404 TWING B. WIGGINS 



physician was a great man, the practical, useful surgeon a 

 humble barber. That shows us why surgery so outstripped 

 medicine in real advance. The surgeon must prove what he 

 knew. The vaporings of theorists gave medicine no foundation 

 upon which to build. The first real progress in medicine began 

 when physicians learned that they must use their senses in 

 examination of those diseased, and when to these they could 

 add instruments of precision, a genuine advance began. 



In those early years the story of American medicine was 

 the story of the separate colonies, which were isolated and held 

 little communication with each other. Thus prior to the Rev- 

 olution there were six principal medical centers, those in New 

 York, Philadelphia, Boston, Charleston, Virginia and Mary- 

 land. 



In New York the names of M. La Montague and Golden, 

 lieutenant governor of New York, deserve mention. In Phil- 

 adelphia Dr. Thomas Wynne, Shippen and Morgan; Boylston 

 and Mather in Massachusetts, and Chalmers, Bull, Moultrie, 

 Lining and Garden in South Carolina. To these men American 

 medicine in this period owes much. They introduced inoc- 

 ulation for smallpox, made a beginning of our medical liter- 

 ature, established medical schools and laid the foundations 

 of hospitals. Boylston on the 27th of June, inoculated his 

 thirteen year old son with smallpox virus. This was six weeks 

 after Lady Mary Wortley Montague was the subject of the 

 first inoculation in London. It took great courage, even 

 though backed by the redoubtable Cotton Mather, for Boyl- 

 ston was antagonized by the doctors and the public. The re- 

 sults obtained by Boylston and his friends in the first year of 

 their work speak for themselves. Two hundred and eighty 

 six persons were inoculated, of whom six died or one in forty 

 eight; and of those who died, it was asserted three had con- 

 tracted smallpox before inoculation. In the same year five 

 thousand seven hundred and fifty nine took the disease in the 

 ordinary way and of these eight hundred and forty died, or one 

 in seven. For Boylston the glory was great, as he was called 

 to London where the inoculation controversy was still raging 

 with little of the same definite results seen in America. He 

 told his story and demonstrated his method, was made a mem- 



