The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Apothecary in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Apothecary in Eighteenth-Century WilliamsburgThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Apothecary in Eighteenth-Century WilliamsburgAuthor: Thomas K. FordContributor: Harold B. GillRelease date: December 17, 2018 [eBook #58490]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE APOTHECARY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WILLIAMSBURG ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Apothecary in Eighteenth-Century WilliamsburgAuthor: Thomas K. FordContributor: Harold B. GillRelease date: December 17, 2018 [eBook #58490]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Title: The Apothecary in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg

Author: Thomas K. FordContributor: Harold B. Gill

Author: Thomas K. Ford

Contributor: Harold B. Gill

Release date: December 17, 2018 [eBook #58490]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE APOTHECARY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WILLIAMSBURG ***

THEAPOTHECARYin Eighteenth-CenturyWILLIAMSBURGBeing an Account of his medical and chirurgical Services, as well as of his trade Practices as a ChymistWilliamsburg Craft SeriesWILLIAMSBURGPublished byColonial WilliamsburgMCMXC

Being an Account of his medical and chirurgical Services, as well as of his trade Practices as a Chymist

Williamsburg Craft Series

WILLIAMSBURGPublished byColonial WilliamsburgMCMXC

Decorative capital

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.”

Plainly, the Virginia Company of London, numbering several prominent medical men among its backers, wanted its adventurers to the New World to have the best of medical care. Unfortunately for about four of every five settlers in the first few years at Jamestown, the best was not enough to avert wholesale mortality from sickness, Indian arrows, and “meere famine.” That some of the medical men shared the fate of their patients seems likely in the absence of later information about most of them.

Medical theories and practices at the beginning of the seventeenth century were largely those that had prevailed since the time of Galen, a Greek physician who died about two centuries after Christ. According to Galen, the four elements of Aristotelian science—fire, water, air, andearth—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.

Sickness, in the theory of Galen, was caused by one or more of these humors becoming impure or out of place or out of balance. Treatment thus consisted of removing or diminishing the offending humor by purging, bleeding, vomiting, blistering, urinating, sweating, or salivating; on the other hand, a deficient humor was to be restored by diet and drugs. 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. He discovered a white clay—and shipped some to England—that he claimed could absorb and expel poisons from the body. Among vegetable remedies, Bohun experimented with sassafras and found “Galbanum mechoacon, otherwise calledrubarbum alum, to be of service in cold moist bodies, for the purginge of fleame [phlegm] and superfluous matter.”

Already it will be evident that the practice of medicine in seventeenth-century England, and hence in the first American colonies, was not neatly confined to the licensed graduates of accredited medical schools. Quite the contrary. In fact, Henry VIII had complained that all kinds of ignorant people got into the act, including “Smiths, Weavers, and Women.”

In the upper half of this woodcut fromThe Expert Doctor’s Dispensary, published in London in 1657, a learned physician is shown conducting a urinalysis. He simply holds the flask of liquid to the light for visual examination. Below, a customer presents what appears to be a written prescription to be filled by the apothecary.

Two centuries of legal and parliamentary pulling and hauling, plus the consequence of some natural developments, left the situation in England somewhat stabilized—but not necessarily logical. The barbers, chartered as a guild in 1462 and authorized to practice surgery, included both barbers and surgeons in growing disharmony until they were formally divorced in 1745.

The apothecaries—the word originally meant shopkeeper—joined the guild of grocers at one time but shortly broke away to form their own guild in 1617. Meantime, the physicians, organized in the College of Physicians, obtained the right to keep watch on the apothecaries.

Physicians, who had to have as much as 14 years training and four degrees from Oxford or Cambridge, were naturally not abundant. 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.

But the scarcity of physicians, especially in rural areas, left a medical gap that the apothecaries, trained through apprenticeship and many times more numerous, naturally moved to fill. In 1727 English law finally recognized and legalized the fact that for most people the apothecary-surgeon was the only available practitioner of medicine. In turn, the business of purveying drugs and compounding medicines passed from the apothecaries to the wholesale druggists and pharmaceutical chemists.

As it was transferred to America the trade of apothecary—it was neither a craft nor a profession in any strict sense—was probably much like that of the rural apothecary-surgeon of seventeenth-century England. The apothecary still made his living primarily from the provision of drugs and medical preparations; but he also performed amputations, dressed wounds, and subjected his patients to the normal medical treatments of the day.

