Area History: Chapters 17 - 19: Vol II - Watson's Annals of Philadelphia And Pennsylvania, 1857 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by EVC. USGENWEB NOTICE: Printing this file by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. ____________________________________________________________ ANNALS of PHILADELPHIA AND PENNSYLVANIA, VOL. II ______________________________________________ Chapter 17. MEDICAL SUBJECTS To note -- the thousand ills Which flesh and blood assail. Under this head it is intended to comprise such facts as have come to our knowledge respecting early diseases; to name some of the plants in use as remedies in primitive days; and to cite some facts concerning some of the earliest named physicians. OF FEBRILE DISEASES 1687 -- Phineas Pemberton, in his MSS., states that a great mortality occurred at the Falls of Delaware (in 1687) occasioned by "the great land flood and rupture". 1600 -- Isaac Norris, Sen., left among his papers a record, saying "About the time of the harvest proved the hottest summer he had ever before experienced. Several persons died in the field with the violence of the heat". In the autumn of the same year, the town was visited by a very destructive fever : he says of it "This is quite the Barbadoes distemper -- [i.e., the yellow fever of modern times] : they void and vomit blood. There is not a day nor night has passed for several weeks, but we have the account of the death or sickness of some friend or neighbour. It hath been sometimes very sickly, but I never before knew it so mortal as now; nine persons lay dead in one day at the same time; very few recover. All business and trade down. The fall itself was extremely moderate and open". Five of his own family died. [In a letter of subsequent date, he says, that "three years after" the same disease became a scourge at New York, "such as they had never seen before ! Some hundreds died, and many left the town for many weeks, so that the town was almost left desolate." Thomas Story, a public Friend, and the recorder of the city, has also spoken of this calamity in his Journal, as being a scourge which carried off from six to eight of the inhabitants daily, and visiting most of the families. "Great was the fear", says he, "that fell upon all flesh ! I saw no lofty or airy countenances, nor heard any vain jesting; but every face gathered paleness, and many hearts were humbled." The whole number who died was about two hundred and twenty, of whom about eighty or ninety were of the society of Friends. 1717 -- The summer of this year is mentioned in the letter of Jonathan Dickinson, as a time in which was "great prevalence of fever and ague in the country parts adjacent to Philadelphia". 1741 -- The summer of this year is called a time of great sickness in Philadelphia -- Vide secretary Peters' MS. letter to the proprietary, to wit : It was called the "Palantine distemper", because prevailing among the German emigrants, probably from their confinement on shipboard. The inhabitants were much alarmed, and fled to country towns and places; and the country people, in equal fear, avoided to visit the city. From June to October, two hundred and fifty persons died : others, of course, recovered. Noah Webster, speaking of this sickness, says, after the severe winter, the city was severely visited with "the American plague". The same disease, Doctor Bond has said, was yellow fever, supposed to have been introduced by a load of sick people from Dublin. 1743 -- Some of it also again prevailed in Philadelphia, says Secretary Peters, while at the same time, just such another disease visited New York and was there considered as certainly "not imported". Joel Neaves' case, who died of it at Philadelphia, was thus described : "He had a true, genuine yellow fever, with black vomit and spots, and suppression of urine -- all this from overheating himself in a very hot day, by rowing a boat. He also gave it to others about him, and they to others; yet but few of them died". 1747 -- Noah Webster, in his work on Pestilence, says, "This year the city was again visited by bilious plague" preceded by influenza. February 1748, as said by said Peters' letters, was a time of great mortality in all the provinces; it was called "the epidemic pleurisy". It thinned the country so much, that it was said that servants, to fill the places of others in town and country, were bought in great numbers as fast as they arrived. The Indians were afraid to come to a treaty by reason of the sickness. It stopped suddenly, before the summer came. 1754 -- I perceive, by the gazettes, that there were many deaths by reason of the "Dutch distemper". 1755 -- It had often happened, that the servants coming from Germany and Holland, after being purchased, communicated a very malignant fever to whole families and neighbourhoods where they went. It was of such frequent occurrence as to be called, in the gazettes, the "Dutch distemper". This year I find it stated, that it is now settled "to be precisely the disease known as the jail fever". OF SMALLPOX This loathsome and appalling disease was of much more peril to our forefathers than to us in our better management now; to the poor Indians it was terrific and destructive. The happy art of inoculation was first practised in Philadelphia in the year 1731; and the first person of note who then devoted himself as a forlorn hope for the purpose of example was J. Growden, Esq. The circumstance, with his character in life as a public officer in high standing, made his house a place of after notoriety, and is the same venerable and respectable building (when you can see it !) now in the rear of some two or three small houses, since put up, in South Fourth street, vis-à-vis to the first alley below High street. It was then a dignified, two-story large house, with a rural courtyard in front. The terror of inoculation was not such in Philadelphia at any time, as seized upon our brethern of New England, and of Boston in particular, in 1721 when their doctor, Z. Boyleston, had his life menaced, his person assaulted in the streets and loaded with execrations, for having dared, with scientific hardihood, to inoculate his only son and two of his negroes. [This was the same year it was first attempted in England, after the Turkish manner, upon the daughter of the celebrated Lady Montague.] Even sober, pious people were not wanting there to regard it as an act of constructive murder, in case the patient died. We also had our public attempts, growing out of the above facts, to forestall the public mind and to create a religious prejudice against the attempt at inoculation. Our Weekly Mercury, of 1st January 1722, contains the sermon of the Rev. Mr. Masley, who preached and published against the inoculation of the smallpox, which he calls "an unjustifiable art, an infliction of an evil, and a distrust of God's over-ruling care to procure us a possible future good !" Under such circumstances, it became a cause of some triumph in Philadelphia, to publicly announce the success of the experiment on J. Growden, Esq., made in the Gazette of March 1731, to wit : "The practice of inoculation for the smallpox begins to grow among us. J. Growden, Esq., the first patient of note that led the way, is now upon the recovery." 1701 -- Is the first-mentioned occurrence of smallpox in the city of Philadelphia. In that year, one of the letters in the Logan MSS. says, "the smallpox was very mortal and general". As early as 1682, the vessel that brought out William Penn had the smallpox on board, which proved fatal to many while at sea. 1726 -- A ship from Bristol, England, with passengers, had many down with the smallpox; but they, with George Warner, the informant, being landed at the Swedes' church below the town and conducted through the woods to the "Blue-house tavern" out South street, all got well without communicating to the inhabitants of the city. 1730 -- Was called the "great mortality from the smallpox". That year there died of it, George Claypole, who married Cromwell's daughter. His wife Deborah lived to be upwards of ninety years of age. Vide Logan MSS. 1736-7 -- There are some evidences of the progress of inoculation, for the Gazettes thus state the fact, to wit : From the fall of 1736, to the spring of 1737, there have been 129 persons inoculated, viz., Of white men and women --------- 33 persons. " under 12 years of age -----64 " Of mulattoes ------------------------------4 " Of negroes, young and old, --------28 " Only one child died among all the foregoing 129 ! The above account was framed from the then physicians of that day, to wit : Doctors Kearsley, Zachary, Hooper, Cadwaller, Shippen, Bond, and Sommers, they being the only physicians who inoculated. Doctor Graeme had then no share in it, being himself confined with illness the whole time the disease was in town. 1746 -- Even at this late period religious scruples against the smallpox had not subsided; for I see in a