Abstract
THIS work, which is issued on the occasion of the tercentenary celebration of the settling of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Massachusetts Medical Society, is divided into seven chapters. The first is an introduction, in which a sketch is given of contemporary medicine in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The second chapter deals with the colonial period dating from the landing of the pilgrims from England on Dec. 21, 1620, to the end of the seventeenth century, during which the bond between the clergy and the medical profession gradually became severed. In the third chapter, which is concerned with the eighteenth century to the American Revolution in 1775, the author shows that medicine in Massachusetts during that period was characterised by severe epidemics of small-pox, partially controlled by the introduction of inoculation in 1721, strict enforcement of quarantine in the fort of Boston, improvement in the tone of medical practice, the establishment of a medical society, the appearance of sporadic medical literature, and the divorce of medicine from the influence of the ministers.
A Brief History of Medicine in Massachusetts.
By Dr. Henry R. Viets. Pp. xii + 194 + 8 plates. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930.) 4 dollars.
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A Brief History of Medicine in Massachusetts . Nature 128, 135 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128135a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128135a0