He was one of nearly
three thousand Palatines, who came over from England in 1710, under
the protection of Governor Hunter. Where the doctor had studied, how
he had acquired his medical knowledge, and where he had received his
diploma, it is hard at present to say, for nobody knew at the time;
yet it is certain that his profound skill and abstruse knowledge were
the talk and wonder of the common people, far and near.
His practice was totally different from that of any other physician;
consisting in mysterious compounds, known only to himself, in the
preparing and administering of which, it was said, he always consulted
the stars. So high an opinion was entertained of his skill,
particularly by the German and Dutch inhabitants, that they always
resorted to him in desperate cases. He was one of those infallible
doctors, that are always effecting sudden and surprising cures, when
the patient has been given up by all the regular physicians; unless,
as is shrewdly observed, the case has been left too long before it was
put into their hands. The doctor's library was the talk and marvel of
the neighbourhood, I might almost say of the entire burgh. The good
people looked with reverence at a man that had read three whole
shelves full of books, and some of them, too, as large as a family
Bible.
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