PROMISING CURES
The Pursuit of Health in a 19th Century New England Community: Lynn, Massachusetts
ephemera vintage 

Pure fantasy: happy Pilgrims, all dressed in black and white, inviting happy Indians to a yummy Thanksgiving turkey dinner. It was a pretty picture to color with crayons when you were a little kid, but let me tell you what it was reallly like. There was little to be happy about in the 1600s. Few managed to keep healthy, and how can you be happy when you're not healthy? Scientific understanding of just about anything to do with health and medicine was little better than it had been in the Dark Ages. Death was a sudden and frequent invader of most homes in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Outside of Boston and Salem, the colony was spread throughout the challenging wilderness. Most colonists were isolated and had to resort to whatever or whoever was available for medical help: perhaps a local midwife or minister, a tavern keeper or apothecary, or the occasional visit of a wandering physician. But sometimes the healer was a victim as well – they often risked their own lives, even as they tried to save the lives of their patients.      Being a healer in the town of Lynn was risky business during the 17th century. Planted between Salem and Boston, it saw its share of shady and menacing characters who promised cures and even performed surgery. Colorful and sometimes hair-raising stories of healing in the first century of European settlement could be told from every village and outpost of the colony, but for now, Lynn will step forward and represent  the rest.      Lynn was like most other settlements in the colony: a few remote clusters of buildings near sources of water, some tillable land, and woods full of timber, fruits, and game, and individual homes spread in all directions, even more isolated than the villages. They relied on their own wits and the nature around them for their shelter, food, and medicine. They could afford little time and even less money to go to Salem or Boston to buy items; it at least saved time when itinerants traveled to their little town, offering some goods for sale or services for hire.  Beyond a few homemade medicines and poultices made in most homes, Lynn folk often relied on others to provide health services. Sometimes such healers were literally outsiders traveling through but other times they got treated as outsiders because of the peculiarities of their  healing efforts or their behavior.      The stories of two such men and a woman who tried to heal in Lynn will take you back to a place and time better read about than lived in. The three very different healers had one thing very much in common: they struggled to avoid death by something far more dangerous than a horrible, loathsome disease – vindictive people.  THE LOOSE CANNON That would be Phillip Reade. This physician lives on in the long trail of court records that are smeared with his name. It’s hard to say how good he was as a doctor, but there were a bunch of people who didn’t like him one bit. His home was in Concord on the western edge of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but he traveled all over the colony to ply his skills. Court records reveal that in the last five months of 1669, he had traveled through Concord, Billerica, Lynn, Charlestown, and Cambridge. The Concord constables were well exercised in attempting to serve Reade with many warrants, but they seldom found him at home. On one occasion they rode twelve miles to Sudbury to catch up to the traveling doctor.[1] Another court record found Reade at Goodman Clarke’s tavern just one day for his patients in Reading, then a month in Lynn taking care of a Mr. Hawkes’ leg, and finally on to Salem “to visit my patients there.”[2] In his travels, Reade carried a rapier and often enjoyed the company of another traveler. Most of the paths he traveled were remote and secluded; the companionship of friends and sword probably gave him peace of mind amid the potential problems with wolves, wildcats, bears, rattlesnakes, Indians, highway robbers, and other such road hazards of 17th-century Massachusetts.      Reade visited patients’ homes by the wayside, but concentrated his activities at inns and ordinaries because they were places where people gathered. It wasn’t just coincidence that innkeepers and ordinary licensees from Sudbury, Concord, Charlestown, and Reading were involved in court actions for and against Reade. As public houses and local landmarks, these facilities were ideal breeding grounds for patients and conflicts.      Reade had a contentious personality that didn’t endear him to many; he was frequently in court being sued or suing someone else. In 1669 he was sued for slandering a midwife in Concord.[3] In another case that year, Reade filed a complaint against Martha Hill for raising false reports that “he had Cured Sara Wyman of a swelling under her chin and another under her Apron.”