Virginia was the only colony that tried to draw legislative boundaries around the various aspects of medical practice. The effort came in 1736 in the form of “an Act for Regulating the Fees and Accounts of the Practicers of Phisic.” On two grounds the act deserves to be quoted at some length. For one thing, it throws a good light on the state of medical practice at that time. For another, it affords undeniable parallels to some current problems in the cost of medicines and medical care, and to the role of government in serving the interests of the “consumer.”

An eighteenth-century operating chair, fully equipped with tilting back, padded adjustable supports, and straps to keep the patient from writhing away from the knife. Anesthesia was limited to strong doses of spirituous liquors; antisepsis was unknown. The illustration is taken from Denis Diderot’s famous encyclopedia of arts and sciences.

The first section of the act recited certain abuses, especially of the surgeons and apothecaries:

I. Whereas the practice of phisic in this colony, is most commonly taken up and followed, by surgeons, apothecaries, or such as have only served apprenticeships to those trades, who often prove very unskilful in the art of a phisician; and yet do demand excessive fees, and exact unreasonable prices for the medicines which theyadminister, and do too often, for the sake of making up long and expensive bills, load their patients with greater quantities thereof, than are necessary or useful, concealing all their compositions, as well to prevent the discovery of their practice, as of the true value of what they administer: which is become a grievance, dangerous and intolerable, as well to the poorer sort of people as others, & doth require the most effectual remedy that the nature of the thing will admit.

The second section then proceeded to emphasize the chief distinction between the apprentice-trained apothecary-surgeons and the university-educated physicians by allowing the latter to charge twice as much for their services as the former could. If the apothecaries and surgeons felt—as well they might have—that the difference in fees was an insult to them, it did not last long. The law was not renewed at the following session of the Assembly; perhaps its backers, the physicians, had seen their patients flock to the lower-priced practicers.

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 oflaissez fairewere among the alien isms imported after 1776. During the colonial years, government rarely hesitated to act in the economic field where the need was felt.

From this particular Virginia law of 1736 it would appear that some if not all medical charges had gotten well out of line—the correct line, of course, being what the people and their elected representatives thought was reasonable:

II. BE it therefore enacted, ...That from and after the passing of this act, no practicer in phisic, in any action orsuit whatsoever, hereafter to be commenced in any court of record in this colony, shall recover, for visiting any sick person, more than the rates hereafter mentioned: that is to say,Surgeons and apothecaries, who have served an apprenticeship to those trades, shall be allowed,£sdFor every visit, and prescription, in town, or within five miles00500For every mile, above five, and under ten00100For a visit, of ten miles001000And for every mile, above ten000006With an allowance for all ferriages in their journeys.To Surgeons, For a simple fracture, and the cure thereof020000Fora compound fracture, and the cure thereof040000But those persons who have studied phisic in any university, and taken any degree therein, shall be allowed,For every visit, and prescription, in any town, or within five miles001000If above five miles, for every mile more, under ten00100For a visit, if not above ten miles10000And for every mile, above ten00100With an allowance of ferriages, as before.

II. BE it therefore enacted, ...

That from and after the passing of this act, no practicer in phisic, in any action orsuit whatsoever, hereafter to be commenced in any court of record in this colony, shall recover, for visiting any sick person, more than the rates hereafter mentioned: that is to say,

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.” One of the “common distempers” that afflicted Hume was dysentery, then called the flux. He was laid so low that Dr.John Brown all but despaired of his life. Hume’s gratitude for being cured was doubtless enhanced by the fact—carefully reported to his Scottish relatives—that “ye Dr. took nothing for my druggs.”

The third section of the act, specifying exactly what the “practicer of phisic” should set forth in his bill, bears if least a faint augury of modern food-and-drug labeling legislation:

III. And to the end the true value of the medicines administered by any practicer in phisic, may be better known, and judged of,Be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, That whenever any pills, bolus, portion, draught, electuary, decoction, or any medicines, in any form whatsoever, shall be administered to any sick person, the person administering the same shall, at the same time, deliver in his bill, expressing every particular thing made up therein; or if the medicine administered, be a simple, or compound, directed in thedispensatories, the true name thereof shall be expressed in the same bill, together with the quantities and prices, in both cases. 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; unless the articles therein contained, be charged according to the directions of this act.

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.

