William Douglass (physician)
Encyclopedia
William Douglass was a physician in 18th-century Boston
, Massachusetts, who wrote pamphlets on medicine, economics and politics that were often polemical.
, Scotland in about 1691. Douglass studied at Edinburgh
(MA, 1705), Leyden, Paris, and Utrecht, where he received his MD in 1712. He first arrived in Boston in 1716, with letters of introduction to Increase Mather
, Cotton Mather
and Benjamin Colman. After travelling in the West Indies, Douglass returned to Boston in 1718, where he lived for the rest of his life. Douglass prospered in Boston, and put his money into property, both in the city and in remote parts of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Although he owned houses in Boston, he lived at the Green Dragon Tavern
, which he also owned. In 1746 Douglass offered the town of New Sherburn, where he had purchased a large quantity of land, $500 and thirty acres, with a house and barn, to be used to establish free schools in the town, in exchange for the town changing its name to Douglas
.
In common with other educated men of the time, William Douglass pursued a wide range of interests. He corresponded with Cadwallader Colden
for twenty-five years about subjects such as botany and geography, as well as medicine. He knew five languages, accumulated a collection of 1,100 American plants, observed the weather, and studied magnetic deviation
and astronomy. His almanac Mercurius Novanglicanus, published in 1743, has been called "useful" and "good". His map of New England, which was published posthumously, was, at least in part, the basis for every map of New England published over the following fifty years.
Douglass did not always fit in well with Boston society. He was a self-proclaimed "rationalist", and quickly joined in the growing dissent against official Puritanism in Boston. He was probably a member of the group of freethinkers
(the "hell fire club") that contributed to The New-England Courant
published by James Franklin
. He engaged in economic, political and medical controversies. Douglass never married, but had an illegitimate son (born in 1745) whom he adopted, causing a scandal in society.
Although Douglass was a member of what may have been the first medical society in America, formed in Boston around 1735, he did not always get along with his fellow physicians. In 1721 Douglass described himself as the only physician in Boston with a medical degree. He complained about the system that allowed someone with as little as a one year apprenticeship with any sort of medical practitioner to present himself as a physician. He claimed that his fellow physicians were a major cause of death for their patients, and that they too often relied on a single treatment, such as bloodletting
or emetics, for all conditions. He is believed to be the author of a pseudonymous proposal in 1737 to register all medical practitioners in the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
William Douglass died in Boston on 21 October 1752.
(William Douglas claimed to have loaned those issues of the Transactions to Mather). Mather urged that inoculation for smallpox be practised in Boston. William Douglass, along with almost all of Boston's physicians, opposed inoculation. Mather and Douglass attacked each other personally, but by the next year Douglass admitted that the inoculations were safer and more effective than he had believed they would be in 1721, and he eventually performed them himself, although he remained on bad terms with Mather.
or scarlet fever
struck Boston. Douglass's account of the disease, The Practical History of a New Epidemic Eruptive Miliary Fever, with an Angina Ulcusculosa, Which Prevailed in Boston, New England, in the Years 1735 and 1736, has been called "one of the most valuable essays upon diphtheria up to that time", and "the first adequate description of scarlet fever in English." The Practical History was reprinted in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1825, as "one of the best works extant on the subject." Cadwallader Colden wrote that Douglass had published the "only successful method of cure" for the disease.
, who cited the work in The Wealth of Nations
, and called Douglass "honest and downright." Douglass also wrote about wampum
, the Bank of Amsterdam, the ideas of John Law
, the South Sea Bubble, taxation, and "political arithmetic
."
of the Fortress of Louisbourg
in 1745 by forces from New England caused great excitement and joy in Massachusetts. Douglas had been opposed to the expedition against Louisbourg from the beginning, and continued to criticize it afterwards. Douglass held that the expedition had been poorly planned and inadequately manned for an attack on the powerful fortress at Louisbourg, and had succeeded only by a string of lucky turns of events. Critics have cited Douglass's continued criticism of the Louisbourg expedition as evidence of his stubbornness and failure to acknowledge the errors of his opinions. Bullock, however, notes that historians largely agree with Douglass's assessment of the inadequacy of the preparations for the expedition against Louisbourg, and the role played by luck in it.
, Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay
, over Shirley's support of paper money in the colony, and over his leadership in the expedition against Louisbourg. In 1747 Royal Navy Captain Charles Knowles, who had served as governor of Louisbourg after its capture, sought to impress
American seaman from Boston to bring the ships in his squadron up to strength. The press gangs were heavy-handed, and Boston was still smarting from an incident two years earlier in which two American seamen had been killed in a fight with a Royal Navy press gang. Mobs roamed the streets of Boston, threatening naval officers and ships, and Governor Shirley at his home and at the Boston Town House. Douglass used his pamphlets to attack both Shirley and Knowles over the impressment issue. Both men sued Douglas for libel, but the courts found in favour of Douglass in both cases.
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts, who wrote pamphlets on medicine, economics and politics that were often polemical.
Personal life
Douglass was born in GiffordGifford, East Lothian
Gifford is a village in the parish of Yester in East Lothian, Scotland. It lies approximately 4 miles south of Haddington and 25 miles east of Edinburgh.-History:...
, Scotland in about 1691. Douglass studied at Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
(MA, 1705), Leyden, Paris, and Utrecht, where he received his MD in 1712. He first arrived in Boston in 1716, with letters of introduction to Increase Mather
Increase Mather
Increase Mather was a major figure in the early history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay . He was a Puritan minister who was involved with the government of the colony, the administration of Harvard College, and most notoriously, the Salem witch trials...
, Cotton Mather
Cotton Mather
Cotton Mather, FRS was a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, prolific author and pamphleteer; he is often remembered for his role in the Salem witch trials...
and Benjamin Colman. After travelling in the West Indies, Douglass returned to Boston in 1718, where he lived for the rest of his life. Douglass prospered in Boston, and put his money into property, both in the city and in remote parts of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Although he owned houses in Boston, he lived at the Green Dragon Tavern
Green Dragon Tavern
Green Dragon Tavern was a public house used as a tavern and meeting place located on Union Street in Boston's North End.A petition for a license to sell "strong drink" at the Green Dragon was presented in 1714. The property had been inherited by Mehitable Cooper from her father, William Stoughton,...
, which he also owned. In 1746 Douglass offered the town of New Sherburn, where he had purchased a large quantity of land, $500 and thirty acres, with a house and barn, to be used to establish free schools in the town, in exchange for the town changing its name to Douglas
Douglas, Massachusetts
Douglas is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 8,471 as of the 2010 census. It includes the sizable Douglas State Forest, managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation .- History :...
.
In common with other educated men of the time, William Douglass pursued a wide range of interests. He corresponded with Cadwallader Colden
Cadwallader Colden
Cadwallader Colden was a physician, farmer, surveyor, botanist, and a lieutenant governor for the Province of New York.-Biography:...
for twenty-five years about subjects such as botany and geography, as well as medicine. He knew five languages, accumulated a collection of 1,100 American plants, observed the weather, and studied magnetic deviation
Magnetic deviation
Magnetic deviation is the error induced in a compass by local magnetic fields, which must be allowed for, along with magnetic declination, if accurate bearings are to be calculated....
and astronomy. His almanac Mercurius Novanglicanus, published in 1743, has been called "useful" and "good". His map of New England, which was published posthumously, was, at least in part, the basis for every map of New England published over the following fifty years.
Douglass did not always fit in well with Boston society. He was a self-proclaimed "rationalist", and quickly joined in the growing dissent against official Puritanism in Boston. He was probably a member of the group of freethinkers
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
(the "hell fire club") that contributed to The New-England Courant
The New-England Courant
The New-England Courant is one of the oldest and the first truly independent American newspapers. It was founded in Boston on August 7, 1721 by James Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's older brother. The newspaper participated in several controversies and was suppressed in 1727...
published by James Franklin
James Franklin (printer)
James Franklin was an American colonial author, printer, newspaper publisher, and almanac publisher...