[4] Deponents all heard Martha claim that “the New docktor” had said Sarah was pregnant, but no one heard her suggest Reade had performed an abortion, as he had claimed in his complaint. In puritanical Massachusetts Bay Colony, the accusation of performing an abortion would have not only destroyed the physician’s reputation, but would likely have sent him to the gallows.      Reade’s opinions and actions irked none more frequently than the church. In 1669 he was fined £20 for railing against a Concord minister, saying in part that the reverend was selected by a bunch of “blockheads who followed the plowtail.”[5]  He was also chastised for saying that the illness of a female patient came from attending the minister’s long-winded sermon.[6] In 1671 he proved that he was also not a devotee of spiritual healings and was imprisoned for his blasphemy: “Philip Read of Concord Chirurgeon or practitioner of Phisick for not having the fear of God before his eyes & being Instigated by the divill ... on a motion ... to pray to God for his wife then sick blasphemously Cursed bidding the Divill take yow & yor prayers.”[7]      Reade’s ways may have won him some allies, but they created enemies as well; indeed, more than one acquaintance threatened to “take the blood” or “knock out the brains” of “docktor Reade.” In August 1669 warrants were issued for Concord’s constables to apprehend Robert Williams because “doctor Mr. Philip Read ... doth live in fear of his life.” Among several witnesses, Reade’s new father-in-law testified that he heard Williams vow to “have the blood of Dr. Read.” Other deponents recalled Williams swearing he would “get a club and ... knock out the doctors brans” and the next morning that he had actually gotten a club and vowed to be Reade’s death. The depositions leave only a small clue why Williams hated Reade so much, “Dr. Read had given him such language as that he would not bear it though it cost him his blood.” Williams ran away before a verdict was rendered.[8]      In a different case, Reade claimed that another of his melancholy enemies “had borne him a spleene ever since he came to Concord.”[9] In yet another action, Reade brought a defamation suit against Ambrose Makefasset for saying Reade’s mother “was or is a whore.”[10] What made Reade so difficult to like seemed to have more to do with his social weaknesses than his medical skills. He had a quarrelsome character that found more passionate expression than was usually prudent.      In subsequent trips to Lynn, Reade made no effort to curtail his cantankerous disposition. He and John Gifford, the former agent of the ironworks in Lynn, were bitter enemies. Reade accused Gifford of cheating a relative out of £1000. When chance brought the doctor and Gifford together, epithets of “cheating dog” and “cheating rogue” were vehemently exchanged.[11] Reade added salt to the wound by incriminating that Gifford’s wife, Margaret, was a witch, “for there were some things which could not be accounted for by natural causes,” and that others had been “strangely” and “badly handled by her.”[12]      Near the end of September 1679, John and Margaret Gifford were in Reading at Goodman Clarke’s tavern at the same time as the traveling healer. Reade was in Reading at his usual time of month to see his patients from that area. When John Gifford recognized the voice in the room adjacent to him and his wife to be that of Reade, he went straightway to the doctor and began quarrelling. Reade told Gifford to leave the room because he was attending to some patients, but Gifford refused. The two exchanged threats and demeaning names and stopped short of a fight only because there wasn’t enough space in that room for Reade to wield his rapier. Gifford left the room, but returned again with his wife who had some choice words of her own for the doctor, saying that “she was cleare of that he accused her of and that she should appear one day to be a Child of God when he should not.” The Giffords returned to Lynn where John told some of the townspeople “he had met with the Cowardly Dog Doctor Reade ... [who] drew his rapier at him ... he would make [Reade] Eate the point of his own rapier.”[13] A month passed, but the animosities did not.      On October 31st, the antagonists met again, this time on the road to Salem; Reade was traveling towards Salem with a friend and Gifford was riding home from Salem alone. The events that followed depend on the storyteller. Gifford complained to the court of an incensed, murderous doctor who vowed to have his blood and that when passing each other on the road, the doctor took him by the shoulder and tried to push him off his horse, swearing, “he would have the blood of Such as I was.” Gifford managed to stay on his horse, but when past the doctor by about three horse lengths, he saw the doctor had drawn his sword and was riding back to attack him. “he presently made a thrust at me ... which I defended with takeing his Swoard blade in my hand though to the Cutting of me. Upon which he then Lett drive at my head. haveing nothing in my hand to defend myselfe but a small burchin twig he cut me o[n] the Elbow to the bone ...” The doctor was about to attack Gifford again, but someone was approaching on a cart, so he road off, swearing he would meet up with Gifford again and would have his blood.