MS. journal of John Smith, Esq., (son-in-law of James Logan) that he thus intimates his disapprobation of the measure, to wit : "Two or three persons (in one month) have the smallpox, having got it at New York. Inoculation he dislikes, because it seems clear to him that we, who are only tenants, have no right to pull down the house that belongs only to the landlord who built it !" It was probably about this period of time that Thomas Jefferson (say about 1760) came to Philadelphia on purpose to get inoculated for the smallpox, and was placed in a cottage house, back from the city, near to the Schuylkill. It was then that Charles Thomson first became acquainted with him, and from him I derive this fact. Samuel Preston, Esq., an aged gentleman, has given me some ideas of the fatality of the smallpox among the Indians in Bucks county. It got among the Indians settled at Ingham spring, and as they used sweating for it, it proved fatal. Several of the Indians, as they had never heard of the disease, thought it was sent by the whites for their ruin. Such as survived, abandoned the place. Tedeuscung, the Delaware chief, was among the latter. OF PLANTS FOR MEDICINE. In the olden time, the practice of medicine and the dependence of the people upon physicians in cases of ordinary sickness, were essentially different from the present. Physicians then were at greater expense for their education, with less compensation for services. Then, all accredited physicians were accustomed to go to England or Scotland to prepare themselves. The people were much accustomed to the use of plants and herbs in cases of sickness; and their chief resort to physicians was in calls of surgery, or difficult cases of childbirth. As the druggist shops have since increased in drugs and mineral preparations, the use of herb and roots has more and more declined. We have, indeed, since then, brought the study of the names of plants into great repute, under the imposing character of botanical lectures; but the virtue and properties are too often abandoned for a mere classification of uninstructive names. In that day, every physicians house was his own drug shop, at which all his patients obtained their medicine. I have formerly seen aged person, not possessing more than the ordinary knowledge of plants for family medicines, who could tell me, in a walk through the woods or fields, the medicinal uses of almost every shrub or weed we passed. It was, indeed, grateful to me to perceive that nothing around us seemed made in vain ! "Let no presuming, impious railer tax Creative wisdom, as if aught was form'd In vain, or not for admirable ends." Thus, in the commons, the Jamestown weed was used by smoking it in a pipe, for the asthma; the pokeberries when ripe and the juice dried in the sun, as a plaster of great virtue for the cancer; sour dock root made an ointment for itch and tetters; burdock leaves made drafts for the feet to reduce and allay fevers; tea from it was made into a wholesome tonic -- the roots were also used; the plant everlasting, much approved for poultices in drawing swellings to a head; of mullein was made a steam vapour to sit over in cases of bowel diseases; motherwort was used in childbirth cases; catmint tea was used for colic; a vine which grows among field strawberries, called cinque-foil, was used as a ptsan for fevers; blackberry roots and berries were used for dysenteries. [Note: ptsan = tisane = crushed herbs or leaves used for poultices and medicinal teas.] In the woods they also found medicines, much of which knowledge was derived from the Indians, as G. Thomas, 1689, says "there are also many curious and excellent herbs, roots, and drugs of great virtue, which makes the Indians, by a right application of them, as able doctors and surgeons as any in Europe". The inner bark of the oak, and of the wild cherry-tree, were their tonics. Sassafras roots and flowers were used as purifiers and thinners of the blood. People used the leaves of the beech-tree for steeping the feet in hot water. Grapevine sap they used to make the hair grow. Of the dogwood tree (its flowers or bark) they made a great cure for dysentery. The magnolia leaf they used as a tea to produce sweat; the berries, put into brandy, cured consumptions and was a good bitter; the bark of it was used for dysenteries; it could cure old sores by burning the wood to charcoal and mixing the powder of it with hogs' lard. People used the root of the bayberry bush to cure toothache. The cedar tree berries were used as a tonic, to strengthen a weak spine, to destroy worms,&c. Goldenrod was deemed excellent for dysentery. Boneset, used for consumption and for agues; sweet fern for bowel complaints; pennyroyal, excellent to produce sweats for colds; dittany, for cure of a fever; alder-buds made a tea for purging the blood; elder-berries were used for purges, and the inner bark to make ointment for burns and sores. It is needless to hint at even a few of the numerous plants cultivated in gardens, and laid up in store against family illness; many are still known. [It was an annual concern of the ladies of the family at Norris' garden, in Philadelphia, to dry and lay up various herbs for medical purposes, to be given away to the many who called for them.] It may suffice to say, in conclusion, that they regarded the whole kingdom of vegetation as appointed for "the healing of the nations". It would be a most commendable adjunct of botany, if to the present exterior and superficial classification of plants, they would investigate and affix their uses and virtues. OF PHYSICIANS Those who first came among us, in primitive days, were generally from Great Britain. The names and characters of those we can occasionally see in the passing events of their day may be generally summed up in the following brief recital, to wit : Thomas Wynn, an eminent Welch physician who had practised medicine several years with high reputation in London, and his brother, came to this country in 1682 with the original settlers, located themselves in Philadelphia, and were the earliest physicians of the city. Dr. Griffith Owen arrived in the prime of life, and is said to have done the principal medical business in the city, where he was highly distinguished for his talents, integrity, and zeal. He died in 1717, about the age of seventy years, and left a son who practised some time after his father's death. [Dr. Wynn also left a son-in-law, Dr. Jones, who enjoyed considerable repute as a physician. Doctors Wynne and Owen were of the society of Friends; the former was speaker of the assembly. To their names might have been added, Dr. John Goodson, chirurgeon, who was in the city at and before the year 1700. He was also of the society of Friends; also Dr. Hodgson. {Note : chirurgeon = surgeon} ] Dr. Graeme came from Great Britain, with the governor, Sir William Keith, in the year 1717. He was about thirty years of age when he arrived, had an excellent education and agreeable manners, and was therefore much employed as a practitioner, and greatly confided in by his fellow citizens. Dr. Loyd Zachary probably commenced the practice of medicine between 1720 and 1730, and died in the year 1756 in the meridian of life, greatly and most deservedly lamented. He was one of the founders of, and a very liberal contributor to, both the College and the Hospital. Dr. Kearsley, Senr., was for many years a very industrious practitioner both in medicine and surgery. He was not deficient in public spirit. The public are more indebted to him than to any other man for that respectable edifice, Christ church; and by his will he founded and endowed a hospital for poor widows. He educated Dr. John Redman, and Dr. John Bard, of New York. This eminent physician, Dr. John Kearsley, had been so popular in the assembly, that on several occasions he has been borne home from the hall on the shoulders of the people; he died in 1772 at the age of eighty-eight years, having been in the city since the year 1711, happily dying just three years before he could witness the outrage offered to his respectable nephew, Dr. John Kearsley, who was obnoxious as a tory in 1775. Dr. Cadwallader Evans was one of the first pupils of Dr. Thomas Bond, and completed his medical education in England. He was descended from a much venerated early settler, and had a great share of public spirit as well as of professional worth. In 1769, some observations appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine of London, from Dr. Kearsley, Jun., of Philadelphia, relative to "angina maligna" which prevailed in 1746 and 1760. "It extended," says the author, "through the neighbouring provinces with mortal rage, in opposition to the united endeavours of the faculty. It swept off all before it, baffling every attempt to stop its progress, and seemed, by its dire effects, to be more like the drawn sword of vengeance to stop the growth of the colonies, than the natural progress of disease. Villages were almost