A Narrative of Medicine in America

periods and obscure phrasing; but one fact stands out luminous, that at the end of the eighteenth century even so careful a student as Ramsay knew little of the accomplishments of his immediate predecessors. Just as to-day most of us think of the times before Lister and Pasteur as belonging to the Dark Ages, so a hundred years ago Rush was the prophet and former times were of small moment. Yet those former times, like former times in all ages, were needed for the better things to come. The hidden currents which, since the Renaissance, had been sweeping towards the political and intellectual enfranchisement of the eighteenth century were not unfelt by science, and the American colonies of Great Britain got their share. To one who observes the progress of the race it appears that political and scientific development are apt to go hand in hand. So it was with us, and the cause is obvious enough. With the larger life and expanding fortunes of the colonies, from 1700 to 1775, democratic thought began to prevail at the same time that rational observation, deduction, and record began to be made. Then came the Revolution, marking an era in our science as important, almost, as in our politics; not so violent, perhaps, but no less certain. When one thinks of the progress of events in the America of that century during the first seventy-five years, one finds that wars and rumors thereof occupied very much of the time. From 1702 to 1713 there was Queen Anne's war; ...