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. The same year young Adam Cunningham gave up his brief effort to establish himself in practice as a doctor:

Another illustration from the Diderot encyclopedia shows the operation of trepanning a skull and some surgical tools in common use in the eighteenth century, in colonial America as well as in Europe.

Williamsburg [he wrote] is but a small Village containing not more than 60 families, at most; and in and about this City are no less than 25 or 30 phisitians, and of that number not above 2 capable of living handsomly. So that I did not think it proper to stay, in a place where so many of my profession are lickely to starve.

Little is known about any of these “phisitians,” not even the names of most. It seems fairly sure, however, that a number were quacks. Gooch had complained in the same letter about the “unskilfulness of practioners in this country” but was gullible enough himself to pay 60 pounds from public funds and give freedom to a Negro slave for the secret of the latter’s alleged cure of venereal diseases. It turned out to be a decoction of roots and barks, which the Governor avowed to be “a certain Remedy here” and sent samples so the College of Physicians could try its effect in England.

Most of Gooch’s abundant physicians almost certainly made up their own prescriptions. From 1622 at Jamestown until 1731 in Williamsburg no mention of an apothecary in Virginia has been found in historical records. In the latter year, however, there were four shops purveying drugs and compounding medicines in Williamsburg. The proprietors of two were doctors—Dr. George Gilmer and Dr. Kenneth McKenzie; the other two were druggists or “chymists”—Thomas Wharton and Thomas Goodwin.

Goodwin did not remain independent long. After about two years he joined Dr. Robert Davidson, mayor of Williamsburg, in a partnership that was itself dissolved in two years by the death of Dr. Davidson. Thomas Wharton, on the other hand, kept shop in Williamsburg for some eleven years. He had arrived in Virginia about 1703 as anindentured servant to a Dr. Richard Wright and had acquired by the time of his death in 1746 not only a pharmaceutical business, but the title of “Doctor.” He willed his drugs, medicines, and shop utensils to Dr. McKenzie.

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; at the age of 31 he arrived in Virginia to practice medicine and manage the affairs of a land company. He married again and must have prospered, because in four years’ time he was able to purchase for £155 three choice lots near the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg.

These three lots, on which the rambling St. George Tucker House has stood since 1788, were described in 1735 as “the Lotts and Land whereon the Bowling Green formerly was, the Dwelling House and Kitchen of William Levingston and the House call’d the Play House.” The last, of course, was the first theater in the English colonies, and Gilmer later sold it to the mayor and aldermen of Williamsburg to be used as a city hall and courthouse. It was a particularly convenient arrangement for one of the aldermen who was to become mayor himself a year later, none other than Dr. George Gilmer.

Gilmer’s career as an apothecary-surgeon-physician was not without its ups and downs. Soon after buying the property on Palace Green, he was giving away samples of rattlesnake root on behalf of Dr. John Tennent, who maintained it would cure pleurisy, the gout, rheumatism, and mad-dog bites.

At the same time theVirginia Gazette, Williamsburg’s new weekly, carried the news that “onMondayMorning last, dy’d, at Mr.Geo. Gilmer’s, in this City, Mrs.Susanna Skaife, ... and was decently interr’d onWensday. And, onThursdayMorning also dy’d, the Rev. Mr.John Skaife, her Husband, after a tedious Indisposition.” It would appear that at least Mrs. Skaife was a bed patient in Dr. Gilmer’s home; this was a usual way of caring for serious illnesses before the day of hospitals.

Surrounded by the equipment of his craft, this young apothecary is making up a prescription of some kind, probably for pills. The illustration traces back to a London publication,The Book of Trades or Library of Useful Arts, first American edition published in 1807 by J. Johnson and for sale in his bookstore in Philadelphia and in Richmond, Virginia.

Soon thereafter, Gilmer found it necessary to insert the following advertisement in theVirginia Gazette:

WilliamsburgMay26, 1737.There being a Report industriously spread about the Country, ofGeorge Gilmer’sDeath, by some well-meaning People, and of his being so much in Debt, that nothing fromEnglandwould be sent him this Year,if alive.To obviate such scandalous and groundlessReports, I take this Opportunity to acquaint all my Friends, that I can now, better than ever, supply them with all manner of Chymical and Galenical Medicines, truly and faithfully prepared, and at as cheap Rates as can be had fromEngland. Also Double-refin’d, Single refin’d, and Lump Sugars, Cinnamon, Cloves, Mace, Nutmegs,Bateman’sDrops,Squire’sElixir,Anderson’sPills, Sweet Oil,&c.at reasonable Rates; at my Old Shop, near theGovernor’s.George Gilmer

WilliamsburgMay26, 1737.