depopulated, and numerous parents were left to bewail the loss of their tender offspring". An essay on the iliac passion, by Dr. Thomas Cadwallader, a respectable physician in Philadelphia, appeared in the year 1740, in which the author opposes, with considerable talent and learning, the then common mode of treating that disease. This was one of the earliest publications on a medical subject in America. Dr. Thomas Bond, about 1754, was author of some useful medical memoirs, which were published in a periodical work, in London. Phineas Bond, M.D., a younger brother of Thomas Bond, after studying medicine some time in Maryland, visited Europe, and passed a considerable time at the medical schools of Leyden, Paris, London, and Edinburgh. On his return, he settled in Philadelphia, where he enjoyed a high reputation for many years. He was one of the founders of the College, now the University of Philadelphia. About the middle of the 18th century, Dr. Thomas published a discourse on the preparation of the body for the reception of the smallpox and the manner of receiving the infection, as it was delivered in the public hall of the Academy before the trustees and others in November 1750. This production was highly applauded both in America and Europe, as at that period the practice of inoculation was on the decline. The author states that inoculation was so unsuccessful at Philadelphia that many were disposed to abandon the practice; wherefore, upon the suggestion of the 1392d aphorism of Boerhaave, he was led to prepare his patients by a composition of antimony and mercury, which he had constantly employed, for twelve years, with uninterrupted success. It was reserved for the accomplished Dr. William Shippen, and Dr. John Morgan, to construct a permanent foundation for the medical institutions of our country. [Dr. Morgan was educated by the Rev. Mr. Finley, at his school at Nottingham, and finished his studies in the Philadelphia Academy. Having studied with Dr. Redman, he went into the provincial army a short time, in the French war. In 1760 he visited Europe generally where he mixed much with the scientific men in London, Edinburgh, Paris, and Italy. On his return home he was regarded as something extra among the people, and as having, perhaps, some of the "eccentricities of genius". The aged citizens still remember him as the first man who ventured to carry a silk umbrella -- a scouted effeminacy then ! -- and also an innovator in first introducing the practice of sending to the apothecary for all the medicines wanted for the sick ! With Dr. Morgan was joined Dr. Chanceller, and Parson Duché, making then a rare trio, in forcing the use of sun umbrellas upon the town ! Dr. Rush has said, "the historian who shall hereafter relate the progress of medical science in America, will be deficient in candour and justice if he does not connect the name of Dr. Morgan with that auspicious era in which medicine was first taught, and studied as a science in this country".] Both these gentlemen were natives of Philadelphia, and after receiving the usual preparatory course of instruction, repaired to Europe to complete a scientific education. Here they enjoyed ample means of qualifying themselves for the great duties of professors and teachers. Accordingly, in 1762, Dr. Shippen commenced a course of lectures on anatomy and midwifery, accompanied by dissections, to a class of ten students; and this was the first systematic course of lectures on medical subjects ever delivered in America, if we except those delivered at Newport, in 1756, by Dr. Hunter. [Dr. Clossey offered anatomical lectures at New York in November 1763; and afterwards, in 1768, he and others proposed regular lectures at King's College, say on anatomy, surgery, and physic.] In 1765, Dr. Morgan returned from Europe, and was appointed professor of the institutes of medicine, and Dr. Shippen the professor of anatomy : they were the only professors of this new institution until 1768, when Dr. Kuhn was elected professor of botany. In the following year, Dr. Benjamin Rush was chosen professor of chemistry. These learned characters, assisted by the venerable Thomas Bond, as lecturer on clinical medicine zealously devoted their talents to the duties of the several departments of medical instruction. This first medical school in the American colonies, was soon after confirmed and established by the authority of the trustees of the College of Philadelphia, while Dr. Franklin officiated as their president. The Philadelphia Dispensary, for the medical relief of the poor, the first institution of its kind in the United States, was founded in 1786. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia was established in 1787, and the labours of the professors commenced under circumstances eminently auspicious to the improvement of medical science : an unfortunate competition and discord, however, between the medical college and an opposition school, for a time marred their prospects and impeded that useful progress which the friends of the institution and the public had confidently expected. But, in 1790, some important changes took place, and a harmonious union of the contending parties was effected. Dr. Rush was appointed professor of the institutes and practice of physic, and of clinical medicine. From this period the progress and improvement of the institution have been no less honourable to the venerable founders, than beneficial to the community. The commanding talents and profound erudition of Professors Rush, Wistar, Barton, Physick, Dorsey, Chapman, and others, have given the medical school of Philadelphia, a celebrity which will probably long remain unrivalled in the United States, and will enable it to vie with the most elevated seminaries of the European world. It has become the resort of students from every section of our united confederacy. Five hundred, in some seasons, have attended the various courses of lectures; and the inaugural dissertations of those who, from time to time, received its honours, have extended the fame of the school from which they have emanated. At the commencement in June 1771, the degree of A.B. was conferred on seven, and the degree of M.D. on four candidates. Such has been the prosperity of this medical institution, the first founded in our country, that from the most accurate calculation that can be made, up to 1830, it is computed that between seven and eight thousand young men have received instruction within its walls since its establishment; and from this source, the remotest parts of our union have been furnished with learned physicians, who are ornaments to their profession. During the four months' attendance on the lectures, the class expends not less than 200,000 dollars in the city of Philadelphia. As Dr. William Shippen was the first public lecturer in Philadelphia, having commenced his anatomical lectures there in the year 1762, and thus leading the van in an enterprise which has become so eminently successful to others in subsequent years, it may be curious now to learn the means by which he became qualified to be such a leader -- told in all the frank simplicity and naiveté of a father (himself a physician) sending forth his son as an adventurer for knowledge abroad, and as a candidate for future usefulness and fame at home. The letters and MS. papers of the father having been under my inspection, I have gleaned as follows, to wit : In September 1758, Dr. William Shippen, Sen., writes to several persons in England to speak of his son William, whom he then sends to London and France to perfect him in the medical art. "My son (says he) has had his education in the best college in this part of the country, and has been studying physic with me, besides which he has had the opportunity of seeing the practice of every gentleman of note in our city. But for want of that variety of operations and those frequent dissections which are common in older countries, I must send him to Europe. His scheme is to gain all the knowledge he can in anatomy, physic, and surgery. He will stay in London for the winter, and shall attend Mr. Hunter's anatomical lectures and private dissections, injections, &c., and at the same time go through a course of midwifery with Dr. Smellie; also enter a pupil in Guy's Hospital. As soon as the season is over he may go over to France and live with Dr. Leese in Rouen, and there study physic until he can pass an examination and take a degree. Then he may return to London, revisit the hospitals, and come home." At the same time his good father does not forget "that better part", and earnestly commends his son to the spiritual guidance and oversight of his beloved friend, the Rev. George Whitfield. Under such auspices, Dr. Wm. Shippen, Jr., was enabled to return to his country a doctor indeed, and ably qualified by his teaching to raise a school of eminent pupils in the healing art. He directed his chief attention to the department of anatomy. His first