. He engaged in economic, political and medical controversies. Douglass never married, but had an illegitimate son (born in 1745) whom he adopted, causing a scandal in society.
Although Douglass was a member of what may have been the first medical society in America, formed in Boston around 1735, he did not always get along with his fellow physicians. In 1721 Douglass described himself as the only physician in Boston with a medical degree. He complained about the system that allowed someone with as little as a one year apprenticeship with any sort of medical practitioner to present himself as a physician. He claimed that his fellow physicians were a major cause of death for their patients, and that they too often relied on a single treatment, such as bloodletting
Bloodletting
Bloodletting is the withdrawal of often little quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease. Bloodletting was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluid were considered to be "humors" the proper balance of which maintained health...
or emetics, for all conditions. He is believed to be the author of a pseudonymous proposal in 1737 to register all medical practitioners in the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
William Douglass died in Boston on 21 October 1752.
Smallpox inoculation controversy
In 1721, while smallpox was spreading through Boston, Cotton Mather learned of the Turkish practice of inoculation to control the severity of smallpox, accounts of which had been published that year in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal SocietyPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society of London. It was established in 1665, making it the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to science, and it has remained in continuous publication ever since, making it the world's...
(William Douglas claimed to have loaned those issues of the Transactions to Mather). Mather urged that inoculation for smallpox be practised in Boston. William Douglass, along with almost all of Boston's physicians, opposed inoculation. Mather and Douglass attacked each other personally, but by the next year Douglass admitted that the inoculations were safer and more effective than he had believed they would be in 1721, and he eventually performed them himself, although he remained on bad terms with Mather.
Epidemic of 1735/1736
In 1735 and 1736 an epidemic of diphtheriaDiphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...
or scarlet fever
Scarlet fever
Scarlet fever is a disease caused by exotoxin released by Streptococcus pyogenes. Once a major cause of death, it is now effectively treated with antibiotics...
struck Boston. Douglass's account of the disease, The Practical History of a New Epidemic Eruptive Miliary Fever, with an Angina Ulcusculosa, Which Prevailed in Boston, New England, in the Years 1735 and 1736, has been called "one of the most valuable essays upon diphtheria up to that time", and "the first adequate description of scarlet fever in English." The Practical History was reprinted in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1825, as "one of the best works extant on the subject." Cadwallader Colden wrote that Douglass had published the "only successful method of cure" for the disease.
Economics
Douglass wrote several pamphlets condemning the use of paper money by the American colonies. His Summary of ... the British Settlements in North America attracted favorable notice from Adam SmithAdam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
, who cited the work in The Wealth of Nations
The Wealth of Nations
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, generally referred to by its shortened title The Wealth of Nations, is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith...
, and called Douglass "honest and downright." Douglass also wrote about wampum
Wampum
Wampum are traditional, sacred shell beads of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of the indigenous people of North America. Wampum include the white shell beads fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell; and the white and purple beads made from the quahog, or Western North Atlantic...
, the Bank of Amsterdam, the ideas of John Law
John Law (economist)
John Law was a Scottish economist who believed that money was only a means of exchange that did not constitute wealth in itself and that national wealth depended on trade...
, the South Sea Bubble, taxation, and "political arithmetic
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
."