There being a Report industriously spread about the Country, ofGeorge Gilmer’sDeath, by some well-meaning People, and of his being so much in Debt, that nothing fromEnglandwould be sent him this Year,if alive.

To obviate such scandalous and groundlessReports, I take this Opportunity to acquaint all my Friends, that I can now, better than ever, supply them with all manner of Chymical and Galenical Medicines, truly and faithfully prepared, and at as cheap Rates as can be had fromEngland. Also Double-refin’d, Single refin’d, and Lump Sugars, Cinnamon, Cloves, Mace, Nutmegs,Bateman’sDrops,Squire’sElixir,Anderson’sPills, Sweet Oil,&c.at reasonable Rates; at my Old Shop, near theGovernor’s.

George Gilmer

Nine years later Gilmer was so much alive and active as to be mayor of the city, the owner of a new four-wheeled chaise, and once more a bridegroom. On the death of his second wife, Gilmer had promptly married his next-door neighbor. The third Mrs. Gilmer was Harrison Blair, daughter of Dr. Archibald Blair and sister of the Hon. John Blair of the governor’s council. The apothecary’s star was rising.

He was still, of course, a shopkeeper. His “Old Shop near the Governor’s” stood at the very edge of Palace Green, a frame building of about 20 feet square. Every year or so he advertised the arrival from England of a shipment of drugs, medicines, spices, and groceries—to be sold at the shop, wholesale or retail, and at reasonable rates.

Archaeological excavations on the site of the first theater, and extending north of it onto the adjacent Brush-Everard House property, yielded quantities of Dr. Gilmer’s domestic and pharmaceutical rubbish. The latter included delftware ointment pots and drug jars, glass medicine phials and fragments of carboys, bottles for Pyrmont mineral water, a brass pestle, and, inexplicably, a human jaw. Just how, or if, that related to Gilmer’s shop remains open to conjecture, but it is evident from the quantity of pharmaceutical artifacts recovered that Dr. Gilmer’s business was as extensive as his 1737 advertisement claimed.

Indeed, Gilmer was no ordinary shopkeeper. His social status—doubtless bolstered by that of his wife’s family—was great enough that he could be among the first to entertain the newly appointed Governor Dinwiddie. One suspects that either the ambitious Dr. Gilmer or his well-born wife decided that his house on Palace Street fell short of such prestigious demands. Six months after the dinner for Dinwiddie, the apothecary was having his dining room wainscoted, with a marble fireplace, a mirror over the mantel, and a cabinet to contain the set of new china his wife had ordered from London.

About the same time Dr. Gilmer, who gave himself perhaps facetiously the title of “colonel,” became part owner of the Raleigh Tavern. The deed by which he and Colonel Chiswell bought the famous inn for £700 testified that he had gained that ultimate accolade of social and economic status in colonial Virginia, the designation “Geo Gilmer Gent.”

In the letters he wrote to London, Gilmer seems to refer to himself not as a doctor or surgeon, but as an apothecary, and his name in public documents as well as in private records most often appears not as Dr. Gilmer but as Mr. Gilmer. He was doubtless prouder of being known as a gentleman and a colonel; the title of doctor was often held in poor esteem. William Byrd II wrote in 1706 that “here be some men indeed that are call’d Doctors: but they are generally discarded Surgeons of Ships, that know nothing above the very common Remedys.” As late as 1783 Dr. Johann Schoepf, writing of his travels through the former colonies, asserted that “in America every man who drives the curing trade is known without distinction as Doctor, as elsewhere every person who makes verses is a poet—so there are both black doctors and brown, and quacks in abundance.”

Apprenticeship was the usual form of training for allcolonial occupations, with the possible exception of the ministry at one end of the scale and ordinary farming at the other. Medicine was not an exception; practitioners normally took apprentices for the same reasons that cabinetmakers or blacksmiths did. The beginning apprentice performed the unskilled and some of the semiskilled duties of the establishment, learning as he did so. As he acquired knowledge, he could give the doctor more and more assistance in his practice.