public advertisement reads thus, viz. : "Dr. Wm. Shippens anatomical lectures will begin to-morrow evening, at his father's house in Fourth street. Tickets for the course at five pistoles each. Gentlemen who incline to see the subject prepared for the lectures, and to learn the art of dissecting, injecting, &c., are to pay five pistoles additional." Thus the lectures were begun in a private house in the year 1762, with only ten students. But he lived to enlarge his theatre -- to address a class of two hundred and fifty persons, and to see medical lectures diffused into five branches -- and Edinburgh itself rivalled here at home ! He died at Germantown in 1808, and was succeeded by Dr. Wistar. Who now knows the locality of this first lecture-room ! Or does any body care to transfer their respect for the man, to the place where he began his career ! It was on the premises late Yohe's hotel, in North Fourth street, a little above High street -- then sufficiently out of town, with a long back yard leading to the alley opening out upon High street along the side of Warner's bookstore -- by this they favoured the ingress and egress of students in the shades of night. It was at first a terrific and appalling school to the good citizens. It was expected to fill the peaceful town with disquieted ghosts -- mobbing was talked of, and not a little dreaded. It was therefore pretended that they contented themselves with the few criminal subjects they could procure; which was further countenanced by a published permission to him, by authority, to take the bodies of suicides. As the dead tell no tales, the excitement of the day subsided, and the affair was dropped in general parlance -- save among the boys, with whom it lingered long -- "And awful stories chain'd the wondering ear ! Of fancy led, at midnight's fearful hour, With startling step, we saw the dreaded corse !" The tales had not subsided when I was a boy, when, for want of facts, we surmised them. The lonely desolate house is yet standing by the stone bridge over the Cohocksink, on north Third street, which all the boys of Philadelphia deemed the receptacle of dead bodies, where their flesh was boiled, and their bones burnt down for the use of the faculty ! The proofs were apparent enough : -- It was always shut up -- showed no out-door labourers -- had a constant stream of running water to wash off remains -- had "No Admittance", for ever grimly forbidding, at the door; and from the great chimney about once a fortnight issued great volumes of black smoke, filling the atmosphere all the country round with a most noisome odour -- offensive and deadly as yawning graves themselves ! Does nobody remember this ! Have none since smiled in their manhood to find it was a place for boiling oil and making hartshorn -- took thus far out of town to save the delicate sensations of the citizens, by the considerate owner Christopher Marshall ! The whole mysteries of the place, and the supposed doings of the doctors was cause enough for ghost's complaints like these : "The body-snatchers ! they have come And made a snatch at me; It's very hard them kind of men Won't let a body be ! Don't go to weep upon my grave And think that there I be; They haven't left an atom there Of my anatomy !" But more certain discoveries were afterwards made at Dr. Shippen's anatomical theatre in his yard. Time, which demolishes all things, brought at last all his buildings under the fitful change of fashion "to pull down and build greater" -- when, in digging up the yard for cellar foundations, they were surprised to find a grave-yard and its materials not in any record of the city ! A thing in itself as perplexing to the moderns who beheld the bones, as it had been before the trouble of the ancients ! In 1765, it is publicly announced that "Dr. John Morgan, professor of medicine in the College of Philadelphia, is to join Dr. William Shippen, Jr., in delivering lectures. Dr. Shippen to lecture on anatomy, and Dr. Morgan on the materia medica." Thus forming the first combination of lectures in Philadelphia, and indeed in the then colonies -- a precedence to which Philadelphia still owes her renown in medical science. In 1768, the name of Dr. Bond is also publicly announced as to lecture on clinical practice, and Dr. Kuhn on the materia medica -- being so much added by the College to the two former lectures. In 1769, Dr. Benjamin Rush is made professor of chemistry to the College, and at the same time Thomas Penn, Esq., makes a present of a complete chemical apparatus. In looking back through the "long vista of years that have fled", the memory and the fancy can recreate the imagery of some of the men and things that were. My friend Lang Syne, whose imagination is lively, and his pen picturesque, has portrayed the remembered physicians of his youthful day, in a manner which may gratify those who are not wholly absorbed in their own contemplations, to wit : One of the earliest, and one of the most vivid recollections in this city, by the reminiscent, is of the person of old Dr. Chovet, living at the time, directly opposite the (now) "White Swan" in Race above Third street. [It might justly surprise the present generation to know that, in 1778, this Dr. Chovet advertised his anatomical lectures to take place at his amphitheatre at his dwelling house in Water street, near the old ferry -- to continue during the winter -- his charge three guineas. Observe, that Water street then, was the chief place of residence to the best families of the business class.] He it was, who by his genius, professional skill and perserverance, finally perfected those wonderful (at the time) anatomical preparations in wax, which since his death, have been in possession of the Pennsylvania Hospital. These anatomical preparations, the very sight of which is calculated to fill the mind with solemn awe, while beholding not only the streets, but the lanes, alleys and inner chambers of the microcosm or little world of man, was beheld by the writer only some few years since, forcing back upon the memory the once aged appearance of the doctor, contrasted with the exertions made by him, and apparent to every one who beheld him, to appear active and sprightly in business, cleaving as it were, to his "last sand". This aged gentleman and physician was almost daily to be seen pushing his way, in spite of his feebleness in a kind of hasty walk, or rather shuffle; his aged head and straight white hair, bowed and hanging forward beyond the cape of his black old-fashioned coat, mounted by a small cocked hat, closely turned upon the crown upwards behind, but projectingly, and out of all proportion, cocked before and seemingly the impelling cause of his anxious forward movements; his aged lips closely compressed (sans teeth) together, were in continual motion as though he were munching somewhat all the while; his golden-headed Indian cane, not used for his support, but dangling by a knotted black silken string from his wrist; the ferrule of his cane, and the heels of his capacious shoes well lined in winter time with thick woollen cloth, might be heard jingling and scraping the pavement at every step; he seemed on the street always as one hastening as fast as his aged limbs would permit him, to some patient dangerously ill, without looking at any one passing him to the right or left; he was always spoken of as possessing much sarcastic wit; and also, for using expletives in his common conversation, in the opinion of those who spoke on the subject, to be neither useful nor ornamental. [In the above case of Dr. Chovet, we have a striking illustration of the changes of practice. Here was an AGED physician doing all his visits ON FOOT -- but now, all think they MUST visit in their carriage.] An anecdote strikingly illustrative of the latter, might here be given of the doctor, and a member of the Society of Friends who had lent him his great coat to shelter him on his way home from the then falling rain. The coat was loaned by the Friend to the doctor with a moral condition annexed; which, upon the return of the coat, the doctor declared he had religiously performed -- adding, in facetious vein, a supplemental remark to the Friend, descriptive of an unusual propensity he found himself to be labouring under, during the whole time he had been enveloped in a plain coat -- having so said and done, they separated on the most friendly terms, with a hearty laugh on both sides. -- Does none remember ? Dr. Thomas Say lived in Moravian (now Bread) street, on the west side, near Arch street. Having to pass that way frequently to school, his person became very familiar. In fair weather, he was to be seen almost daily, standing, dressed in a light drab suit with his arms gently folded, and leaning with one shoulder against the cheek of the door, for the support evidently of his rather tall and slender frame -- now weakened by age. He was the same Dr. Thomas Say who, many years before, had been in a trance of