The graves of those who died were levelled and sowed with grain
that the losses of the little band might not be suspected by the savage
tenants of the wilderness, and their story remains untold.
Of Dr. Fuller's practice, at a later period, we have an account in a
letter of his to Governor Bradford, dated June, 1630. "I have been to
Matapan" (now Dorchester), he says, "and let some twenty of those people
blood." Such wholesale depletion as this, except with avowed homicidal
intent, is quite unknown in these days; though I once saw the noted
French surgeon, Lisfranc, in a fine phlebotomizing frenzy, order some ten
or fifteen patients, taken almost indiscriminately, to be bled in a
single morning.
Dr. Fuller's two visits to Salem, at the request of Governor Endicott,
seem to have been very satisfactory to that gentleman. Morton, the wild
fellow of Merry Mount, gives a rather questionable reason for the
Governor's being so well pleased with the physician's doings. The names
under which he mentions the two personages, it will be seen, are not
intended to be complimentary. "Dr. Noddy did a great cure for Captain
Littleworth. He cured him of a disease called a wife." William Gager,
who came out with Winthrop, is spoken of as "a right godly man and
skilful chyrurgeon, but died of a malignant fever not very long after his
arrival."
Two practitioners of the ancient town of Newbury are entitled to special
notice, for different reasons.
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