The doctor generally undertook, if there was a formal indenture, to teach the apprentice the “art and mystery of physic, surgery, and pharmacy,” or words to that effect. Sometimes, however, he agreed to teach only the art of the apothecary. In either event, the apprentice was taught to compound medicines as directed by his master, to search the woods for medicinal plants, and probably to keep books and collect fees. Even an apprentice apothecary might in time be called on to assist—or perhaps even take over—such routine treatments as bleeding. Most likely he also had to spend his evenings reading whatever medical or pharmaceutical works the doctor had on hand—from Hippocrates to the latest edition of theEdinburgh Pharmacopoeia.

On completing this apprenticeship—which in most cases probably fell short of the English norm of seven years—the young man could set up in the “curing trade”, for himself, with no more credentials than his master’s certificate to the effect that he had served a certain term and had studied certain books. Or he could go to Edinburgh or London for further study at a university or in a hospital.

Another plate from Diderot’s encyclopedia shows a variety of instruments used by eighteenth-century apothecary-surgeons. Notice the box-like device with 16 small knives that can be pressed against the skin and triggered to make simultaneous incisions for bleeding a patient. One of these gadgets can be seen at the Apothecary Shop in Williamsburg.

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 theVirginia Gazette, the first in 1771 by Dr. William Stark of the town of Blandford, the second five years later by a quack who did not even bother to give himself the title of doctor.

The Subscriber having been bred to Physick in his younger Years, and having attended particularly to this Study for these three Years past, now proposes to practise on the most moderate Terms. He cannot with Sincerity boast of having attained theNe plus ultraof theAesculapianArt, nor yet of acquiring any superior Degree of Knowledge in this Science; but flatters himself that, by a vigilant and due Attention to the Indications and Efforts of Nature in those sick Persons who should, through Choice or Necessity, be committed to his Care, he may be able to afford them proper and timely Assistance.* * *Thomas Johnson, of Brunswick, Who is well known for his Abilities in the Cure of the Flux, gives Notice that he also cures the following Disorders,viz.the Spleen, Cholic, Asthma, and any Kind of Fevers, lingering Disorders, bad Coughs, Scurvy, any Kind of running Humours or scorbutic Disorders, the Yaws andFrenchDisorder, without Salivation, sore Legs, Dropsy, Scurvy in the Gums, and has the greatest Reason to believe he can cure the Consumption if timely applied to.

* * *

Thomas Johnson, of Brunswick, Who is well known for his Abilities in the Cure of the Flux, gives Notice that he also cures the following Disorders,viz.the Spleen, Cholic, Asthma, and any Kind of Fevers, lingering Disorders, bad Coughs, Scurvy, any Kind of running Humours or scorbutic Disorders, the Yaws andFrenchDisorder, without Salivation, sore Legs, Dropsy, Scurvy in the Gums, and has the greatest Reason to believe he can cure the Consumption if timely applied to.

In a very direct and personal way, each generation of Williamsburg physician-apothecary trained its successor. Two particularly illustrative lines began with Dr. George Gilmer.

At one time in 1745 it appears that Gilmer had an apprentice by the name of James Carter. A few years later Carter opened an apothecary shop of his own at the sign of the Unicorn’s Horn, next door to the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg. Carter in turn took Andrew Anderson as apprentice, and in due time when Anderson had attain the status of “doctor,” took him into partnership.This combination lasted only two years, and James Carter later formed a partnership with his brother William, a physician. After another few years James sold his share of the apothecary shop to William but apparently continued independently to practice medicine until his death in 1794.

Gilmer, of course, had long since taken another apprentice in young James Carter’s place. Billy Pasteur was the son of the barber and wigmaker, who could not afford to send his son abroad for medical study. But at the end of his apprenticeship, Pasteur did go to London with the help of Dr. Gilmer for a year’s study at St. Thomas’s Hospital. He returned to Williamsburg and opened shop just after his benefactor’s death. It would seem probable that he took over Gilmer’s shop before building his own, though the record does not say.

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. Galt is also said to have attended the College of William and Mary—presumably before going abroad—and to have pursued his medical studies in Edinburgh and Paris aswell as in London. All of this made John Minson Galt undoubtedly the best educated apothecary-surgeon of eighteenth-century Williamsburg.

