Cadwallader Colden (7 page)

Colden was especially critical of the contamination of stagnant water in the area of the docks, and he urged that removal of the filth and better drainage be carried out. He insisted that the responsibility be assigned to a tax-supported entity rather than contracted to private parties.
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As a consequence of Colden's efforts, which gain him primacy as the first to deal with public health in the Province of New York, corrective measures were undertaken and more stringent regulations were adopted.
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Colden's medical notes chronicle his observations on the bite of a rattle snake that injected its venom into a steer. Successful treatment was effected by pouring heated hog's lard down the throat into the stomach of the steer.
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He speculated on the relationship
between Yaws and Lues Venera, and indicated that the former had an African origin while the latter originated in America before the European explorers arrived, thereby making the two distinct species of disease.
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Colden's treatise on Tar water,
An Abstract from Dr. Berkeley's Treatise on Tar-Water with Some Reflections Thereon, Adapted to Diseases Frequent in America
, was printed by James Parker in 1744.
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A common interest in medicine brought Colden together with John Mitchell, who became a member of the American Philosophical Society at the same time as Colden. The relationship began in June 1745 with an introductory letter from Colden to Mitchell, and continued when Franklin sent Colden Mitchell's reflections about pestilential distemper (Yellow Fever) in accordance with Mitchell's request.
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For a disease that was associated with 90 percent mortality, Mitchell recommended diaphoretics and purgatives to stimulation evacuation. In reference to the treatment of pleurisy and pneumonia, Mitchell introduced the new medicine, named Rattlesnake Root (
Polygala senega
).
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In Colden's letter of response to Mitchell, he reported on the epidemics of 1743 and 1745 in New York City. He ascribed the disease to importation from England, Europe, and the West Indies because it that is where it first appeared and was concentrated near the docks. It is now felt that the “Yellow Fever,” which gained the attention of many colonial physicians, including the most notable Benjamin Rush, was probably either infectious hepatitis or Weil's disease (food or water contaminated by urine containing
Leptospira icterohaemorhagiae
of infected rats).
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Colden included reports of the benefits of Tar Water as treatment of Yaws, gout, and scurvy. In that letter Colden deviated from medicine to bring into focus his own intellectual accomplishments in Newtonian science.
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I think I have discover'd the first principles of Action in the Material World & that I can demonstrate them & from them demonstrate not only all the Phenomena arising from Gravitation
but the cause of Gravitation itself In short I think I can demonstrate the Theorem in S
^r
Isaac Newtones Principia from these Principles & that independently from the conic sections which alone would be of some advantage to those who would not be so perfect in that Doctrine as the understanding of S
^r
Isaac Principia requires…. I am in hopes it may likewise be of use to explain some other Phenomena besides Gravitation of which none of the Philosophers have hitherto been able to give any tolerable account.”
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JOHN MITCHELL

John Mitchell, with whom Cadwallader Colden never made personal contact, shared with Colden the status of an Edinburgh trained colonial physician, a concern with the Anglo-French rivalry in North America, cartography of the pertinent region, a continued interest in botany, as well as early membership in the American Philosophical Society.

Unlike his contemporary medical colleagues, Colden and Douglass, John Mitchell was a native American, born in White Chapel Parish, Lancaster County, Virginia, on April 13, 1711. He was the son of a comfortable planter and merchant. As a young teen, Mitchell was sent to Edinburgh, which awarded him a master's degree in 1729. While at the university he studied botany under Dr. Charles Alston, who later became the King's Botanist for Scotland. Over the ensuing two years, Mitchell continued his studies in preparation for a career in medicine. He enrolled in the anatomy course of Alexander Monro
primus
and the class on the practice of medicine conducted by John Rutherfurd, the grandfather of Sir Walter Scott. Mitchell did not receive a medical degree, but returned home to practice medicine in Lancaster for two years before moving to Urbanna in Middlesex County, Virginia, where he spent his remaining years in America.
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Mitchell maintained his interest in botany and began collecting plant specimens from his region almost immediately after his return to Virginia. He shared these with his fellow Virginian John Clayton who assembled “A Catalogue of Plants, Fruits and Trees Native to Virginia,” which was dispatched to Dr. Johannes Frederick Gronovius who, without Clayton's knowledge or permission, published the material in 1739 with the title of
Flora Virginica.
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As early as 1737, John Mitchell began his correspondence with Peter Collinson, the conduit between colonial botanists and those with shared interests in Great Britain and Europe. The only surviving letter between the two was dated March 11, 1741. It included Mitchell's taxonomic treatise and descriptions of thirty new floral genera.
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Collinson forwarded the treatise to Christopher Jacob Trew in Nuremberg who had it published in the proceedings of the local academy in 1748.
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Thus, Mitchell is credited as the first North American to publish on taxonomy.
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At the same time that he collected plant specimens in Virginia, Mitchell, in response to the curiosity of Peter Collinson and other Englishmen, studied and dissected both male and female opossums. The findings were read at a meeting of the Royal Society of London on February 10, 1743.
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Mitchell's first publication appeared in the
Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society in 1744. The paper was a consideration of the causes of different pigmentations in people. Mitchell deduced from his own studies of the composition of Negro skin:

