Aristole's Master Piece in America: A Landmark in the Folklore of Medicine

Abstract

HE picture of popular medicine in eighteenthand early nine|teenth-century America is to be found in the random yet extensive XLattention given to the subject in the periodical press-in newspapers, magazines, almanacs-and in pamphlets and medical handbooks, both English and American, which were widely available. Generally there was a time lag between new medical discoveries and their assimilation into popular practice, except on the special occasions when certain respected leaders chose to disseminate medical information in the public prints.' Popular medicine was eclectic with material drawn indiscriminately from writers of ancient Greece and Rome; from the works of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century medical writers; and from the vast accretions of European folklore. There was no sense of medicine as a progressively developing science; emphasis was rather upon the tried and true with due note of popular medical fads such as tar water and other cureails.2 The most striking element in medicine of the period, both popular and learned, was that of folklore. In its peculiarly native aspects it appeared as Indian medicine. John Josselyn in New England's Rarities Discovered . . . (London, i672) and Cotton Mather in his Curiosa