three days' continuance; during which time (whether in the body or out of the body, he could not tell) he beheld many wonderful matters, as is fully detailed in the "Life of Thomas Say" now extant and written by his son Benjamin, deceased. He was of fair complexion, and his thinly spread hair of silvery white, slightly curled over and behind the ears -- in appearance very venerable, in his speech and manner, mild and amiable -- as is well remembered concerning him while he stood one day affectionately admonishing some boys, who had gazed perhaps too rudely at the aged man, of whom they had heard probably, that he had seen a vision. He mildly advised them to pass on their way -- pressing, at the same time, and with lasting effect, upon the mind of one of them, never to stare (said he) at strangers, and aged men. The next aged physician of the Old School was Dr. Redman, who lived next door to Dr. Ustick's Baptist meeting-house, in Second near Arch street. The doctor had retired from practice altogether, and was known to the public eye as an antiquated looking old gentleman, usually habited in a broad-skirted dark coat, with long pocket flaps, buttoned across his under dress; wearing in strict conformity with the cut of the coat, a pair of Baron Steuben's military shaped boots, coming above the knees for riding; his hat flapped before and cocked up smartly behind, covering a full bottomed powdered wig -- in the front of which might be seen an eagle-pointed nose, separating a pair of piercing black eyes -- his lips, exhibiting (but only now and then) a quick motion, as though at the moment he was endeavouring to extract the essence of a small quid. As thus described, in habit and person, he was to be seen almost daily in fair weather, mounted on a short, fat, black switch-tailed horse, and riding for his amusement and exercise in a brisk racking canter, about the streets and suburbs of the city. He was so well known, that in his rambles about the town, on foot, he would step in without ceremony, at the first public office which presented itself to his view, and upon his seeing any vacant desk or writing table, set himself down with a pleasant nod to some one present, and begin writing his letter or memorandum. One day, while thus occupied in his writing, he was suddenly addressed by a very forward presuming person, who wanted of him some medical advice gratis. Finding himself thus interrupted, he lifted the corner of his wig, as usual, and desired the person to repeat his question, which he did, loudly, as follows : -- "Doctor ! what would you advise, as the best thing for a pain in the breast ?" The wig having dropped to its proper place, the doctor, after a seemingly profound study for a moment on the subject, replied, "Oh ! ay -- I will tell you, my good friend -- the very best thing I could advise you to do for a pain in the breast is to -- consult your physician !" These three veterans of the city, in the science and practice of medicine in the time of the colonies -- like three remaining apples, separate and lonely upon the uppermost bough of a leafless tree, were finally shaken to the ground by the unrelenting wind of death, and gathered to the "narrow house" as very readily surmised by the reader, no doubt. My friend, Mr. P., another Philadelphian, long residing in New York, has also communicated his reminiscences of some of the Philadelphia faculty, as they stood impressed upon his boyish judgment and feelings, which I shall add, to wit : "I wish to mention the names of a few physicians in my day, Dr. William Shippen, Sen., resided, when he left off practice, in Germantown; at the age of ninety he would ride in and out of the city, on horseback, full gallop, without an overcoat in the coldest weather. Dr. Thomas Bond died in 1784; always rode in a small phaeton; resided in Second street near Norris' alley. Dr. Redman resided near the Baptist Meeting in Second street; a small black filly had the honour to carry the doctor on his visits, and would await his return at the door of the patient; the doctor would kindly lend his creature, but she was sure to throw the rider. Dr. Chovet, a most eccentric man, full of anecdote, and noted for his propensity for what is now termed quizzing, resided in Race street above Third street. The doctor was what was termed a tory; was licensed to say and do what he pleased, at which no one took umbrage. He one day entered the old Coffee-house, corner of Market and Front streets, with an open letter in his hand; it was 12 o'clock, change hour, the merchants all assembled. On seeing the doctor, they surrounded him, inquiring what news he had in that letter, which he stated he had just received by a king's ship arrived at New York. In reply to the inquiry, he said that the letter contained information of the death of an old cobbler in London, who had his stall in one of the by-streets, and asked the gentlemen what they supposed the cobbler had died worth? One said £5000, another £10,000, and another £20,000 sterling. `No, gentlemen, no, you are all mistaken. Not one farthing, gentlemen', running out, laughing at the joke at the expense of the collected mercantile wisdom of the city. Another time, having been sent for by the Spanish minister, Don Juan, (I forget his name) who resided in old Mr. Chew's house in Third, between Walnut and Spruce streets, the weather being rather unpleasant, the ambassador ordered his carriage to the door to convey the doctor home -- the doctor, full of fun and joke, directed the coachman to drive by the Coffee-house, which, as he approached, was perceived by the merchants who immediately drew up in order, hats off, to pay their respects to the Don, as minister from a friendly power. The doctor kept himself close back in the carriage until directly opposite the Coffee-house; the gentlemen all bowing and scraping, when he pops out his head -- `Good morning, gentlemen, good morning; I hope you are all well; thank you, in the name of his majesty, King George', and drove off, laughing heartily at having again joked with the Philadelphia whigs." The few physicians mentioned in the preceding notices as having their pacing nags, or a little wheeled vehicle, are intended as rarities among the profession. It was only an indulgence awarded to the aged and infirm to submit to motive assistance. Any young man resorting to it would have endangered his reputation and practice. Dr. Rush has told his friends how often he visited Kensington on foot to serve poor sick persons, from whom he expected nothing directly, but by the fame of which, in his successful practice in their behalf, he indirectly was rewarded with his future choice of practice there. [The very residence of such a man as Dr. Rush shows by its locality how little they regarded horses or stabling them -- it being a bank house on the east side of Front street above Walnut. It was long a fashionable location for a physician or gentleman, although it had not one foot of yard.] It was not only to walk far, for smaller reward, but the time was before the fashion of umbrellas and boots, that they had to wade through unpaved lanes and alleys without defence against storms of rain, hail, or snow ! As if it were inferred that men who professed to heal all maladies, should themselves be invulnerable to the assaults of disease. In extreme olden time, occasional indulgence was enjoyed by the faculty, under an oiled linen hat cover, and a large shoulder cape of like material, called a roquelaure -- it was intended as a kind of storm shed to shield the upper works only. [Old Mrs. Shoemaker, who saw them in use, said ministers also used them. It hooked round the neck and descended to the loins loose as a cloak all round.] Wet feet or drenched lower limbs, with the then hardy sons of Esculapious, were nothing ! -- or if regarded, it was only as the Indians feel for feeble children -- by concluding that those who could not encounter the necessary exposures of the hunter's life were not worth the keeping. In tracing some of the leading features of our domestic history of medicine, there is one modern and modish change of practice which has almost subverted all former scruples of sex, and given a large accession of business to the faculty. We mean the transfer of midwifery from the hands of the grandames to professional men. This very thing shows the powerful ascendency of custom. The same ladies are still living who once, in all cases short of the extremities of death, would have resisted the approach of the man-midwife, yet came at length to submit themselves to that assistance. Its introduction as a practice (prevalent as it now is) came into use only since the year 1790. This new measure was deemed in necessary accordance with our new notions of foreign luxuries -- in furniture, equipage and dress, and from the same causes, to wit : the greatly increased ability to pay for whatever was deemed modish and novel. The innovation being once adopted in high life, soon "infected downward all the graduated scale" till, finally the whole service is engrossed by obstetric professors. Mrs. Lydia Robinson, at the age of 70 years, in 1769, had in her services of thirty-five years at and near New London, Connecticut, "delivered 1200 children, and never lost one". Can any skill in science surpass that ! Before this era, the crisis of all our mothers, and the hopes of all our forefathers, was committed to "female women" who, if they had not the science of their successors, had a potent and ready assistant in Dame Nature, (for reason as we will, facts are stubborn things) and it must be conceded, that the issue, in such hands, was equally satisfactory to all concerned. Now, the gentlemen of the profession, always men of influence and character, are known in every street and public hall; but then there was a kind of mysterious concealment of the good grandame, that made her, when rarely seen or spoken of among the younger members of the family, a being of some nondescript relation -- something `sui-generis', and as mysterious in her visits or goings abroad as her occupation itself. Some of their names and persons pass in review while we write, but we are aware that they are things not to be expatiated upon with the present generation. But as the office and the service were worthy they had their esteem in days of "Lang Syne" -- even to publish elegiac praise. On the 6th of January 1729-30 was published in the Gazette, the decease of such a useful matron, to wit : "Yesterday died Mary Broadway, aged 100 years -- a noted midwife -- her constitution wore well in the last, and she could read without spectacles". On this worthy woman was afterwards published an elegy, which in a short time went through two editions. Who can now show it ! Perchance from the muse of Aquilla Rose, or from the poet Keimer ! With that loss we have also to deplore the extinction of the first published medical tract in our annals -- an essay of the year 1740, by Dr. Thomas Cadwallader, on the iliac passion ! But a more modern grandame, drawn to my hand, may close this notice, to wit : "At Second and Dock streets I would remember the house once occupied by Mrs. Lydia Darrach, a whig of the Revolution, who assisted in increasing the census of the city more than any other lady of her profession". Finally, if they thus differed in their services afforded to our mothers, our mothers also in turn as much differed in their former mode of assisting the little strangers, by means called killing by the moderns, maugre all which, we shouted it out and lived ! {Note : maugre = in spite of} "The babe then must be straitly rolled round the waist with a linen swathe and loaded with clothes until it could scarcely breathe, and when unwell or fretful was dosed with spirits and water stewed with spicery. The mother in the mean time was refreshed with rum, either buttered or made into hot tiff !" In all this the initiated sufficiently know the marked dissimilar views and practice now ! With the increase of luxuries have come in the indolent habits of repose and table indulgences, creating a new disease quite unknown to our robust ancestors. They had never heard of the present modish name of "dyspepsia". Indigestion, if it troubled them after occasional excess in banqueting, was quickly cast off by the stout efforts of Dame Nature. Men and maidens then walked much more than they rode, and pursued active employments quite as much as they read. They had not then learned to cloy themselves with the varieties of the restorateur's art : -- French stimulants were unknown. Even the sedentary habits of study were then unafflicted, and the idea of a "disease of genius" now so called, had never been placed to the maladies of professional men. The following presents a list of all the physicians and surgeons as they existed in Philadelphia soon after the peace of 1783, to which is affixed their residences; which are here added for the sake of showing what were then deemed their best locations for business, to wit : James Batchelor, Water street, between Almond and Catharine streets. Barnabas Binney, Arch street, between Fourth and Fifth streets. Bond & Wilson, Second street, between Market and Arch streets. John Baker, Dentist, Second street, between Walnut and Spruce streets. John Carson, Third street, between Chestnut and Walnut streets. Wm. Clarkson, Front street, between Union and Pine streets. Gerrardus Clarkson, Pine street, between Front and Second streets. Abraham Chovet, Race street, between Third and Fourth streets. William Curry, corner Second and Pine streets. Benjamin Duffield, Front street, between South and Almond streets. James Dunlop, Market street, between Fifth and Sixth streets. Nathan Dorsey, Front street, between Walnut and Spruce streets. Samuel Duffield, Chestnut street, between Second and Third streets. John Foulk, Front street, between Market and Arch streets. George Glentworth, Arch street, between Front and Second streets. Peter Glentworth, Front street, between Market and Arch streets. Joseph Goss, Front street, between Walnut and Spruce streets. Saml. K. Griffith, Union street, between Second and Third streets. James Gardette, Dentist, corner Third and Pear streets. James Hutchinson, Second street, between Walnut and Spruce streets. Robert Harris, Spruce street, between Second and Third streets. John Jones, Market street, between Second and Third streets. Michael Jennings, Moravian alley, (Bread street). Jackson & Smith, Second street, between Market and Chestnut sts. John Kehlme, Race street, between Second and Third streets. Adam Kucher, Second street, between Chestnut and Walnut sts. George Lyle, Front street, near Poole's bridge. John Morgan, Corner Second and Spruce streets. John Morris, Chestnut street, between Front and Second streets. Peter Peres, a French gentleman, north Second street, corner of Brown street, Northern Liberties. Joseph Phiffer, a German gentleman, Second street, between Vine and Callowhill sts. Thos. Park, Fourth street, between Chestnut and Market streets. Benjamin Rush, Second street, between Chestnut and Walnut sts. Fredk. Rapp, Third street, between Race and Vine streets. John Redman, Second street, between Market and Arch streets. Benj. Say, Second street, between Arch and Race streets. Wm. Smith, Arch street, between Front and Second streets. Saml. Shober, Front street, between South and Almond streets. Thos. Shaw, corner Front and Callowhill streets. Wm. Shippen, Second street, between Walnut and Spruce streets. Benj. Vanleer, Water street, between Race and Vine streets. Of the Calamities of the Profession. A few words may be added, because exemption from error or injustice is not the lot of humanity. An annalist, without ill-nature, may tell all. The name of Dr. E.J.J., chemist, has not been previously introduced to the notice of the readers as among the preceding roll, his being an exempt case, and himself 'un enfant perdu'. He had the misfortune greatly to overplay his part in a case of intended merriment, which set the whole town in commotion and indignation. The circumstances are strange : -- In the year 1737 an apprentice lad living with the said Dr. J. had expressed a desire to be initiated into the mysteries of masonry. The doctor and some of his friends affected to become operators, with a design to make their sport of his simplicity and credulity. He was blindfolded, and was to say certain profane words to the devil. They then administered to him a cup, which some said was in imitation of a sacrament, in which was a strong dose of physic. Being led to kiss a book to swear upon, he was made to kiss a substitute, intended to much increase the rude sport of the company. Then spirits was set on fire, having a deposit of salt, intended to cause the appearance called "snap dragon", which gives to every face near it the pale hue of death. [Hanks in his late expose of masonry, says he saw this thing practised in his lodge in Virginia.] The lad was here uncovered so as to see them, but not being terrified, as they expected or wished, although one of the company was clothed in a cow's hide and horns, Dr. J., as if infatuated with his mischievous fancies, actually cast the pan of remaining burning spirits upon the poor lad's bosom ! This fatal revel terminated in the death of the young man -- for after languishing three days in delirium he died. The facts thus lengthened by the proofs in the case, have been told as they appeared in substance at the trial -- for the act being a felony in its nature caused the arrest of the doctor, and his distress in his turn. As he and his companions were withal Free Masons, it brought reproach upon the fraternity. They had therefore to repel it by holding a special meeting and publicly expressing their abhorrence of the act. On this occasion an article appeared in the Mercury of 1737-8, against Benjamin Franklin, who was privy to some of the affair, and his vindication is given in his