On his return to Williamsburg in 1769 he bought “a box of Surgeon’s Instruments,” married Judith Craig, and announced his intention to open shop at “the Brick House, opposite the Coffee House when he gets his utensils fixed.” TheVirginia Gazette’s notice of the marriage was short and full of confident optimism:

This evening Doctor JOHN MINSON GALT, of this city, was married to Miss JUDITH CRAIG, eldest daughter of Mr. ALEXANDER CRAIG. The mutual affection and familiarity of disposition in this agreeable pair, afford the strongest assurance of their enjoying the highest felicity in the nuptial state.

In setting up shop as an apothecary-surgeon in Williamsburg, Galt was not exactly filling a vacuum. In fact, the same issue of theGazettein which he announced himself carried long advertisements by two other apothecaries. One was Galt’s former master and benefactor, William Pasteur; the other was “Andrew Anderson, Surgeon and Man-Midwife,” also just launching in practice. Altogether the ads occupy a little over one whole column of the paper, and each consists almost solely of a list of the items available at that shop.

It is interesting to notice that William Pasteur had imported a new supply of goods in the same ship with Galt’s “compleat assortment,” and just in time:

The subscriber having had but very few medicines left in his shop before this order came to hand, will now be able to furnish his friends and customers with every thing fresh and genuine. 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 acctof our confounded druggisthere....” 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. 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. On one instance he wrote off a debt with an equal credit “for the Runaway.”

What is surely the most provocative entry occurs opposite February 29, 1772, a Leap Year Day. On that date appears a debit against a Mr. Bowyer of 10 shillings for “attendcein the night.” On the credit side are these words in Galt’s hand: “Twas sewed on by a Girl who I shou’d be happy with.” Does this mean that in three short years the “mutual affection and familiarity of disposition” of John and Judith had worn away? The account book does not answer.

Notice that Galt’s charge of 10 shillings for visiting a patient was the very sum permitted by law in 1736—three and a half decades earlier. For amputating Mr. Parson’s finger and dressing it he charged £3 4s6d, and the same amount to Mr. Cardwell for “laying open Child’s leg &c.”

There is but a single entry for bleeding, and in this case the patient was a Negro. Dr. Galt, unlike most of his colleagues, seems not to have favored phlebotomy. The great number of entries simply mention visiting, attendance, or advice, with prescriptions by the score of cathartics, emetics, purges, etc.

It must have been a source of gratification to JohnMinson Galt when the well-established Pasteur invited the younger man to become his partner. The announcement of the new firm read as follows:

WILLIAMSBURG,April15, 1775.THE Subscribers having this Day entered into Partnership, beg Leave to acquaint the Public in general, and their Friends and Neighbours in particular, that they intend practicing Physic and Surgery to their fullest Extent; and that they intend also, as soon as the Situation of the Times will admit, to keep full and complete Assortments of Drugs and Medicines, which they will endeavour to procure of the very best in Quality, and will take Care to have them fresh by making several Importations in the Year. It is proposed thatJohn M. Galtshall pay his particular Attention to Surgery, to whom our Friends are desired to apply on all such occasions, but will be advised and assisted byW. Pasteurin all difficult Cases. They both desire to make their most grateful Acknowledgments to their Friends and Customers for the many Favours and Civilities they have received, and hope, by this Union, they will be enabled to carry on their Business to the entire Satisfaction of their Friends; as, on their Part, the strictest Assiduity and Attention shall be observed.PASTEUR & GALT

WILLIAMSBURG,April15, 1775.

THE Subscribers having this Day entered into Partnership, beg Leave to acquaint the Public in general, and their Friends and Neighbours in particular, that they intend practicing Physic and Surgery to their fullest Extent; and that they intend also, as soon as the Situation of the Times will admit, to keep full and complete Assortments of Drugs and Medicines, which they will endeavour to procure of the very best in Quality, and will take Care to have them fresh by making several Importations in the Year. It is proposed thatJohn M. Galtshall pay his particular Attention to Surgery, to whom our Friends are desired to apply on all such occasions, but will be advised and assisted byW. Pasteurin all difficult Cases. They both desire to make their most grateful Acknowledgments to their Friends and Customers for the many Favours and Civilities they have received, and hope, by this Union, they will be enabled to carry on their Business to the entire Satisfaction of their Friends; as, on their Part, the strictest Assiduity and Attention shall be observed.

