Part 2

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.

In any event, there was no requirement that a dealer in drugs or a practicer of medicine must have a degree, a license, or any other recommendation than his own assurance of good results to the sick who applied to him. Some practitioners were on the modest side in offering their services; some were wholly unrestrained—even guaranteeing to cure cancer! The contrast stands out sharply in these two advertisements from the _Virginia Gazette_, the first in 1771 by Dr. 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 the _Ne plus ultra_ of the _Aesculapian_ Art, 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 and _French_ Disorder, 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.

_LINES OF SUCCESSION_

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 as well 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.” The _Virginia 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 the _Gazette_ in 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 acc^t of our confounded druggist here....” The “confounded druggist,” William Biers, was having his own difficulties making a living, however, and soon sold out to the partnership of James Carter and Andrew Anderson.

Colonial Williamsburg owns several of Dr. 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 “attend^ce in 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 4_s_ 6_d_, 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.

_PASTEUR & GALT_

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

WILLIAMSBURG, _April_ 15, 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 that _John M. Galt_ shall pay his particular Attention to Surgery, to whom our Friends are desired to apply on all such occasions, but will be advised and assisted by _W. Pasteur_ in 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:

April 14 To bleeding Vomit & Chamomile Flowers . . 7 . . 6 21 To Brimstone & Antimony . . 1 . . 3 22 To Purge Honey & Barley . . 4 . . 25 To Purge 2/6. 26 Sugar Candy 1/3 . . 3 . . 9 29 To bleeding & Pectoral Mixture . . 8 . . 6 30 To Visiting Mixture & Sago . . 9 . . 9 May 4 To Pectoral Mixture . . 6 . . 6 11 To 1 lb Balsam Honey . . 6 . . 3 19 To 1 lb D_o_. 6/3 25 Honey 1/0 31_st_ Cons. Roses 2/ . . 9 . . 3 June 1 To 1 lb Balsam Honey . . 6 . . 3 6 To Lenitive Electary & Salope . . 3 . . 6 15 To Castor Oil & Honey . . 6 . . 16 To Febrifuge & Bitter Decoctions . .12 . . 22 To Attend_ce_ & Bleedg in the Night . .10 . . 23 To Honey & Oxymel Squills . . 2 . . 6 July 10 To Honey 1/ 10_th_ Capillaire & Sago 5/6 . . 6 . . 6 August 20 To Vomit & Chamomile Flowers . . 2 . . 6 21 To Febrifuge Decoction repeated . .10 . . L 5. 16 . 6

The partnership lasted only three years, for reasons not 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 APOTHECARY SHOP_

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.

WILLIAMSBURG, _August_ 31, 1769. _Just imported in the_ Experiment, _Capt._ Hamlin,

A FRESH and compleat assortment of DRUGS and MEDICINES, chymical and galenical, which will be SOLD at very low advance for READY 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 in _London_. 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.

An apt example is the advertisement placed in the Virginia Gazette of September 21, 1769, by John Minson Galt at the outset of his long career (preceding page).

LONDON By The Kings Royall Patent Granted to

JANU^Y 26 1754 Rob.^t Turlington For His Invented Balsam of Life

Analysis of the Galt or any other advertisement of the time shows that the contents of a colonial apothecary shop fell into five categories: plant materials, animal extracts, metals and metallic derivatives, medical equipment, and prepared elixirs, pills, and the like.

Among the most popular of the prepared medicines—judging from the many advertisements of Dr. John Minson Galt in the years 1772-1774—were Dr. Keyser’s celebrated anti-venereal pills. These were backed by testimonials of two English and three French dukes, and Galt published lengthy accounts avowing that “the Patient is most effectually cured without any Inconvenience to himself, or being exposed to the Shame and Confusion of his Disaster being known to the nicest Observer.”

Not only were they supposed to cure syphilis, but “the happy effects of _Keyser’s_ pills have often been proved in white Swellings, asthmas, Suppressions of the Urine, in the Palsy, Apoplexies, Sciaticks, in the Green Sickness, and more especially in the Yaws.”

“Mrs. Rednapp’s red fit drops” were among Dr. Pasteur’s favorite patent medicines, and Daffy’s, Stoughton’s, and Bateman’s elixirs or drops were distributed not only by most colonial apothecaries but also by the keepers of general stores, ship captains, and others. In 1771 no fewer than nineteen packaged English medicines were offered for sale at the Post Office in Williamsburg!

The formulas for some of these, consisting of twenty or more separate ingredients, were printed in the principal pharmacopoeias and were commonly made up by doctors and apothecaries for their own use and for sale. Dr. Pasteur and Dr. James Carter both ordered quantities of empty bottles for Stoughton’s and Daffy’s compounds.

Dependence on imported patent medicines was a development that several observers deplored. Dr. Schoepf, for instance, thought American physicians should patriotically discontinue “making use almost wholly of foreign medicines, with which in large measure they might easily dispense, if they were willing to give their attention to home-products, informing themselves more exactly of the properties and uses of the stock of domestic medicines already known.”

Jefferson in his _Notes on the State of Virginia_ had listed twenty-one medicinal plants native to the state, and others before him had commented on the abundance of simple remedies afforded by the woods and marshes of tidewater Virginia. Indeed, it appears that colonial medical men in the seventeenth century had gathered the largest part of their own medicines close at hand, and that the growing importation of patent mixtures was matched by an increasing export of native drugs.

By the middle of the eighteenth century considerable quantities of at least eight medicinal plants were being shipped to England from Virginia, among them ipecacuanha, sassafras, balsam of Tolu, ginseng, and snakeroot. The last two formed the bulk of the export; of them more in a moment.

However, if there were in colonial towns “some apothecaries shops wainscotted or papered with advertisements, recommending quack medicines,” a large number of rural practitioners preferred to make up their remedies. “I do not apply to the Apothecaries Shops for my Means,” said the advertisement of one such, “I compact my own medicines myself. The produce of _Virginia_ Earth, with a few trifles besides, supports my Body, ... and many others besides, without bleeding, sweating, physicking, or Bitters.”

Whether used from conviction that such means were better, or because the imported medicines were too expensive, the result was the same: such mild cures were less likely to interfere with the healing course of nature than did the complex, often drastic, and sometimes revolting compounds of the leading English physicians.

From inventories of the estates of deceased apothecaries as well as from their newspaper advertisements comes evidence as to the equipment they kept and used in their shops. The remarkable thing is to see how little the essential items have changed over the course of the centuries—alike before and since the colonial era.

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