pitt, born in 1724 in England and “bred a Surgeon,” established his apothecary shop in Williamsburg in 1744 at the “Sign of the Rhinoceros.” In 1768 he closed his shop and returned to England. He later came back to Virginia but no longer engaged in medicine or pharmacy. In 1776 Pitt, a tory, left Virginia again. He died later that year in England. ”

“ Surgeons and apothecaries, who have served an apprenticeship to those trades, shall be allowed,
But those persons who have studied phisic in any university, and taken any degree therein, shall be allowed,
Lest it appear that all Williamsburg “practicers” made a habit of charging excessive fees, the generous treatment an earlier doctor gave at least one of his patients must be set down. George Hume, a Scottish merchant who came to Virginia about 1722 and soon caught all the prevalent ills, found the place “only good for doctors and ministers who have very good encouragem’nt here.” ”

“ Galen classed drugs according to their warm, cold, moist, or dry qualities. For instance, pepper was a heating drug, good for chills, while cucumber was a cool one, to be given in case of fever.
Galenism had been subjected to attack in the sixteenth century by Paracelsus and Vesalius, but its appeal was logical and remained strong in seventeenth-century England. (In fact, some survivals can be found in twentieth-century folk medicine.) Dr. Lawrence Bohun (or Boone) , who came over in 1610 and returned to England in 1611, spent some of the year investigating medicinal sources in Virginia. ”

“ Dr. Nicolson served his apprenticeship with Dr. Pasteur and then studied medicine in England. He returned to Williamsburg in 1779 and opened his apothecary shop. After the Revolutionary War he moved his shop to Yorktown where he practiced medicine until his death in 1798.
William Pasteur (1757-1791)
After the completion of his apprenticeship with Dr. George Gilmer, Sr., Pasteur studied in England for about a year. He returned to Williamsburg in 1757 and established an apothecary shop. From 1775 to 1778 he operated the shop in partnership with John Minson Galt. ”

“ Rob.t Turlington For His Invented Balsam of Life
Analysis of the Galt or any other advertisement of the time shows that the contents of a colonial apothecary shop fell into five categories: plant materials, animal extracts, metals and metallic derivatives, medical equipment, and prepared elixirs, pills, and the like.
Among the most popular of the prepared medicines—judging from the many advertisements of Dr. John Minson Galt in the years 1772-1774—were Dr. Keyser’s celebrated anti-venereal pills. ”

“ In view of the general state of medical knowledge and practice throughout the eighteenth century—bleeding being always a foremost treatment of numerous ailments—it seems likely that the liberal use of native herbs, being for the most part harmless, was probably the safest and most effective course of medication. ”

“ Published by Colonial Williamsburg
MCMXC
1 The Apothecary
in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg
Of the first 225 men sent over from London to settle at Jamestown in 1607 and 1608, seven were practitioners of medicine—as it was then practiced: Walter Russell, Gent., was a “Doctour of Physicke,” which is to say that he had studied at a university and earned a degree in medicine; Thomas Wotton, Will Wilkinson, and Post Ginnat were listed as surgeons—“chirurgeon” as it then appeared; Thomas Field and John Harford bore the label of apothecaries; and the seventh was “Tho: Cowper the Barber.” ”

“ Glass and ceramic containers by the hundreds were also used to store simple ingredients and compounds for sale. Dr. Pasteur at one time, for instance, ordered 246 white glass vials ranging in capacity from two drams to twelve ounces. Dr. Alexander Middleton, whose tory sympathies cost him his Williamsburg shop and contents 29 during the Revolution, listed more than fifty dozen bottles, from one ounce size to two gallons, along with dozens of pill pots, ointment pots, and syrup pots. Glass seems to have been the most common type of container, with earthenware “gallipots” probably second. ”

“ These were backed by testimonials of two English and three French dukes, and Galt published lengthy accounts avowing that “the Patient is most effectually cured without any Inconvenience to himself, or being exposed to the Shame and Confusion of his Disaster being known to the nicest Observer.”
Not only were they supposed to cure syphilis, but “the happy effects of Keyser’s pills have often been proved in white Swellings, asthmas, Suppressions of the Urine, in the Palsy, Apoplexies, Sciaticks, in the Green Sickness, and more especially in the Yaws.” ”

“ According to Galen, the four elements of Aristotelian science—fire, water, air, and 2 earth—comprised the four major humors of the human body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Blood was held to be moist and warm, phlegm was moist and cool, yellow bile dry and warm, and black bile dry and cold. ”

“ It would require more space than is here available to describe, or even to list, all the articles in the shop today, and to identify all the drugs, herbs, powders, and compounds that would have been contained in the numerous bottles, jars, boxes, and drawers of the shop. The quantity and variety, however, may be taken as typical of a well provided apothecary shop of colonial America. ”

“ This final section reveals that some differentiation between the branches of the medical profession had already begun in America. The tip-off is the phrase that imposes on “any apothecary making up the prescription of another” the same requirements as on physicians who make up their own prescriptions.
THE DOCTORS OF WILLIAMSBURG
If competition tends to keep prices low, fees charged in and around the capital city in the early eighteenth century should have been at the rock bottom level. Governor Gooch in 1729 reported to London that Williamsburg abounded in physicians. ”

“ Galt’s account books, including the one for the years 1770 to 1775, before he joined Pasteur. One of the early entries shows a charge against Thomas Glass of ten shillings for “visiting &c.” The corresponding credit entry shows that the bill was paid in cash seven years and five months later! Patients were as lax about paying their doctor’s bills then as now, and although most of Dr. Galt’s patients paid in cash, he also took wood, hay, and oats. ”

“ One of these gadgets can be seen at the Apothecary Shop in Williamsburg.
17
In any event, there was no requirement that a dealer in drugs or a practicer of medicine must have a degree, a license, or any other recommendation than his own assurance of good results to the sick who applied to him. Some practitioners were on the modest side in offering their services; some were wholly unrestrained—even guaranteeing to cure cancer! The contrast stands out sharply in these two advertisements from the Virginia Gazette, the first in 1771 by Dr. ”

“ And in failure thereof, such practicer, or any apothecary, making up the prescription of another, shall be nonsuited, in any action or suit hereafter commenced, which shall be grounded upon such bill or bills: Nor shall any book, or account, of any practicer in phisic, or any apothecary, be permitted to be given in evidence, before a court ”

“ Gentlemen practitioners, and others, may depend on being supplied at a very low advance.
The final assurance echoes Pasteur’s earlier complaint written his London agents to the effect that “tiss hardly worth our while to import medicines for sale we are Oblige to sell at a low advance on acct of our confounded druggist 20 here....” The “confounded druggist,” William Biers, was having his own difficulties making a living, however, and soon sold out to the partnership of James Carter and Andrew Anderson.
Colonial Williamsburg owns several of Dr. ”

“ He willed his drugs, medicines, and shop utensils to Dr. McKenzie.
SHOPKEEPER EXTRAORDINARY
The fourth named practicer, George Gilmer, Sr., deserves extended attention. He comes as close as any one person to being a typical Williamsburg apothecary-surgeon-physician of his time, though his extramedical career was far from typical.
Born in Edinburgh in 1700, Gilmer studied medicine there, then practiced with one of London’s leading doctors, whose daughter he married. Possibly the death of his young wife moved him to ship for America ”