PASTEUR & GALT

Only a few days after this announcement appeared, the spark of revolution flared out in both Lexington, Massachusetts, and Williamsburg, Virginia. As it happened, Dr. Pasteur was to play a minor role and a momentary one on the Williamsburg stage. Governor Dunmore’s surreptitious removal of the colony’s gunpowder from the Magazine was detected and there was an immediate reaction from the populace, some under arms. Attending a patient in the Palace, Dr. Pasteur was twice accosted by the Governor and made the bearer of angry messages to the Speaker of the House of Burgesses and “the Gentlemen of the Town.” Should he be attacked, His Lordship blustered, “he would declare freedom to the slaves & reduce the city of Williamsburg to ashes.”

What actually followed was that Dunmore and his family fled the Palace, never to return, and Pasteur became the next mayor of Williamsburg. It should be mentioned that he and John Minson Galt were already members of the Committee of Safety for the city when they formed their partnership. The sympathies of both were clearly on the patriot side.

The partners very shortly were able to advertise the importation of the usual wide assortment of drugs and medicines for sale in their shop on Duke of Gloucester Street. And a few surviving bills indicate that they did not lack for medical and surgical business. Dr. Pasteur, it would seem, did not share his younger colleague’s aversion to phlebotomy, as the following excerpt from a Pasteur & Galt bill to Henry Morse Esq. in 1775 shows:

The partnership lasted only three years, for reasonsnot now discernable, and William Pasteur gave notice to the public that “I purpose commencing oyster merchant” at his landing on King’s Creek between Williamsburg and Yorktown. Galt, on the other hand, continued to practice medicine, serving as a senior surgeon to the Continental military hospital in Williamsburg, joining in partnership with Dr. Philip Barraud, and becoming visiting physician to the public hospital for the insane and a member of its board of directors. He held both offices until his death in 1808. Yet as late as 1794 he was identified in court records as “Apothecary, of the City of Williamsburg.”

The Pasteur-Galt apothecary shop on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg is a reconstruction. Its size and location are determined with certainty not only from an eighteenth-century town map, but also by eighteenth-century foundations excavated on the site. The land was owned by Dr. William Pasteur from 1760 until 1778, during which time he probably built the shop. When he and John Minson Galt dissolved their partnership, he sold the property to Galt, who transferred it to his son at the end of the century.

No record survives as to the exact appearance, outside or inside, of the Pasteur-Galt shop. Some apothecary shops apparently had as many as three rooms: the front shop, the doctor’s office and operating room, and possibly a sort of laboratory where the apprentice compounded medicines.

The Pasteur-Galt shop has been reconstructed with two, the preparative work being done in full view of the public.

As to the content of the shop, ample evidence comes from almost any advertisement of Galt, Pasteur, or for that matter of just about any apothecary in colonial America at any time during the eighteenth century. They all published for their prospective customers lengthy lists of items just imported, and the lists bear a marked resemblance from place to place and from time to time.

Apothecary’s advertisement

WILLIAMSBURG,August31, 1769.Just imported in theExperiment,Capt.Hamlin,A FRESH and compleat assortment of DRUGS and MEDICINES, chymical and galenical, which will be SOLD at very low advance forREADY CASH, and are as follows:Crude antimony, æther, verdigrease, Barbados, hepatick, and succotrine aloes, common and rock alum, ambergrise, compound waters of all kinds, quicksilver, balsams of capri, Peru, amber, and Tolu, Canadian balsam, Armenian bole, borax, calomel crude and prepared, comphor, camella alba, cantharides, cloves, Indian pink, greatly celebrated for destroying worms in children, Russian and Hudson’s Bay castors, common and lunar caustick, cinnabar of antimony, native and fictitious cinnabar, potash, cochineal, colcothar, vitriol, colocynth, confectio cardiaca, conserves of hips, sloes, and sorrel roses, wormwood and orange peel, Jesuits bark, cinnamon, cascarilla, cremor tartar, English and Spanish saffron, claterium, plaisters and electuaries of all kinds, essence of lemons, burgamot and ambergrease, single and double camomile flowers, flower of brimstone, balaustines, fenna, galls, grains of paradise, gums of all kinds, pearl barley, isinglass, Irish slate, litharge, common and flakey manna, sweet mercury, calcined mercury, corrosive sublimate, red precipitate, musk, chymical oils, opium, long pepper, ipecacuanha, jalap, gentian, licorice, contrayerva, calamus aromaticus, china and sarsaparilla, best Turkey and India rhubarb, valerian, sago, alkaline, neutral, and volatile salts, saloop, seeds of anise, carraway, coriander, wild carrot, fennel and fennugreek, lesser cardamoms, staves acre, spermaceti, spirits of hartshorn, lavender, sal volatile, and sal ammoniac, nitre, mineral acids, dulcified spirits of salt, vitriol, and sal ammoniac, Spanish licorice, tartar emetic, vermacelli, white, blue, and green vitriols, extract of hemlock, glass of antimony, meadow, saffron, and mezereon roots, common and Nesbitt’s clyster pipes, gold and silver leaf, Dutch metal, gallipots and vials, Anderson’s, Hooper’s, and Lockyer’s pills, Turlington’s balsam, Hill’s pectoral balsam of honey, Bateman’s drops, Squire’s, Daffy’s, and Bostock’s elixirs, Freeman’s and Godfrey’s cordials British oil, eau de luce, Dr. James’s fever powder, court plaister, best lavender and Hungary water, &c. &c.The subscriber intends opening shop at the BRICK HOUSE, opposite the Coffee-House, when he gets his utensils fixed, which will be in a fortnight at farthest; and as this is his first importation, every thing may be depended upon as entirely fresh, and bought of one of the best hands inLondon. Those who please to favour him with their orders, may depend on having them immediately dispatched, and every thing put up in the best manner, byTheir most obedient humble servant,JOHN MINSON GALT.

