MCDOCTORS

In the early 1740s, a young Scottish doctor named John Murray arrived in Charleston. Soon he was writing home to report that he had achieved “incredible” success. South Carolina, he concluded, was “a fine place for a surgeon.” The virulent-disease environment in itself was not much of an attraction, as the lack of adequate medical care in the unhealthiest parts of the world today attests. What made it a fine place was its combination of pestilence and prosperity. As another Scot, Adam Smith, observed in 1776, it is not demand but effective demand that encourages people to supply a need or want. The great wealth of the planters and merchants held the promise of a lucrative medical marketplace, and a supply of Scottish medicos rushed to meet the demand.

Established medical practitioners in late colonial Charleston appear to have earned a comfortable living. During epidemics they could make money “very fast,” according to his cousin, also named John Murray. Another Scottish doctor, Alexander Garden, who arrived in the early 1750s, was soon averaging an income of 500 pounds a year. By the 1770s, he was making several times that much and was reputed the richest doctor in the province. A number of other doctors earned yearly incomes of 500 pounds or more. Many doctors supplemented their incomes by opening shops where they mixed and sold drugs.