4o8 TWING B. WIGGINS 



we have mentioned thus far, were men of wide culture for their 

 time, and would even now be so considered. We must not 

 omit to note that the rank and file of the doctors of that time 

 were very ignorant and poorly trained. Quackery was even 

 more flourishing then than now. The distance from Europe 

 and the lack of schools in America had so reduced the standard 

 of requirement that the lapse of over a century has hardly 

 availed to raise us to the European standard and to place phy- 

 sicians as a whole on a plane with the other professions. Bet- 

 ter schools than our best do not exist, but at the same time the 

 world contains no schools so bad as our worst. 



So much for the planting of medical science in America. 

 At first it compared favorably with what was known and prac- 

 ticed in Europe, for many of the pioneer doctors were men of 

 education and others returned to the old world for their train- 

 ing. As these first mentioned died out, there came a decline 

 in the standard, and aside from the foreigners who came to us, 

 and the few who went abroad to study, the medical attain- 

 ments of our ancestors were not high. Such a condition could 

 only be relieved by the rise of the schools and the spread of a 

 higher learning. Thus in the war of the American revolution 

 the physicians played but a sorry part. The services rendered 

 the troops were slight and crude. It is true drugs were few 

 and bad, and hospital supplies were not to be had. The one 

 disease which was successfully combated was smallpox, for 

 which inoculation was practiced. With the ending of the 

 Revolution the tale of American medicine really begins. The 

 colonies were provincial in science, dependent on Europe for 

 everything; but with the rising of the nation, the science of 

 medicine rose too ; and although many of our young men con- 

 tinued to study and travel in Europe, we early developed a 

 type of doctor of our own, and American practice became well 

 and favorably known more than a century ago. Medicine was 

 from the first a favorite profession. In colonial days theology, 

 the law, the army and the navy led it, but to political freedom 

 was added religious freedom, and the class that formerly re- 

 cruited the clergy came in a very few years to embrace med- 

 icine. That class was the strongest and finest that our race 

 has yet produced. They were virile and enterprising, country 