Louisbourg
The captureSiege of Louisbourg (1745)
The Siege of Louisbourg took place in 1745 when a New England colonial force aided by a British fleet captured Louisbourg, the capital of the French province of Île-Royale during the War of the Austrian Succession, known as King George's War in the British colonies.Although the Fortress of...
of the Fortress of Louisbourg
Fortress of Louisbourg
The Fortress of Louisbourg is a national historic site and the location of a one-quarter partial reconstruction of an 18th century French fortress at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia...
in 1745 by forces from New England caused great excitement and joy in Massachusetts. Douglas had been opposed to the expedition against Louisbourg from the beginning, and continued to criticize it afterwards. Douglass held that the expedition had been poorly planned and inadequately manned for an attack on the powerful fortress at Louisbourg, and had succeeded only by a string of lucky turns of events. Critics have cited Douglass's continued criticism of the Louisbourg expedition as evidence of his stubbornness and failure to acknowledge the errors of his opinions. Bullock, however, notes that historians largely agree with Douglass's assessment of the inadequacy of the preparations for the expedition against Louisbourg, and the role played by luck in it.
Libel
Douglass repeatedly attacked William ShirleyWilliam Shirley
William Shirley was a British colonial administrator who served twice as Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and as Governor of the Bahamas in the 1760s...
, Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay
Province of Massachusetts Bay
The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a crown colony in North America. It was chartered on October 7, 1691 by William and Mary, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of England and Scotland...
, over Shirley's support of paper money in the colony, and over his leadership in the expedition against Louisbourg. In 1747 Royal Navy Captain Charles Knowles, who had served as governor of Louisbourg after its capture, sought to impress
Impressment
Impressment, colloquially, "the Press", was the act of taking men into a navy by force and without notice. It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to...
American seaman from Boston to bring the ships in his squadron up to strength. The press gangs were heavy-handed, and Boston was still smarting from an incident two years earlier in which two American seamen had been killed in a fight with a Royal Navy press gang. Mobs roamed the streets of Boston, threatening naval officers and ships, and Governor Shirley at his home and at the Boston Town House. Douglass used his pamphlets to attack both Shirley and Knowles over the impressment issue. Both men sued Douglas for libel, but the courts found in favour of Douglass in both cases.
Scholarly assessment
Douglass has been accused of being partial and prejudiced, often in error, careless in writing, and having a "conception of historical method" that was "entirely inadequate." One assessment of Douglass's work was, "Always positive, and sometimes right." On the other hand, Bullock calls Douglass "generally a reliable and valuable authority" on colonial trade, commerce, and money, and states that he gave "intelligent accounts of colonial taxation." Trent and Wells described the Summary of ... the British Settlements in North America as "interesting" and "valuable, in spite of its prejudices and inaccuracies."Works
- Inoculation of the Small Pox as practised in Boston, considered in a letter to A[lexander] S[tuart], M. D. F. R. S., in London. (1722)
- The Abuses and Scandals of some late Pamphlets in favor of Inoculation of the Small-pox, as practised in Boston. (1722)
- Inoculation, The Abuses and Scandals of some late Pamphlets in favor of Inoculation of the Small-pox, mostly obviated, and Inoculation further considered, considered in a letter to A[lexander] S[tuart], M. D. F. R. S. (1722)
- Postscript to the Above, Being a short answer to the Matters of fact, &c, misrepresented in a late doggerel dialogue (between Academicus and Sawny, &c). (1722)
- Some historical remarks on the city of St. Andrews in North-Britain, with a particular account of the ...Harbour, etc. (1728)
- A Dissertation concerning the Inoculation of the Small-pox. (1730)
- A Practical Essay Concerning the Small-pox. (1730)
- The Practical History of a New Epidemic Eruptive Miliary Fever, with an Angina Ulcusculosa, Which Prevailed in Boston, New England, in the Years 1735 and 1736. (1736)
- Some Observations on the Scheme projected for emitting 60000 £ in Bills of a New Tenour, to be redeemed in Silver and Gold. (1738)
- An Essay, Concerning Silver and Paper Currencies; More Especially with Regard to the British Colonies in New England. (1738)
- A Discourse Concerning the Currencies of the British Plantations in America: More Particularly in Relation to the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, in New England. (1739)
- Mercurius Novanglicanus. (Almanac for 1743–1744) (1743)
- A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North America. (1748) (Online at Google Books).
- Plan of the British Dominions of New England. (Map) (1753)