Early American medical literature

Abstract

The first successful English settlement in North America was in Virginia in 1607. There, and in other early settlements in New England and Maryland, the first physicians were men who had trained abroad. With a few exceptions, they were apprentice-trained surgeons, who formed the great bulk of general practitioners in England. By and large, doctors of medicine from Oxford and Cambridge did not emigrate. Apprenticeship continued to be the chief method of training in the colonies, so that it is perhaps not surprising that we find no American medical literature written and published in the British colonies for nearly 100 years. Instead, physicians relied on a few imported books. From inventories at probate, we learn that Dr Henry Willoughby of Virginia in 1676 left 44 medical books (as well as 75 religious ones) and that the library of the Rev Thomas Teackle, who died in 1696 or 1697, included such