WILLIAMSBURG,August31, 1769.Just imported in theExperiment,Capt.Hamlin,

A FRESH and compleat assortment of DRUGS and MEDICINES, chymical and galenical, which will be SOLD at very low advance forREADY CASH, and are as follows:

Crude antimony, æther, verdigrease, Barbados, hepatick, and succotrine aloes, common and rock alum, ambergrise, compound waters of all kinds, quicksilver, balsams of capri, Peru, amber, and Tolu, Canadian balsam, Armenian bole, borax, calomel crude and prepared, comphor, camella alba, cantharides, cloves, Indian pink, greatly celebrated for destroying worms in children, Russian and Hudson’s Bay castors, common and lunar caustick, cinnabar of antimony, native and fictitious cinnabar, potash, cochineal, colcothar, vitriol, colocynth, confectio cardiaca, conserves of hips, sloes, and sorrel roses, wormwood and orange peel, Jesuits bark, cinnamon, cascarilla, cremor tartar, English and Spanish saffron, claterium, plaisters and electuaries of all kinds, essence of lemons, burgamot and ambergrease, single and double camomile flowers, flower of brimstone, balaustines, fenna, galls, grains of paradise, gums of all kinds, pearl barley, isinglass, Irish slate, litharge, common and flakey manna, sweet mercury, calcined mercury, corrosive sublimate, red precipitate, musk, chymical oils, opium, long pepper, ipecacuanha, jalap, gentian, licorice, contrayerva, calamus aromaticus, china and sarsaparilla, best Turkey and India rhubarb, valerian, sago, alkaline, neutral, and volatile salts, saloop, seeds of anise, carraway, coriander, wild carrot, fennel and fennugreek, lesser cardamoms, staves acre, spermaceti, spirits of hartshorn, lavender, sal volatile, and sal ammoniac, nitre, mineral acids, dulcified spirits of salt, vitriol, and sal ammoniac, Spanish licorice, tartar emetic, vermacelli, white, blue, and green vitriols, extract of hemlock, glass of antimony, meadow, saffron, and mezereon roots, common and Nesbitt’s clyster pipes, gold and silver leaf, Dutch metal, gallipots and vials, Anderson’s, Hooper’s, and Lockyer’s pills, Turlington’s balsam, Hill’s pectoral balsam of honey, Bateman’s drops, Squire’s, Daffy’s, and Bostock’s elixirs, Freeman’s and Godfrey’s cordials British oil, eau de luce, Dr. James’s fever powder, court plaister, best lavender and Hungary water, &c. &c.

The subscriber intends opening shop at the BRICK HOUSE, opposite the Coffee-House, when he gets his utensils fixed, which will be in a fortnight at farthest; and as this is his first importation, every thing may be depended upon as entirely fresh, and bought of one of the best hands inLondon. Those who please to favour him with their orders, may depend on having them immediately dispatched, and every thing put up in the best manner, by

Their most obedient humble servant,JOHN MINSON GALT.

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