Cotton Mather's medicine, with particular reference to measles.

While the vocation of Cotton Mather (1663-1728) was his ministry in Boston, he made important contributions to medicine, most famously in helping to introduce variolation to New England in 1721-22 and in writing The Angel of Bethesda (1724), the first medical treatise produced in Colonial North America. This article, however, focuses on an earlier initiative, Mather's efforts to quell the epidemic of measles that struck Boston in 1713, killing among many others his wife and three children. Historians have devoted little attention to this episode or to measles in general, even though the disease was highly mortal during the colonial period.

The attitude of Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) towards Native American medicine.

Benjamin Rush was the first American physician to create a medical system that was distinct from European models. He was furthermore critical of shortcomings in European medicine and of aspects of 'modern' lifestyle, notably idleness and self-indulgence, which he regarded as detrimental to health. Nevertheless, he was Eurocentric and he believed that European and particularly British medicine was the best foundation for further progress although he also thought the final conquest of disease would come in America rather than in Europe.

The British army in North America and the West Indies, 1755-83: a medical perspective.

This chapter provides an analytical overview of the operational structure, hospital and regimental systems of military medical practice of the British Army in North Amercia and the West Indies, 1755-83, using a database of medical officers, regimental returns, lists of drugs used, correspondence and publications. Practice varied depending on location, season, and time of year, but cooperation between medical and general officers was crucial. Pringle's emphasis on environment influenced practice, with medics advocating preventative treatments.

"Venerate the Lancet": Benjamin Rush's yellow fever therapy in context.

In 1793, during a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, Benjamin Rush adopted a therapy that centered on rapid depletion through purgation and bleeding. His method, especially his reliance on copious bloodletting, was at first widely condemned, but many American practitioners eventually adopted it. Although the therapy struck many observers as being radical, in large part it grew from premises that had substantial support.