Medicine and Surgery in the 1700’s

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Medicine and Surgery in the 1700’s

By Aja Depass and Alexis Oeth

Herbs Used for Medicine

Honeysuckle Foxglove plants Lobelia

Cayenne peppers Parsley Columbine leaves

Honeysuckle was used to treat fevers.

Foxglove plants were used to make cream to treat scabs.

Lobelia and Cayenne peppers were used often in medicines.

Parsley was good for treating stomach pains.

Columbine leaves were made into creams to help with sore throats and mouths.

Many settlers learned cures from Native Americans. Others grew herbs in home gardens. A majority of the people gathered medicines from Apothecary Shops, which are like drug stores today.

In an Apothecary Shop, merchants first would make sure they had enough ingredients to make the medicine. Then they would cut up herbs and put them in a mortar. This mortar would grind the herbs into powder with a pestle. The powder would be dissolved into a liquid for someone to drink as medicine.

Did you know: Barber poles are red because barbers would act as doctors and performed surgery.

Surgery was extremely dangerous in 1700s. Not many doctors had a good education and learned by working with an experienced doctor for six years. This way of learning is called empiricism.

Doctors never washed their tools so the germs were passed on to their patients. Surgery also was very painful because back then there were no pain killers and the doctors just used big knives or leeches to get the patients blood. Many patients did not survive.

Benjamin Rush was a man who cured sick people. He used cures such as his famous calomel-and-jalap pills. He had a medicine case that held those famous pills and Fothergill's Pills. Also, he believed that doctors should bleed their patients, for the virus to escape through the blood.

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Samuel, Charlie. Medicine in Colonial America. New York: Power Kids P.Porter, Roy, ed. Medicine: A History of Healing. Broadway, NY: The Ivy P Limited, 1997.www.cycledog.blogspot.comwww.flickr.comwww.coloradonga.orgwww.growing-peppers.comwww.theweeklybeet.comwww.sewicob.comwww.jepoy.bengero.comwww.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/medical_history/lewis_clark/assets/medicine_chest.jpg"Medicine of Benjamin Rush." Discovering Lewis and Clark. 30 Mar. 2009 <http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2388>. "Medicine of Benjamin Rush."