paper, No. 479, entirely exculpating himself. At the era of the revolution, Dr. John Kearsley, although otherwise a citizen of good character and standing, became exposed to the scoffs and insults of the people, by his ardent loyalism : being naturally impetuous in his temper, he gave much umbrage to the whigs of the day, by his rash expressions. It was intended therefore to sober his feelings by the argument of "tar and feathers". He was seized at midday, at his own door in Front a little below High street by a party of the militia, and in his attempt to resist them he received a bayonet wound in his hand. Mr. Graydon, a bystander, has told the sequel. He was forced into a cart, and amidst a multitude of boys and idlers, paraded through the streets to the tune of the Rogue's March. The concourse brought him before the Coffee-house, where they halted; the doctor, foaming with rage and indignation, without a hat, his wig dishevelled, and himself bloody from his wounded hand, stood up in the cart and called for a bowl of punch; when so vehement was his thirst that he swallowed it all ere he took it from his lips. "I was shocked": says Graydon, "at the spectacle, thus to see a lately respected citizen so vilified". It is grateful to add, however, that they proceeded to no further violence, thus proving that a Philadelphia mob has some sense of restraint. But although the doctor was allowed to escape the threatened tar and feathers, the actual indignity so inflamed and maddened his spirit, that his friends had to confine him for a time as an insane. He died during the war -- a resident at Carlisle. In contra- distinguishing him from his once popular uncle of the same name and profession, he was usually called "tory doctor". OF QUACKS The forced display and quackery of medicine, as we now see it in staring capitals, saluting us with impudent front at every turn, is an affair of modern growth and patronage -- all full of promise for renovating age ! -- "Roses for the cheeks And lilies for the brows of faded age, Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald !" On topics like these, our simple forefathers were almost wholly silent. Yet we have on record some "fond dreams of hope" of good Mrs. Sibylla Masters, (wife of Thomas) who went out to England in 1711-12, to make her fortune abroad, by the patent and sale of her "Tuscarora rice" so called. It was her preparation from our Indian corn, made into something like our hominy, and which she then strongly recommended as a food peculiarly adapted for the relief and recovery of consumptive and sickly persons. After she had procured the patent, her husband set up a water-mill and suitable works near Philadelphia, to make it in quantities for sale. There was much lack of consumptive people in those robust days. Possibly some one may now take the hint, and revive it for the benefit of the sufferers and themselves ! About the year 1739, I saw much said in the gazettes of the newly-discovered virtues of the Seneka rattlesnake root; and while the excitement was high, Dr. John Tennant got £100 from the Virginia colony, for proving its use in curing the pleurisy. In October 1745, Francis Torres, a Frenchman, (probably the first, and for a long time lonely and neglected quack in our annals) advertises the sale of the Chinese stone, with some powders, both to be applied outwardly, and to effect strange cures indeed -- all ably proved by his certificates ! The stone was a chemical preparation; when applied to the bite of a rattlesnake or any such poison, it cured immediately. It could draw off humours, cancers, swellings, pains, rheumatisms, toothache; greatly mitigated labour pains, and pangs of the gout, &c. Might it not be a good investment to again introduce some from China ? Such a stone would prove the philosopher's stone -- like Midas finger, converting what it touched to gold -- the usual desideratum in those who sell. LOCATION OF FIRST HOSPITALS, &C. When city physicians made their calls on foot, it is obvious that it was a convenience to have their hospital and poorhouse much nearer than they now are. The hospital, therefore, a two-story house of double front, lately standing, was the hired house of Judge Kinsey, on the south side of High street, fourth house west of Fifth street, having then much open ground and fruit trees in the rear. The poorhouse, at the same time, was near the centre of an open meadow, extending from Spruce to Pine, and from Third to Fourth streets. In the time of the war, as has been told under its appropriate head, they made use of several empty private houses for the reception of the sick soldiery by the camp fever. The house of the present Schuylkill Bank, at the south-east corner of Sixth and High streets, then deserted by the tory owner, Lawyer Galloway, was filled with those feeble men of war. At the same time, the large building in Chestnut street (late Judge Tilghman's) was also so used. YELLOW FEVER OF 1793. No history of Philadelphia would be complete, which should overlook the eventful period of 1793, when the fatal yellow fever made its ravages there. It is an event which should never be forgotten; because, whether we regard it as a natural or a spiritual scourge, (effected by the divine power) it is a calamity which may revisit us and which, therefore, should be duly considered, or we suffer it to lose its proper moral influence. The medical histories and official accounts of that disastrous period are in print before the public, and in general terms, give the statement of the rise, progress, and termination of the disease, and the lists of the weekly, monthly, and total deaths : but the ideas of the reader are too generalized to be properly affected with the measure of individual sufferings; therefore, the facts which I have preserved on that memorable occasion, are calculated to supply that defect, and to bring the whole home to people's interests and bosoms. Let the reader think of a desolation which shut up nearly all the usual churches; their pastors generally fled, and their congregations scattered; the few that still assembled in small circles for religious exercises, not without just fears that their assembling might communicate the disease from one to the other. No light and careless hearers then appeared, and no flippant preaching to indulge itching ears : all, all was solemn and impressive. They then felt and thought they should not all meet again on a like occasion; death, judgment, and eternity then possessed the minds of all who so assembled. Look, then, in which way you would through the streets, and you saw the exposed coffins on chair-wheels, either in quick motion, or you saw the wheels drawn before houses to receive their pestilential charge. Then family, friends, or mourners scarcely ever accompanied them; and no coffins were adorned to please the eye; but coarse, stained wood of hasty fabric received them all. The graves were not dug singly, but pits which might receive many before entire filling up, were opened. In the streets you met no cheerful, heedless faces, but pensive downcast eyes and hurried steps, hastening to the necessary calls of the sick. Then the haunts of vice were shut up; drunkenness and revelling found no companions; tavern doors grew rusty on their hinges; the lewd or merry song was hushed; lewdness perished or was banished, and men generally called upon God. Men saluted each other as if doubting to be met again, and their conversation for the moment was about their several losses and sufferings. The facts of "moving incidents" in individual cases, prepared for the present article, have been necessarily excluded from lack of room, but may hereafter be consulted on pages 210 to 213 in my MS. Annals in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Chapter 18. THE POST "He comes ! the herald of a noisy world, News from all nations, lumb'ring at his back !" There is nothing in which the days of "Auld Lang Syne" more differ from the present, than in the astonishing facilities now afforded for rapid conveyances from place to place, and of course, in the quick delivery of communications by the mail. Before the year 1775, five to six weeks were consumed in writing to and receiving an answer from Boston. All the letters were conveyed on horseback, at a snail-pace gait -- slow, but sure. The first stage between Boston and New York commenced on the 24th of June 1772, to run once a fortnight as "a useful, new, and expensive undertaking"; "to start on the 13th, and to arrive either to or from either of those places on the 25th" -- thus making thirteen days of travel ! * Now, it travels the same distance in fourteen hours ! The first stage between New York and Philadelphia, begun in 1756, occupied three days, and now it accomplishes it in six hours ! * "Madam Knight's Journal" of the year 1704, shows that she was two weeks in riding with the postman as her guide, from Boston to New York. In most of the towns she saw Indians. She often