[14]      Reade painted quite a different picture for the court with him as the innocent who was wronged and abused and Gifford as the man possessed. He claimed that when they met on the road, Gifford hit him in the chest and the face, pushing his lit pipe so far down his throat that it made him spit up blood and he also kicked him so severely that it broke his shinbone. The doctor said that Gifford swore “you hors Doctorly Dog” then picked up stones and threatened to “knock my braines out” along with other threats that made him fear for his life.[15] Neither man was ultimately exonerated.      Reade had pressed against the Giffords in another direction during the assault trials by launching a formal complaint against Margaret Gifford for witchcraft. He even accused John Gifford of “haveing Sum familiaritye with Satan or his instruments.”[16] The court did not heed the inference about John, but based on Reade’s promise of more evidence on Margaret Gifford, she was ordered to appear at the next court three months later. John Gifford tried in turn to sue Reade in Superior Court for slanderously reporting that Margaret Gifford “had bewitched his wife and childe and that Shee should walke with him the sd Read hand in hand flesh, blood & bone in her own person two miles together.”[17] Ultimately, however, Margaret Gifford never had to go to court to answer for Reade’s accusations.      The strain of constant financial hardship, coupled with the pressures of trials and the rigors of an itinerant medical practice, manifested themselves in what may have been Reade’s greatest temptation: alcohol. Virtually everywhere Reade traveled, people reported occasions of seeing him in an incoherent, drunken stupor. He was seen riding toward Concord in the winter of 1670, swaying to and fro upon his horse, speaking some things madly and swearing by the name of God two or three times.[18] He was drunk in Charlestown in the late summer of 1669, such that he could not speak rationally.[19] John Buss was in Reade’s company at Salem in August 1669, and saw that Reade was incoherent and couldn’t ride well. Buss further testified that he saw Reade so drunk at Concord that “he could not goe without stagering or speake rationaly and several other times both at Concord at Woburne & other places, where I accompanied him hee has Drunke to much.”[20] Others remembered Reade in Charlestown, swearing,  “by ye name of god and wishd his soule damd to hell if he went not home yt night and [he] went not” because he was drunk.[21] Ann Adams of Cambridge recounted for the court how Reade came into her house one evening near the end of 1669, “much overtaken in drinke, & in such a condition that wee could not get rid of him, but were forsed to entertaine him till the morneing and that he uttered sundry evile & reproachful termes against Captain Gookin” (one of the magistrates who frequently presided in Reade’s trials), like “Captayne Hobby Horse,” “Captayne Glaze Eyes,” and “Captain Clowne.”[22]      While Phillip Reade got mixed reviews from patients, his character was the critical weakness that prevented him from achieving lasting notoriety. He was contentious, opinionated, and fiercely inde-pendent, and the flames of all three were fueled by rum.      A tongue that was often let loose against church and enemies and too often loose for drink sometimes put him outside the law and in conflict with the colony. Yet after each sentence was served and each fine was paid, Read returned to the same towns, taverns, and patients that were his practice. Phillip Reade’s career forced him to wrestle with demons of witchcraft and alcohol during his travels over the many miles.  THE WITCH A widow named Ann Burt was one of those witches, or so Phillip Reade and others claimed.      Science, superstition, and conjecture were never far apart in 17th-century medicine. The holes of ignorance were filled by suspicion and fear when no empirical explanation for physical, mental, or emotional abnormalities was clearly evident. Unexplainable illness or one that didn’t respond to treatment were often considered the work of witches.      As demonstrated by the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, there was no question in the minds of Puritans, from the humblest to the loftiest, that witches were real and many tried to protect themselves from the witches. In 1698 Cotton Mather scolded the colonists for their use of common objects to magically protect against evil: “Scores of poor People … did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God; they would often cure Hurts with Spells, and practice detestable Conjurations with Sieves, and Keys, and Pease, and Nails, and Horse-shoes, and other implements.”