The history of medical knowledge and practice in Plymouth can be traced through the lives of local physicians and institutions.

In his early 19th-century History of the Town of Plymouth, Dr. James Thacher compiled a list of doctors in Plymouth, recognizing 21 practitioners of medicine from the early 17th century into the 1830s. Thacher’s list of doctors focused on professional men of medicine and included individuals from other Plymouth Colony and later Plymouth County towns.

Thacher neglected to mention any women healers, though women were the central caregivers for their family’s and community’s general health needs, as well as specializing in midwifery. Bridget Fuller, for example, wife of Plymouth Colony’s first physician, Dr. Samule Fuller, was an experienced midwife with a significant role in the early settlement. Thacher also ignored medicine givers of other cultures who lived in Plymouth, including Indigenous healers.

Thacher’s List

Click on names to learn more.

Caleb Boutelle (1784-1819)

Andrew Mackie (1742-1817)

James Thacher (1754-1844)

Rosseter Cotton (1758-1837)

Nathan Hayward (1762-1848)

Zaccheus Bartlett (1765-1835)

Charles Cotton (1788-1870)

Robert Capen (1790-1853)

Winslow Warren (1795-1870)

Hervey N. Preston