Medicine: Resources available in the Special Collections Research Center

This collection consists of a physician's daybook kept by Dr. George Williamson of New Market, Virginia whose practice extended throughout the Shenandoah Valley. Spanning 1808-1819 the daybook records names of patients, treatments, and payments (for both Caucasians and African-Americans). Treatments range from inoculations and venereal disease to all night vigils.

Letters, accounts, and legal papers of Dr. Charles Brown. Collection includes letters, 1813-1818, concerning patients (including slaves).

Medical ledger, 1825-1837, of James Keen, a physician in Mecklenburg County, Virginia. Notes information about visits to patients which include treatments, medicines dispensed, prescriptions, notes, calculations and payment records. There are over 60 entries for the treatment of slaves in which several individuals are named. One includes the removal of a tumor from a "Negro Woman". An alphabetical index in the back of the ledger lists the names of the patients and the respective pages on which the records are located. The ledger contains loose receipts for visits, treatments, prescriptions, etc. Some medicines prescribed are : 1 doz pills, opiate pills, laudanum, Canthar pills, epsom salts, castor oil, hive syrup, nitric acid, blue pills and magnesium. Some treatments include tumor extraction, blister plaster and coughs.

This collection consists of a medical account book written by Dawson Warren, M.D. (????-1850), who practiced medicine at Surry County, VA. This account book spans the period of 1844 to 1849 and contains information on patient visits (including slaves), charges for services rendered, payments made, and bonds payable to Dr. Warren.

Contain oystering accounts; farm accounts for "Porto Bella," York County, Virginia and "New Hope," [?]; cash accounts of Williamsburg, Virginia; list of ages and prices of slaves; records of physician's visits to family and slaves; remedy for colic; and memorandum of a purchase of land from College of William and Mary in October 1847.

Collection includes papers concerning Essex County, Va. including land records and wills. Includes "Letters to a Nineteenth Century Physician" paper by R.D. Jordan. Papers concerns letters from owners of ailing slaves in Albemarle County, Virginia to Charles Brown, a Charlottesville physician.