[23]       Despite Reverend Mather’s chastisement and call to repentance for using charms, evidence remaining in original Lynn shows that many families were discreetly practicing counter-magic to fight off witches and their familiars. Most of Lynn’s seventeenth-century buildings have disappeared; only nine houses are known to have survived (to 2022) since their construction from 1629-1725, but seven out of nine still contain marks or objects that were designed to keep the witches away. The wary occupants of these Lynn homes had hexafoils, slash and mesh marks, concentric circles, saltire crosses, and other symbols scratched or drawn into parts of the woodwork, especially around fireplaces, windows, and doorways, to catch and prevent the further invasion of evil into the home and family. Witch bottles (as they have come to be identified in the twentieth century) were another significant witch-fighting tool available to the Massachusetts Bay colonists. Like the marks on the walls and doors, they were designed to trap witches who in spirit form tried to gain entrance into their homes to make family members sick and die. They feared and hated witches so much that they were willing to use these “white magic” measures to defend themselves against the witch’s black magic.      People hated witches, and it was said that Widow Ann Burt was one, so her life was in serious danger.      In 1669 Phillip Reade accused the widow Ann Burt of Lynn of being a witch. The elderly woman had been practicing the healing arts while her husband was alive, but for eight years after his death at aged seventy, continuing to sell her medicines and healing services became essential to sustain herself in her widowhood. Reade may have been protecting his value as a healer by trying to eliminate the competition, but several others also bore wild-eyed, frightful testimony against her that sounded quite damning. The evidence painted her to be the opposite of Puritan morality – a devil-worshipping witch. Claims were made that the old widow had tormented her patients, tried to get them in league with the devil, appeared and disappeared at will and even exercised control over a cat and a dog to do her bidding. The ill patronized her nonetheless, though some came to rue their decision, complaining that Burt took demonic satisfaction in the fact that her remedies only caused their pains to increase.       Bethiah Carter, aged 23, deposed that when her sister Sarah Townsend was still “a maid,” she had been “sorely afflicted with sad fits” and that on an occasion when the two sisters were both ill, their father had carried Bethiah to Boston for treatment, but only took Sarah “too Lin too an owld wich” – the widow Ann Burt. Bethiah also claimed her sister Sarah saw the widow Burt appear at the foot of her bed frequently, both day and night and also that Burt had said if she would believe in her God (insinuating that Burt meant the Devil), she would be able to cure her body and soul.[24] Madeline Pearson, Sarah and Bethiah’s mother, deposed that she had heard Sarah explain how, after Widow Burt had gotten her to bed, she had urged her to smoke her pipe, “and giving of her the pipe she smoket it and Sarah fell into the fits again and said Goodwife Burt brought the devil to her to torment her.”[25]      Reade testified he was sent for three times to examine the ill sisters and found that Sarah was “in a more sadder Condiccion … but did playnly perceive there was no Naturall caus for such unaturall fits.” Finding Sarah rational on his fourth visit, Reade asked her the cause of her fits, “she tould me ... Burt had aflickted her.” When the girl had her worst fit an hour later, Reade asked her who afflicted her, “She Replide with a great scrich she had tould me alreddy and that she did Now Suffer for it.”[26] John Knight testified that he had seen Burt coming out of a swamp in her smock sleeves, a black handkerchief and a black cap on her head and then she suddenly disappeared; when he came into the house he found her there, wearing the same clothing he had seen her in at the swamp. When he asked her if she had been in the swamp, she denied it, saying she had been in the house the whole time to which he replied that she must be a “light headed woman” (crazy); he was standing by what he had claimed to have seen with his own eyes.