> > JoEllen Brown wrote: > >> >> >> Does anyone know where I could get a list of the medical schools >> that existed in Massachusetts around 1800. > To expand a bit on my earlier reply, this is from Paul Starr, _The Social Transformation of American Medecine_ (Basic Books, 1982). "At the time of the Revolution there appear to have been about 3,500 or 4,000 physicians; 400 of them had formal medical training, perhaps half as many held medical degrees. This professional elite was concentrated almost entirely in the larger cities. ... Apprenticeship served as the principal form of medical training in the colonial period, and it remained central even after the advent of medical schools." (p. 40) [The first medical school in the colonies was at the College of Philadelphia, 1765] "After the War of 1812, medical schools began to proliferate through the country." (42) Your man may have had a medical school education, but the odds are he didn't. Interestingly that may well have made him a better doctor at that time. George Washington received the "best" medical attention available--they drained nearly all his blood in a lethal effort to save his life. One of my wife's ancestors was a doctor at about the same time. He moved his family again and again--he lived in four states during his lifetime. We assume that like the southern planters who exhausted the soil and moved on, he stayed in one place until he had killed off all his patients and then went in search of new blood. >> > > > >