INTRODUCTION

Those professing to be healers in North American towns during the 1700s inherited moral values associated with specific communities: families, merchants, churches, schools, vocational societies, hospitals, judges, and governing officials. The “governors” of towns and colonies embedded their values in laws adopted to regulate “healers” in each polity. The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1649) and the Provincial Assembly of New York (1760) adopted such laws. Judges and juries began assessing penalties for those convicted of “malpractice.” In 1791, the Supreme Court of Connecticut awarded forty pounds to the husband of a woman who had died after a breast amputation performed by the defendant (Burns 1969a, 54). The regulations of a few hospitals, such as the Pennsylvania Hospital (1752) and the Williamsburg State Hospital (1773), began to exert directive influences. Societies of physicians transformed the ideals of individual consciences into rules that could be enforced. In its constitution adopted in 1766, for example, the New Jersey Medical Society forbade the use of secret remedies. Medical schools, beginning in Philadelphia in 1765 and in New York City in 1767, added their moral expectations for doctors. Churches wielded omnipotent influences in shaping moral values. As commerce expanded, healers wanted monetary rewards for their services. Families struggled to reconcile competing moral claims as they chose the services of specific healers.