SCHOPF AMERICAN TRAVELS. 



commonest motives among' the no less numerous mystery-usurers of 

 more civilized and enlightened nations. A speaking example of this 

 has been just now afforded in Pensylvania and adjacent parts by a 

 certain Martin, who boasted of possessing an all-powerful but secret 

 cure for cancer. This aroused the credulity and won the confidence 

 of his people so much the more because of the clever pretext that the 

 discovery of the root (according to him the medicine came from a 

 root) had been communicated to him in confidence by an old Indian 

 at Pittsburg. Although shrewd and impartial physicians at Philadel- 

 phia found good reasons to doubt the highly praised worth of the 

 remedy in genuine cases of cancer, the incredible number of imaginary 

 or pretended cases of the disease, news of which came in from all 

 parts, was astonishing. Never before had so much been heard of this 

 malady. But it was certain, that fear and prepossession caused the 

 anxious patient to fancy every obstinate or rooted impostume must 

 be cancerous, and it was to be expected of the purveyor of the famous 

 remedy that he, for his advantage, should claim, everything to be 

 cancer, and thus multiply his cures. However, it was by no means 

 clearly made out that the medicine used by him was in reality taken 

 from nothing but a root. But he sought to spread abroad this belief, 

 and almost every year made a journey to Pittsburg, pretending to 

 dig his mysterious root there from a particular hill on the Alonon- 

 gahela. Since I had come from Philadelphia, the attempt was made 

 to search out this root for me, and I was shown the region whence it 

 was believed he got the root ; I found there in great quantity the 

 Sangiiinaria canadensis (blood-root), and the Ranunculus sceleratus 

 L. Both roots have corrosive properties, and from many other cir- 

 cumstances too numerous to mention, it is highly probably that Martin 

 made use of one or the other, if only to conceal other and more power- 

 ful constituents mixed in, for it is supposed that he added arsenic to 

 his medicine.* Both plants are very common in other parts of Amer- 

 ica, and the blood-root is here and there used as a remedy for warts 

 and in cleansing slight sores. It is to be wished that the physicians 

 in America, who have already in other matters shown their patriotism 

 in many noble efforts, may also have a patriotic eye to the completer 

 knowlege and more general use of their native materia medica. It 

 betrays a,n unpardonable indifference to their fatherland to see them 

 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. They would then have the pleasure of showing their fellow-, 

 citizens how unreasonable it is to envy the poor Indians their reputed 

 science, and they would be working usefully for the community and 

 beneficently for the poor if they made it their business to further the 

 employment of the manifold wealth afforded by nature in its precious 

 gifts to them. 



* After Martin's death, in 1784, Dr. Rush discovered and published ^n the second volume of the 

 Transact. 0/ the Amer. Pkilos. Society, that his cancer-powder consisted of white arsenic and a plant 

 ingredient. 



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