151 



This being declined, they pushed on the work with char- 

 acteristic energy, and October 19, opened the Essex 

 Hospital to the public with the sanction of the Provincial 

 Assembly and under a rigid system of rules duly approved 

 by the "gentlemen selectmen of Salem and Marblehead." 



One of the selectmen of Salem was Timothy Pickering, 

 jr., at that time captain of the 4th Salem Company in the 

 1st Essex Regiment of Infantry, of which he soon after 

 became colonel. He threw himself with the same bold- 

 ness and enthusiasm into the controversies growing out of 

 the small-pox excitement of that year, as he did into 

 every other on which he entered. A prolific and telling 

 writer on military, patriotic, theological and political 

 topics, he was at the same time engaged in a furious 

 newspaper warfare with Rev. Dr. Whitaker in the Essex 

 Gazette, as to which was the better of the two prevailing 

 methods of inoculation, and had that summer made a 

 saddle-journey alone to Albany, in the Province of New 

 York, to secure the services of a celebrated surgeon 

 attached to the Eighth (King's) Regiment of Foot, who 

 practised the much-vaunted Suttonian method. This 

 step he took as overseer of a hospital for inoculation, 

 then building near Castle Hill in Salem, in "the great 

 pasture common," which seems to have been the second 

 institution of the kind opened in this province, the Essex 

 Hospital alone being completed before it. Of Mr. Gerry, 

 it is proper to say that he had in early life given much 

 attention to medicine, a profession to which he was in- 

 clined and for which his father destined him ; but the 

 troubles of his country summoned him to more con- 

 spicuous service. 



It will be seen that the sanction of the selectmen of 

 Marblehead for the opening of the Essex Hospital was 

 granted after an expression of public disapproval and dis- 



