ows that many noted people were in
communication with him as his patients. Roger Williams wants a little
of his medicine for Mrs. Weekes's daughter; worshipful John Haynes is
in receipt of his powders; troublesome Captain Underhill wants "a little
white vitterall" for his wife, and something to cure his wife's friend's
neuralgia, (I think his wife's friend's husband had a little rather have
had it sent by the hands of Mrs. Underhill, than by those of the gallant
and discursive captain); and pious John Davenport says, his wife "tooke
but one halfe of one of the papers" (which probably contained the
medicine he called rubila), "but could not beare the taste of it, and
is discouraged from taking any more;" and honored William Leete asks for
more powders for his "poore little daughter Graciana," though he found
it "hard to make her take it," delicate, and of course sensitive, child
as she was, languishing and dying before her time, in spite of all the
bitter things she swallowed,--God help all little children in the hands
of dosing doctors and howling dervishes! Restless Samuel Gorton, now
tamed by the burden of fourscore and two years, writes so touching an
account of his infirmities, and expresses such overflowing gratitude for
the relief he has obtained from the Governor's prescriptions, wondering
how "a thing so little in quantity, so little in sent, so little in
taste, and so little to sence in operation, should beget and bring forth
such efects," that we repent our hasty exclamation, and bless the memory
of the good Governor, who gave relief to the worn-out frame of our
long-departed brother, the sturdy old heretic of Rhode Island.

What was that medicine which so frequently occurs in the printed letters
under the name of "rubila"? It is evidently a secret remedy, and, so
far as I know, has not yet been made out. I had almost given it up in
despair, when I found what appears to be a key to the mystery. In the
vast multitude of prescriptions contained in the manuscripts, most of
them written in symbols, I find one which I thus interpret:

"Four grains of (diaphoretic) antimony, with twenty grains of nitre,
with a little salt of tin, making rubila." Perhaps something was
added to redden the powder, as he constantly speaks of "rubifying" or
"viridating" his prescriptions; a very common practice of prescribers,
when their powders look a little too much like plain salt or sugar.

Waitstill Winthrop, the Governor's son, "w