[27]      Jacob Knight told of an occasion when he was lodging under the same roof as the Widow Burt. While lighting his pipe in the same room as Burt, Knight told her he had come down with a pain in his head, then went back to his room, which was separated from hers by five doors. He stooped down to unloosen his shoe, then upon looking upward, “there was widow Burt with a glasse bottle in her hand.” She told him it contained something that “would doe my head good, or cure my head, ... [but] when I had drunke of it, I was worse in my head”. He then thought about how she had suddenly appeared in his room, separated as it was from hers by the five doors and a squeaky floor, “but I heard nothing & her sudden being with mee put mee into affright ….” The next day on his way to Salem, he saw a cat which then disappeared, followed by a dog that did the same (the intimation being that these animals were witch’s familiars spying on Knight for her as she had instructed them), then someone who looked like widow Burt goeing before mee downe a hill as I was goeing up it ....” The following night, in the clear moon light, he looked out his chamber window and “saw widow Burt upon a graye horse” in the yard “or one in her shape,” but when he awoke his brother, neither could see her. After his brother was again asleep, “shee appeared to mee in the chamber, & then I tooke upp a peece of a barrill head and threw it at her & as I thinke hit her on the brest & then could see her noe more at that tyme.”[28]      Thomas Farrar similarly testified that his daughters were “in former time sorely afflicted and in ther greatest extremety they would cry out & roare & say that they did see goody Burtt & say ther she is doe you not see her kill her there she is & that they said several times and I have a son now in extreme misery much as the former hath bin and the doctor says he [the son] is bewiched to his understanding.”[29] Farrar’s description of his daughters’ hysterical reactions to their spectral visions of Burt were eerie portends of the Salem witch trials yet to come. Amazingly, despite the emotional testimonies, fearsome accusations, and spectral evidence presented against Widow Ann Burt by Reade and the others, there is no indication that she was convicted, which it seems, in retrospect, could only have been avoided by using a little hocus-pocus.[30] THE PIRATE For a time, Johann Casper Richter von Cronenshilt, lived a pirate’s life, although as one sanctioned by the government. He could have stayed in Lynn, living the sedate life  of a country doctor, but the call of the sea was strong – and it was dangerous. The difference between a pirate and a privateer was just two sides of the same cutlass: sailing the high seas and attacking ships for their booty was done the same way with the same risks, but piracy meant not sharing with the crown. Some of Cronenshilt’s crewmates flipped over to piracy after he served with them.      During his swashbuckling adventure, he was the doctor and surgeon for two English privateers at the same time. Court records of 1695 reveal the seafaring voyages of “Johann Casper Richter Van Cronadshilt of Lynne, Chyrurgeon" who took care of all the sicknesses and wounds among the crews of the privateers Dolphin and Dragon – “betwixt both Sloopes wee had but one doctor,” wrote one of the captains of the two ships joined in a single mission.[31]      The Dolphin and Dragon were both sloops, sometimes referred to as “Man of War” sloops, being rigged out with cannons and letters of marque with which they were sanctioned by the British government to fight, capture or destroy, and plunder French ships. Voluminous court records first locate the two ships off the coast of the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, working in “consortship” to attack and plunder a French ship, a pursuit that ended unsuccessfully. “Johann Cronon: Schilt[,] a Jerman,” was the one doctor for both ships, but sickness (especially contagious illness) and battle wounds could produce a sudden influx of patients in desperate need of the one doctor-surgeon, for which he would receive 100 pieces of eight plus his full share of plunder.[32]      The alliance of the two sloops made their attacks even more withering for the victimized enemy; the tandem acted like a team of wolves at sea, circling around their prey then suddenly attacking together.[33]  The two sloops finally had a victory on 2 March 1694, taking a French brigantine off Crab Island, then carrying the prize ship to St. Thomas; the plunder was valued at £400.[34]  It was a win, but not the booty of their dreams.  At the village of Samana, Hispaniola, the two captains wrote up a new mutual alliance with the strategy of finding and plundering “their Majesties Enemies” thousands of nautical miles to the north in the “River of Quebec” – the Saint Lawrence River.[35]  By mid-May, the Dragon and Dolphin were being loaded with supplies and new crews in the important port of Salem, Massachusetts.      