saw wampum passing as money among the people; but 6d. a meal, at inns, &c. Tobacco was used and sold under the name of "black junk". Mrs. Shippen, soon after her marriage in 1702, came from Boston to Philadelphia on horseback, bringing a baby on her lap. Nor are those former prolonged movements peculiar to us. It was even so with our British ancestors, not very long before us ! We have a specimen of their sluggish doings in this matter, as late as the year 1712. "The New Castle Courant" of that year contains a stage advertisement, saying that "all who desire to pass from Edinboro' to London, or from London to Edinboro', let them repair to Mr. John Baillie's &c., every other Saturday and Monday, at both of which places they may be received in a stage coach, which performs the whole journey in thirteen days, without stoppage (if God permit) having eighty able horses to perform the whole stage". Now the same distance is performed in forty-six hours ! On the whole, it is manifest the whole civilized world have learned to move every where with accelerated motion ! The facts, as they were in the olden time, are to the following effect, to wit : -- In July 1683, William Penn issued an order for the establishment of a post office, and granted to Henry Waldy, of Tekonay, authority to hold one, and "to supply passengers with horses from Philadelphia to New Castle, or to the Falls". The rates of postage were, to wit : -- "Letters from : the Falls to Philadelphia, 3d. -- to Chester, 5d. -- to New Castle, 7d. -- to Maryland, 9d. -- and from: Philadelphia to Chester, 2d. -- to New Castle, 4d. -- and to Maryland 6d." This post went once a week, and was to be carefully published "on the meeting-house door, and other public places". These facts I found in the MSS. of the Pemberton family. A regular act for a post-office at Philadelphia was first enacted in the year 1700. Colonel John Hamilton, of New Jersey, and son of Governor Andrew Hamilton, first devised the post-office scheme for British America, for which he obtained a patent, and the profits accruing. Afterwards, he sold it to the crown, and a member of parliament was appointed for the whole, with a right to have his substitute reside in New York. In December 1717, Jonathan Dickinson writes to his correspondent, saying, "We have a settled post from Virginia and Maryland unto us, and goes through all our northern colonies, whereby advices from Boston unto Williamsburg, in Virginia, is completed in four weeks from March to December, and in double that time in the other months of the year". In 1722, the Gazette says -- "We have been these three days expecting the New York post, as usual, but he is not yet arrived", although three days over his time ! In 1727, the mail to Annapolis is opened this year to go once a fortnight in summer and once a month in winter, via New Castle, &c., to the Western Shore, and back to the Eastern Shore; managed by William Bradford in Philadelphia, and by William Parks in Annapolis. In December 1729, the Gazette announces that "while the New York post continues his fornight stage, we shall publish but once a week as in former times". In the summer it went once a week. In 1738, Henry Pratt is made riding postmaster for all the stages between Philadelphia and Newport, in Virginia; to set out in the beginning of each month, and to return in twenty-four days. To him, all merchants, &c., may confide their letters and other business, he having given security to the postmaster general. In this day we can have but little conception of his lonely rides through imperfect roads; of his laying out at times all night, and giving his horse a range of rope to browse, while he should make his letter-pack his pillow, on the ground ! In 1744, it is announced in the Gazette, that the "northern post begins his fornight stages on Tuesday next, for the winter season". In 1745, John Dalley, surveyor, states that he has just made survey of the road from Trenton to Amboy, and had set up marks at every two miles to guide the traveller. It was done by private subscriptions, and he proposes to do the whole road from Philadelphia to New York in the same way, if a sum can be made up ! In 1748, when Professor Kalm arrived at Philadelphia from London, many of the inhabitants came on board his vessel for letters. Such as were not called for, were taken to the Coffee-house, where every body could make inquiry for them, thus showing that, then, the post-office did not seem to claim a right to distribute them as now. In 1753, the delivery of letters by the penny post was first begun. At the same time began the practice of advertising remaining letters in the office. The letters for all the neighbouring counties went to Philadelphia, and lay there till called for -- thus, letters for Newtown, Bristol, New Castle &c., are to be called for in Philadelphia. Even at that late period, the northern mail goes and returns but once a week in summer, and once a fortnight in winter, just as it did twenty-five years before. But in October 1754, a new impulse is given, so as to start for New York thereafter on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; and in the winter once a week. This, therefore, marks the period of a new era in the mail establishment of our country. It owed this impulse, extending also to Boston, to the management of our Franklin, made postmaster general. In 1755, the postmaster general, Benjamin Franklin, publishes, that to aid trade &c., he gives notice, that hereafter, the winter northern mail from Philadelphia to New England, which used to set out but once a fortnight, shall start once a week all the year round -- "whereby answers may be obtained in letters between Philadelphia and Boston, in three weeks, which used to require six weeks ! " In 1758, newspapers which aforetime were carried post free per mail, will, by the reason of their great increase, be changed thereafter to the small price of 9d. a year, for fifty miles, and 1s.6d. for one hundred miles. This was most probably, the private emolument of the rider; the papers themselves not having been mailed at all, it is probable. {Note : emolument = form of compensation} Finally, in 1774, which brings colonial things nearly to its final close, by the war of Independence, soon after, we read that "John Perkins engages to ride post to carry the mail once a week to Baltimore, and will take along or bring back led horses or any parcels." Immediately after the second Congress met in May 1775, they appointed a committe to report a scheme of a post "for conveying letters and intelligence through this continent". In July following, an establishment was made under a postmaster general, to be located at Philadelphia -- "he to form a line of posts from Falmouth, New England, to Savannah, in Georgia, with cross posts where needful". Such a postmaster general had $1000 per annum, and a secretary and comptroller at $340 each -- a small affair indeed then ! Benjamin Franklin was this postmaster general. In the following year, the office was conferred on Richard Bache. To carry the mails, riders were appointed for every twenty-five miles, to deliver from one to the other, and return to their starting places, they to travel day and night and to be faithful men and true. At the same time it was ordered that three advice boats should be established, "one to ply between North Carolina and such ports as shall be most convenient to the place where Congress shall be sitting -- one other between the State of Georgia and the same port. The boats to be armed, and to be freighted by individuals for the sake of diminishing the public expense.". Sometimes carrying, perchance, oysters, potatoes, apples, &c. In November 1776, authority was given "to employ extra post riders between the armies, from their head quarters to Philadelphia". The pay of the postmaster general was increased to $2000, in April 1779. In 1779, the post was regulated "to arrive and set out twice a week at the place where Congress shall be sitting, to go as far as Boston, and to Charleston, South Carolina". In consequence of this alleged increase of business, the postmaster general was to receive $5000 per annum, and the comptroller $4000, meaning continental money, we presume, for in September 1780, the postmaster general actually received but $1000, and the comptroller but $500. The surveyor $533, in specie. Besides these two officers in the post department, there was a secretary, who acted as clerk to the postmaster general. There were three surveyors who were to travel and inspect the conduct of riders &c. There was also an inspector of dead letters, at a salary of $100 a year -- now there are four clerks constantly employed at this service, inspecting upwards of a million of dead letters in a year ! The post riders furnished their own horses and forage -- and when much exposed, through any country possessed by the enemy, they had an occasional military escort. Next : GAZETTES AND THE PRINTING PRESS.