ABSTRACT
The medical practice of Jonathan Potts typified the state of the healing art in Pennsylvania. Data about his work as a country practitioner—the diseases he treated, the surgery he performed, the fees he charged, and the drugs he dispensed—provide information about the state of the profession. A glimpse of Potts’s professional activities from 1767 to 1774 offers a microcosm of medicine in late colonial America. The speculative pathology that flourished in Potts’s time not only inhibited progress in therapy, but also blocked developments in major surgery. While engaged in practice, he prepared his dissertation on malaria. He made a commendable effort to halt the ravages of the disease by appealing to his patients in a letter that may have been the basis of a speech. He became an active participant in the great political crisis between America and Britain in 1774 which threatened to erupt into war.