Some of the two dozen men on each sloop may have felt proud to be fighting enemies of the crown, but if so, there were better opportunities for victories in the much bigger, world-class, British naval vessels, rather than the smaller, lighter-gunned but fast vessels in which they were risking their lives. The only certain reason that each member of the Dolphin and Dragon crews sailed the ocean, hunting for quarry, was for money – booty – treasure chests full of it.      But the preponderance of depositions were aimed at the Dragon captain who had been taken to court by several former crew members, among them the doctor, Cronenshilt, for reneging on alleged promises to award them full shares of the booty. It was an even more significant share when their biggest prize turned out to be valued at over £14,000 ($2.8 million USD in 2020); a full share worked out to be £200.[36] Cronenshilt sued for £300 ($60,000 USD in 2020), including damages.[37]      In the weeks leading up to their first sea battle with the French, the Dragon captain sent for Cronenshilt to spend time on his ship because they needed him more; most of the Dragon crew was unwell.[38] The Dragon added some men while traveling through the “Gutt of Cancer” (the Strait of Canso that separated Cape Breton from Nova Scotia), because some of their crew had become incapacitated.[39]  (It was important to both crews that unnecessary extra men weren’t added to the evenly distributed crews of about two dozen on each of their sloops because more men meant smaller shares for each.) Though formally signed on to the Dolphin, the doctor faithfully administered to the crew of the Dragon from that point through the rest of the voyage and in so doing, he found himself amid the blood and gore of naval battle.      The Dragon and their aggressive captain would twice engage French vessels without the aid of their consort, the Dolphin; injuries and deaths occurred during both engagements and Cronenshilt was in the middle of it all. The first victory was against the French ship, St. Joseph, on 25 June 1694.[40] The Dragon captain ordered all of his able-bodied crew on deck to join the fight, so Cronenshilt probably did his share of fighting as well – he owned a cutlass and a short carbine rifle and bayonet, favorite weapons of ship crews for use in the close, confining shipboard combat on narrow decks among the tangle of rigging.[41]      When the British privateer defeated the French fly boat, the Dragon captain instructed surgeon Cronenshilt to go aboard the vanquished prize to look after his men that had boarded and fought on it, being that many of them that were “out of order” (wounded), “which he did.”[42] The valuable French boat could be taken to a British port back in New England where it would be sold with its handsome cargo of wines and brandy.[43]      The Dragon took a second French ship a month later on July 27th.[44] In that action, four of the Dragon’s crew were killed and two were wounded in the fight – a quarter of the original crew had  become casualties in the one engagement, and Cronenshilt applied his surgical and healing skills to everyone who still had a pulse.[45] The two ships finally being reunited after the second battle, the Dolphin captain’s quarters became a makeshift hospital and the captain lamented over the loss of his inner sanctum, “my Doctr hath and does take care of his wounded men – which I have taken on board my Vessell and in my Own Cabbin – and Suffered all manner of Stinck & naughtyness therewith.”[46] The Dolphin captain and various crew members attested to Cronenshilt’s skill in “Physick & Surgery,” confirming his claim of the “Care[,] paines & Medisines wch. the pet[itioner] did take & expend” upon the captain and crew of the Dragon during the whole time of the voyage.[47] The court records don’t reveal whether he was awarded the £300, but he made it back alive and decided to henceforth keep his feet on dry land.      With memories of rocking ships and dangerous adventures lingering freshly in his memory, the 33-year-old doctor married 22-year-old Elizabeth Allen in December of 1694, and they settled down in the serene, sylvan setting of her family’s property at Lynn’s Mineral Spring.[48] Family legend states that Elizabeth had been healed by him of some illness and at the end of the year they were married.[49] Cronenshilt was offered an opportunity to sign on as ship’s doctor with another boat heading out of Salem for the St. Lawrence in 1695, but he declined the high seas and another privateering adventure, having found safe harbor in marriage and babies.[50] In June 1700, “John Casper Rickter van Cronenshelt of Boston, Phisitian,” purchased his mother-in-law’s twenty-acre parcel of land in Lynn between Muddy Pond and Spring Pond.[51] The doctor and his wife lived by Lynn’s idyllic Mineral Spring Pond for a few years, then moved to bustling downtown Boston where they raised their family of five children.      Cronenshilt purchased a home and property in 1705 near Scarlet’s Wharf in Boston’s North End.