"It is only from the most scanty materials that we can trace the origin and progressive improvements in the healing art among the early settlers of the American colonies," and American medical literature was an almost unknown product before the beginning of the Revolution. In the earliest days there were few physicians in the Colonies, and in New England "the practice of medicine was in many instances united with the parochial duties of ministers of religion, who by their amiable manners, zealous attention and pious converse, endeared themselves to their people."1
The population was too small to attract many physicians, and skilful men of the profession "were of rare occurrence in the colony. They seldom, it would appear, partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic. Dr. Robert Child was one of the earliest physicians to come to New England, though he never practiced medicine