From what has been said about the Cause of the Colour of black and white People we may justly conclude, that they might very naturally be both descended from one and the same Parents, as we are better assured from Scripture, that they are…. For the different Colours of People have been demonstrated to be only the necessary Effects, and natural Consequences, of their respective Climes and Ways of Life; as we may further learn from Experience, that they are the most suitable for the Preservation of Health, and the Ease and Convenience of mankind in the
Climes and Ways of Living: So that the black Colour of the Negroes of
Africa
, instead of being a Curse denounced on them, on account of their Forefather
Ham
, as some have idly imagined, is rather a Blessing, rendering their lives in that intemperate Region, more tolerable, and less painful….
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Mitchell met Bartram and Franklin during a visit to Philadelphia in 1744. This stimulated the initiation of correspondence between Mitchell and Colden. In September of the next year, Mitchell wrote to Franklin about his deteriorating health, manifested by fever, diarrhea, “Piles,” and spitting of blood.
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Unable to continue practicing medicine and because he attributed part of his disability to the climate of Virginia, Mitchell sold his house and possessions, including his library and sailed for England with his wife in the beginning of 1746, reaching London in May.

Mitchell and Colden continued to correspond. Knowing of their mutual admiration, Collinson, who was engaged in having a second edition of Colden's
History of the Five Indian Nations
published, asked Mitchell to draw up a new title page.
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Mitchell spent a significant effort on the project, only to learn from Colden, two years after the 1747 publication, that he was displeased because the English edition was dedicated to General James Edward Ogelthorpe, a trustee of the colony of Georgia, with whom Colden had no acquaintance.
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Mitchell was elected to the Royal Society in December 1748 as “A Gentleman of great merit and Learning, who…from his great application to the Study of Natural History, especially Botany, is very well acquainted with the Vegetable production of North America.” His accomplishment in Botany was further honored by Linnaeus in the 1753 publication of
Species Plantarum
, in which the partridge berry was given the name
Mitchella repens.

As the subtitle of the definitive biography of Dr. John Mitchell indicates, he is best remembered as “The Man who made the Map of North America.”
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Mitchell, like Colden, was deeply concerned
with the threat of French expansion in North America. The Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantation appreciated the need to delineate British and French claims, particularly related to lands in the Ohio Valley and west of the British colonies whose boundaries were poorly defined. The French were producing maps on which their claims were staked and the British needed to rebut those claims. This was complicated by that fact that the only previous large-scale map, which was made by Henry Popple in 1733, had many errors and failed to display facts and boundaries appropriate for consideration.

The Lords Commissioners were apparently acquainted with a map of North America that Mitchell had produced in 1750.
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Consequently Mitchell was retained to create a new and improved map based on up-to-date material provided by each of the colonial governors. The result was the 1755 publication of Mitchell's “A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America with the Roads, Distances, Limits, and Extent of the Settlements.” Twenty-one editions and impressions of Mitchell's map appeared in four languages between 1755 and 1781. Copies of the third edition of the map were used by John Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin during the negotiations for the 1783 Treaty of Paris at the end of the Revolutionary War when the boundaries of the United States and Canada were defined. The map was referred to in boundary disputes throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century and most recently in 1932.
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The high regard that John Mitchell enjoyed in London is attested to by his selection as one of two candidates for the position of keeper of the newly created British Museum. After two and a half years of deliberation, the alternate candidate, Gowin Knight, was selected by King George II in 1758.
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One year before the selection,
The Contest in America between Great Britain and France with Its Consequence and Importance
was published by the same man who printed Mitchell's map. There is little doubt that Mitchell was
the author of that work, which was directed at making the colonies better valued and pointing out the dangers the French, currently on the North American continent, represented.
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In 1759, Mitchell moved to Kew in order to become an active participant in the formation of the Royal Botanic Gardens, which had been initiated by the Prince of Wales and supported by Mitchell's intimate friend, the Earl of Bute. In 1767, Mitchell's
Present State of Great Britain and North America with regard to Agriculture, Population, Trade, and Manufactures, impartially considered
was published in London. He considered the 1765 Stamp Act to have been unwise and stressed that imposing taxed on the colonies was counterproductive to their desired expansion. Mitchell died in London on February 29, 1768, in the same month that his membership in the revived American Philosophical Society was confirmed.
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In the early 1740s, Colden was able to dedicate much of his time at Coldengham to his favorite intellectual subject, a consideration of Isaac Newton's postulates regarding matter, motion, and gravitation. Newton's
Principia Mathematica
, in which his three universal laws of motion appeared, was published in 1697. The First Law states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in uniform motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external net force. The Second Law states that an applied force on an object equals the rate of change of its momentum with time. These two laws indicate that a force is only needed in order to change an object's state of motion. Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Colden's initial exposure to Newtonian science occurred during his course in physics at the University of Edinburgh. His notes provide evidence of the awe with which he regarded Newton's work.
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As Colden continued his interest in Newtonian science, the
genesis of his publication was his sincere conviction that his understanding of the science was sufficient for him to make meaningful improvements. As Colden wrote to Peter Collinson in June 1745: