The principal physician engaged under this order was Dr. Isaac Foster, Jr., of Charlestown, a Harvard graduate of the class of 1758, a member of the Provincial Congress, and a doctor of excellent reputation. His first proceeding seems to have been to collect his scattered charges and set up a kind of rough hospital in the fine old mansion on “Tory Row” (now number 96 Brattle Street) belonging to Penelope, relict of Colonel Henry Vassall. Being a loyalist, she had sought the protection of General Gage in Boston; and her deserted dwelling, from its size and central situation, offered an excellent location for the purpose desired. On April 29 Dr. Foster received confirmatory orders “to remove all the sick and wounded, whose circumstances will admit of it, into the hospital.”[1] This establishment, the nucleus of the future Medical Department, soon began adding to its first red-coated inmates the sufferers from fever, dysentery, and the other forms of illness that rapidly developed in the none-too-cleanly camp of the Yankee militia. For the next two months it appears to have been the main sick-bay of the “army.”
Foster’s chief coadjutor was naturally the man already on the ground, Dr. William Gamage of the class of 1767, the regular Cambridge practitioner. He was an allopath of the allopaths. “His lavish over-medi-
- ↑ Lincoln, Journals Massachusetts Provincial Congress, 527.
