Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/447

GARDINER 425 GARDINER diagnosis confirmed and his surgical skill demonstrated. It was then the fashion for physicians to compound drugs in their own dispensary, and Dr. Gardiner, following the custom, became convinced of the waste of his time, and opened an apothecary shop in which the work could be done both for himself and for other physicians. He went on from this beginning, importing drugs and chemicals until his profits ran into the thousands, year after year, from his establishment under the "Sign of the Unicorn and Mortar" on Wash- ington and Winter Streets. He also opened shops in Meriden and Hartford, Connecticut, that proved equally lucrative. These shops "specialized," as it were, in "Galenical and Chymical Medicines," and in "Ship's medicine Boxes, put up in the neatest manner for Mer- chant Ships as they are put up for the Royal Navy at Apothecary's Hall in London." Being, at first, of an easy-going nature. Dr. Gardiner trusted his partners without state- ments handed in, but discovering that he was being cheated, he was obliged to go to law. The newspapers of that period are overflowing with bitter accusations and virulent rejoinders between Dr. Gardiner on the one hand and Mr. James Flagg and Dr. Jepson on the other, until both of these men were at last glad to liquidate their debts, according to the decisions of the judicial referees. In his mansion on Winter Street, with a garden extending to Tremont, Dr. Gardiner entertained lavishly the grandees of the day: Early Percy, Governor Hutchinson, Sir Wil- liam Pepperell, Admiral Graves, General Gage, and many others. In this way he showed his devotion to the Crown of England, and as a physician he built an excellent hospital, sur- rounded with a stockade fence, for the officers and sailors of His British Majesty's New Eng- land Fleet. Moreover, when in 1761, small- pox inoculation came into vogue he oflfered to build another hospital near his own, at a cost to patients of $4 for inoculation and medicines and $3 daily during their stay. This offer was, however, not accepted, because the situation did not seem so salubrious as that afforded by other hospitals. It is now time to say something concerning Dr. Gardiner's adventures in Maine. In 1752 the Kennebec Company was founded with his money, chiefly, and with Dr. Gardiner as "Perpetual Moderator." The charter gave title to seven and a half miles on each side of the Kennebec up as far as fifty miles from its mouth, and in this region Dr. Gardiner built towns, sawmills, and churches, and in- duced people to settle by offers of land at low interest. The town of Dresden of today was so named in order to induce Germans to settle within its borders. In addition to these riches, Dr. Gardiner had shares in the Pejepscot Com- pany and I also note his lucrative lumber dealings in Saco with Dr. Donald Cummings, who was bound to get rich. Dr. Gardiner prospered tremendously until the Revolution, when he avowed himself a loyalist and quarrelled with John Hancock, long a very close friend. Embittered at last by the con- fiscation of his drugs by Dr. John Morgan, surgeon-general of the army by the orders of Washington, then commanding the Con- tinental Army in Dorchester, — for the rest of his life Dr. Gardiner entitled him : "That Thief Washington," — he collected some $2,000 in gold, and with a party of eight people fled to Halifax. For an ideal, the British Crown, he had sacrificed everything : his practice, his stock in trade, his real estate in Boston, and his vast dominions in Maine. His drugs were confiscated, his books and furniture sold at auction for $8,000, while his real estate in Boston was sacrificed. As for the Kennebec Company, invaders squatted where they chose and cut off timber. Amongst this set of marauders I find four physicians, two of whom had the impudence at later dates to sell the land as their own to settlers who were careless about accurate deeds. Meanwhile Dr. Gardiner reached England, where he received a pension from the Crown, lived and practised at Poole, in County Dorset, and went now and then to London, where in Spring Gardens he had many talks with Dr. Richard Huck Saunders, whom he had met in New England as surgeon in the British Army during the colonial wars. He obtained some money from practice, had a pension which was at one time increased by an addi- tional grant of 50 pounds a year from the Crown, and his son-in-law, Oliver Whipple, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sent him cash from time to time. He returned to America in 1785, with the hope of putting his landed estates into shape. They were finally returned to his heirs, chiefly in the form of enormous acreages of timber land in eastern Maine. He settled in Newport, Rhode Island, practised steadily de- spite his advancing years, but died suddenly of a malignant fever, August 8, 1786, at the age of seventy-nine. He was buried from Trinity Church in that city and the flags were half- masted during his funeral. Dr. Gardiner was a public-spirited, able man, but obstinate in his opinions. He prac- tically disinherited his oldest son because ne