[52] He may have left privateering behind, but the salty air of piracy still lingered nearby. In 1704 John Quelch and six of his scurvy crew had been marched in chains from the gaol by forty armed guards, past throngs of gawkers, on their way to Scarlet’s Wharf and the waiting ferry boat. It took them to the gallows that had been set up on a nearby sand bar, where large crowds watched as the pirates were hung. Thomas Larimore, a former Dolphin crewmate and friend of the doctor (he had testified in defense of the doctor’s claim for a share of the plunder), also turned pirate and got tangled up with some of Quelch’s crew and the law in 1706. Cronenshilt might have hidden from view while watching such public spectacles of convicted pirates to avoid the possibility of some of the pirates calling out to their old friend and doctor, exposing his connection to the life that had now smeared into piracy.      After the doctor’s death in 1711, an inventory of what had become his meager estate  showed that while the doctor left behind his swashbuckling days, swashbuckling couldn’t be taken out of the doctor; despite having very little left, he had kept his cutlass, carbine, and bayonet to the end of his life – not at all helpful to a doctor, but very helpful to a pirate. *     *     *     *     *     *      As rugged as the struggle was  for people to stay healthy in 17th century Massachusetts Bay Colony,  it may have been ever harder for the healers to stay alive. They not only had to stay clear of sickness and death, but also the prejudices of those who suspected they were healing under the influence of piracy, witchcraft, or rum. ENDNOTES [1].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 46: Warrant, 31 March 1670. [2].  Suffolk County Supreme Judicial Court Files, manuscript (Massachusetts State Archives, Dorchester, Mass.), Folio 2025:Deposition of Phillip Reade, 5 November 1679. [3].  Middlesex County Court Records, manuscript (Middlesex County Court House, Cambridge, Mass.), Folio 116: Attachment, 23 September 1669. [4].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 116: Attachment, 23 September 1669 (emphasis added). [5].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 56: Deposition of Thomas Wheeler and Jonathan Prescott, no date. [6].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 56: Deposition of David Fiske, 13 April 1670; Deposition of Thomas Wheeler, 13 April 1670. [7].  Supreme Judicial Court Files, manuscript (Massachusetts Archives at Columbia Point, Boston, Mass.), No.1052: Deposition of Susanna Gleison, 5 September 1671. [8].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 48: Warrant, 27 August 1669; Deposition of Richard Rice, no date; Deposition of John Baker, no date; Deposition of John Buss, 1669; Deposition of John Farwell, 29 August 1669; Bondsmen’s petition, 5 October 1669. [9].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 53: Deposition of John Hayward, 21 June 1670. [10].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 67: Attachment to Ambrose Makefasset, 20 May 1674. [11].  Files of the Suffolk County Supreme Judicial Court, manuscript (Massachusetts State Archives, Dorchester, Mass.), No.2025: Deposition of John Dammond, 16 December 1679. [12].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 88: Declaration of Phillip Reade, no date. [13].  Files of the Suffolk County Supreme Judicial Court, No.2025: Deposition of John Dammond, 16 December 1679. Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 88: Deposition of Sarah Hawks and Joseph Trumble, 16 December 1679. [14].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 88: Declaration of John Gifford, 5 November 1679. Sections in brackets fall beyond a torn edge of the page. [15].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 88: Declaration of Phillip Reade, no date. Sections in brackets fall beyond a torn edge of the page. [16].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 88: Declaration of Phillip Reade, no date. [17].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 88: Declaration of Phillip Reade, no date. [18].  Files of the Suffolk County Supreme Judicial Court, No.1052: Deposition of Cyprian Stevens, 13 April 1670. [19].  Files of the Suffolk County Supreme Judicial Court, No.1052: Deposition of John Heyward Sr., 13 April 1670. [20].  Files of the Suffolk County Supreme Judicial Court, No.1052: Deposition of John Buss, 13 April 1670. [21].  Middlesex County Court Records, Folio 53: Deposition of Francis Dudley, Ephraim Roper, and Thomas Wheeler, no date. [22].  Files of the Suffolk County Supreme Judicial Court, No.1052: Deposition of Ann Adams, 15 April 1670. [23].  Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, Book 2, p.60 (emphasis in original). In his comments here, Mather also laid blame upon the growing popular adherence to fortune-telling, singling out by example, the 1684 publication, Delights for the Ingenious, by which “the Minds of many had been so poisoned, that they studied this Finer Witchcraft, until, ‘tis well, if some of them were not betray’d into what is Grosser, and more Sensible and Capital.” Getting people to stop their use of symbolic objects and actions to fend off witchcraft was a confusing message to preach to a people who had for centuries witnessed churches demonstrating the same willful use of faith-based symbolism, including the transubstantiation of blessed wine and bread into the blood and body of Christ and such clerical blessings as those given to farmers’ ploughs to fishing boats. See Matthew Champion, Medieval Graffiti: The Lost Voices of England’s Churches, (London, England: Ebury Press, 2015), p.26. [24].  Dow, Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, (1669), Vol.4, p.207. [25].  Dow, Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, (1669), Vol.4, p.209. It is interesting to note that all of what Sarah Pearson was alleged to have said about her experience with Widow Burt came from the depositions of her mother and sister; there is no record of Sarah giving her own deposition. Perhaps her “condiccion” and “unaturall fits” had temporarily emotionally disabled her from presenting coherent testimony or she might have been otherwise prevented from giving her testimony because it would have contradicted her mother and sister, and been more favorable to the woman who had treated her? [26].  Dow, Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, (1669), Vol.4, p.207. [27].  Dow, Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, (1669), Vol.4, pp.207-208. [28].  Dow, Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, (1669), Vol.4, p.207. A common element of witch lore was that they had “familiars” cats, dogs, and other animals that did their bidding, like spying for them. [29].  Dow, Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, (1669), Vol.4, p.209. [30].  An inventory of her estate was taken on 18 March 1672-3, which suggests that she survived the 1669 witchcraft charges and died about three years later. See Dow, Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts, (1673), Vol.5, p.204. Note that she signed her will with her mark, which strongly suggests she was illiterate, unlike her husband, who was at least able to autograph his will. [31].  Sherriff’s Warrant (Boston, 18 MAR 1695; Lynne – emphasis added) and Deposition of Erasmus Harrison (Boston: 19 MAR 1695; betwixt); both in Suffolk County (MA) court files, 1629-1797, Case 3101, (on familysearch.org); see also Deposition of Abraham Samuel (Boston: 04 APR 1695), Case 3101. [32].  Deposition of Erasmus Harrison (Boston, 19 MAR 1695), Case 3101. See also Deposition of Christopher Weeks & Richard Nulande (Boston: 04 APR 1695), Case 3101 (Jerman); Articles of Agreement between Captain and Crew – Erasmus Harrison, Captain of the Brigantine Mary, Suffolk County Court (MA) court files, 1629-1797 (Boston: 01 MAR 1694), Case 3123 (on familysearch.org), (plunder). [33].  See Articles of Agreement between Captains Glover & Harrison (Salem: 20 MAY 1694), Case 3123 and Testimony of Erasmus Harrison, Captain of the Sloop Dolphin (Boston: 14 SEP 1694), Case 3123. [34].  Deposition of Erasmus Harrison (Boston: 14 SEP 1694), Case 3123. [35].  Deposition of Erasmus Harrison (Boston: 14 SEP 1694), Case 3123. [36].  Statement of Prize Value, Suffolk County (MA) court files, 1629-1797 (Boston: 02 APR 1695), Case 3123. [37].  Sheriff’s Warrant (Boston: 18 MAR 1695), Case 3101. [38].  Deposition of Abraham Samuel (Boston: 04 APR 1695), Case 3101. [39].  Narrative of Robert Glover (Boston: 10 NOV 1694), Case 3123. [40].  Narrative of Robert Glover (Boston: 10 NOV 1694), Case 3123 [41].  Deposition of Edmund Quash, Suffolk County (MA) court files, 1629-1797 (Boston: 01 MAY 1695), Case 3123. [42].  Deposition of Thomas Larrimore (Salem: 20 MAR 1695), Case 3101 (out); Deposition of Erasmus Harrison (Boston: 19 March 1695), Case 3101 (which). [43].  Admiralty Court: Condemnation of fly boat called St. Joseph, Suffolk County (MA) court files, 1629-1797 (Boston: 1694), Case 3123. [44].  Narrative of Robert Glover (Boston: 10 NOV 1694), Case 3123. [45].  Narrative of Robert Glover (Boston: 10 NOV 1694), Case 3123. [46].  Deposition of Erasmus Harrison (14 SEP 1694), Case 3123. [47].  Sheriff’s Warrant (Boston: 18 MAR 1695), Case 3101. [48].  Vital Records of Lynn, Vol.2, p.110. [49].  Harriet Ruth Waters Cooke, The Driver Family, p.268. [50].  Joseph B. Felt, Annals of Salem (Salem, MA: W. & S. B. Ives, 1849), Vol.2, p.245. [51].  Indenture (Lynn: 20 JUN 1700), Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986, Vol.18, pp.206-207 (online at familysearch.org; emphasis added). [52].  Land Sale (Boston: 15 OCT 1705), Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986, Vol.24, pp.122-123. In this record, Cronenshilt was called a surgeon.