160 DR. BENJAMIN ALLEN, OF BRAINTREE.
The wording of these two passages shows that Allen himself
had not, in either case, prescribed the remedy in question, but
what he says of the way he cured his first patient (the widow
Robinson, already mentioned 1), in 1686, shows that he himself
used these disgusting concoctions. The lady was suffering, he
says (pp. 6, 115, and 117), from "A jaundys after an ague, with
a vertigo and a yellowish unsound look" ; all which he cured by
giving her "the common Bitter Drink and peacock's dung in
powder in a tincture of peacock's dung." Scarcely less
disgusting and even more fantastic was another remedy Allen
administered to a Mr. John Clark, who suffered from dropsy and
was cured by "taking millepedes," by which Allen means,
apparently, woodlice or sow-bugs (Oniscidae) ! He continued
to administer this remedy to the end of his life ; for he records
(p. 174) that, in 1736, he cured Mrs. Ager's daughter by "mille-
pedes or sow-bugs."
Another thing, shown by many entries, was the prevalence
of small-pox in Allen's day.
First, we have (p. 2) the recipe ("copied out of a book in my
father's study") for "Matthews's Pill" ("the noblest remedy in
the Small Pocks ''), with the comment : "it never failed my
father and I once." Next, we have (p. 42) the recipe for
A Julep to quench thirst in the Small Pox [or] the Flock Pox ; observed to give
great relief and comfort to Mrs. Allen, of Black Notly, by my father [-in-law],
Dr. Draper:—When Mrs. Alleyn, of Black Notly, lay sick of this pox in
London and was, extremely afflicted with thirst, her physitian, Dr. King,
directed her this julep following :—Take dryed wood sorrell, one handfull;
boyle it with the bottom of a white loaf in a quart of water the due time, not too
long (that is, let the water have the quality of both sharp[ness] and whiteness) ;
then strain it and soak it in a lemmon sliced and sweeten it with syrup of
raspberries or barberrys ; and then let the patient drink of it. She [i.e., Mrs.
Alleyn] found much comfort by it, without any prejudice to the pocks.
Among other observations on the small-pox, we have
these (p. 122):—
A child that hath had it in wombe, as part of the mother, will have it again and
is not secur'd by that having it, as I know ; [for] Patmore's child, who came
markt with it into the world, yet had it after. . . . We can't foresee who
will have (hem [i.e., pock-marks] most ; for Mary Harris, a gross foggy [?] wench
of a body, lusty and humorous, had but fifty in all and my daughter Bette, a lean
body and clear of humors, [had them] severely to convulsions.
Some of Allen's notes on the Small-Pox have local interest.
Thus, he notes (p. 346) that, in 1711, there was "Small Pocks
1 See ante, p. 149.