The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) are to be taken to task for having never pointed out to our kindred brethren, lawyers, that 18th century, up to date medical care, then was: kind nursing, nourishment, the care of wounds, keeping the sick away from people with pox, herbs, leeches and sundry other modalities, perhaps blood letting. As this writer was not wont to do, reading and studying the Constitution, until Senator Byrd on TV pointed and stared and admonished, you and you, read it as he waved the his little book. So he and with his fellow members of the AMA did miss the boat, too. This is certainly the mea culpa for this writer.
18th century up to date medical care had so little to offer, when contrasted with the modalities of medical care that came to be available, more and more, year by year thereafter, that it would seem that there was no up to date medical care then available to colonists.
Back a few years in a book Medical Care: Just and Equal, Dr Gerald J. Brown MD wrote, "finds the tenor of the American past to have always taken care of the sick and injured. Americans for more than two hundred years most always treated the best they could. If an Indian arrowed a settler the survivors pushed it through or pulled it out the best they could; and if the settlers got sick they too were cared by the rest with the aid of the Indians or not. Americans have no history of leaving the dying...; and the U.S. Marines are renowned to leave no man behind. This is one of our mores that has contributed in the past to the aura of America’s greatness."