Physicians And Medical Societies.

Some of the remedies in vogue in the time of the Revolution would not be accepted by the profession, and hardly meet the approval of the general public of this day. I copy from the manuscript receipt-book of Capt. Davis Bevan,¹ used during July and the early part of August, 1779, when enlisting at Chester a crew for the privateer brigantine "Holker," of which vessel Bevan was captain of marines, the following remedy:

"A Receipt For A Sore Mouth. - To a gill of vinegar add a spoonful of honey and ten or twelve sage leaves; set these on a few coals in a clean earthen cup and let it boil a little; then burn the inner soal of an old shoe that has been lately worn, which when burnt to a coal, rub to a fine powder; take out the sage leaves and add a thimble full of the powder, with half as much allum powdered. Stop it close in a bottle and wash your mouth twice a day, after breakfast and after supper. It seldom fails to cure in a few days, and will fasten teeth loosened by the scurvey."

Dr. John Cochran, of Chester County, director-general of the military hospitals during the Revolution, does not seem to have practiced in the territory now comprising Delaware County, and the same remark is true of Dr. Samuel Kennedy, who was surgeon of the Fourth Battalion of the Pennsylvania troops and senior surgeon in the military hospital.

Dr. William Currie,² a native of Chester County, in his youth intended to study theology, but he abandoned that purpose, read medicine, and graduated at the college at Philadelphia. On the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, his father, the rector of St. David's Church, Radnor, and a loyalist, opposed his desire to enter the Continental service, but he persisted, and served as a surgeon in 1776, attached to the hospital on Long Island and subsequently at Amboy. On the conclusion of the struggle, Dr. Currie, then in his twenty-ninth year, located in the borough of Chester, where he practiced medicine, and married a daughter of John Morton, the signer of the Declaration of Independence. Previous to 1792 he removed to Philadelphia, and published his "Historical Account of the Climate and Diseases of the United States." In 1811 he issued " Views of the Diseases most prevalent in the United States, with an account of the most improved methods of treating them," and in 1815 his last work, "General View of the Principal Theories or Doctrines which have prevailed at different periods to the present time." He died in Philadelphia in 1829.

Dr. John Morton, the third son of John Morton, the signer of the Declaration, was a surgeon in the Continental service, was taken prisoner, and while so detained he died on the British prison-ship "Falmouth," in New York harbor. "The late John S. Morton, of Springfield, had for some time a letter in his possession, written by Dr. Morton to his father while he was a prisoner, in which he said they were almost starved, and could eat brick-bats if they could get them."³

During and after the Revolution, Dr. John Smith was a practicing physician located in Lower Chichester. In 1783 he married Dorothea, sister of Henry Hale Graham. She died in 1798 of yellow fever, and it is said her husband had died several years before this time.

Dr. Peter Yarnall, who, between the years 1780 and 1791, resided in Concord, practicing his profession, in which he was highly successful, had a very eventful career. He was by birthright a Friend, but in 1772, when eighteen years of age, he quarreled with his master, for at that day all young men had to serve an apprenticeship, ran away, and enlisted. The influence of his family succeeded in getting him released from the service. Immediately on attaining his majority he began reading medicine, but when the colonies appealed to arms he enlisted in the American army, acting as surgeon's mate in the field and in several hospitals. His health, however, failing, in 1778 he asked for and received his discharge. Thereupon he applied himself diligently to the study of his profession, and in 1779 he graduated from the College of Medicine of Philadelphia, and returned to the service as surgeon's mate, sailing on the privateer "Delaware," but again he resigned, and practiced in the Pennsylvania Hospital. In 1780 he reunited with the Quakers, became a public Friend, located in Concord, and married, in 1732, Hannah Sharpless, of Middletown. In 1791 he removed to Montgomery County, where, his wife having died, he for the second time married. He died in 1798, the year the yellow fever was so fatal to the profession.

Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick, who was called upon, together with Dr. Brown as consulting physician, by Dr. Craik, the medical attendant of Washington during the fatal illness of the latter in December, 1799, was a native of Delaware County, having been born near Marcus Hook Cross-road in 1762. He seems never to have practiced here, but married, October, 1783, Hannah Harman, of Darby. He settled at Alexandria, Va., where he soon gathered a large practice. It is said that Dr. Dick, when all hopes of the recovery of Washington "with less extreme remedies had been abandoned, proposed an operation which he ever afterwards thought might have proved effective in saving the general's life, but it did not meet with the approval of the family physician."⁴