Dr. Thomas Young [ 15 ] may have meant simply to convey respect for a colleague's skill. Young's political career has obscured the regard contemporaries held for him as a physician. John Adams, who came to despise his politics, respected him professionally. When Adams fell ill in Philadelphia while attending Congress, it was Dr. Young "who after scolding at me, quantum sufficit, for not taking his Advice, has pill'd and electuary'd me into pretty good Order!' When Rhode Island's Samuel Ward, another delegate in Philadelphia, caught a fatal case of smallpox, he called in Young to care for him.21 It was from Young that Dr. Benjamin Rush took his famous "ten and ten" purging prescription—ten grains each of calomel and jalap—which he used, along with copious amounts of bleeding, also favored by Young, to "cure" patients during Philadelphia's massive epidemic of yellow fever in 1793. (Rush's eminence and the publicity given his cure, led to the Rush-Young treatment's becoming standard therapy among American physicians for over a quarter of a century.) Young used no elixirs, promised no quick cures, and though many of his therapeutic techniques have since been rejected, no modern physician could object to his theory of medicine. "The great secret in our profession is to obtain a very thorough knowledge of the animal system in all its parts!' he said. Once we know "their structure, action and use in a sound state, with their several sympathies, connexions and mutual affections of each other, we may be the better enabled to judge of the seat, manner and quantity of the injury, when they are hurt!' Blend in a "natural sagacity and diligent observation" and these will "in the end prove the surest resort for the afflicted patient!'22 This common sense approach to medicine won Young a decent practice wherever in his wandering life he settled down, despite what were to many his offensive politics. But Young's medical skill may have had nothing to do with Warren's conciliatory visit. It has been remarked that the style of his words, "stilted even for the eighteenth century, raises a doubt as to Warren's sincerity. This, one suspects, was the young political leader as much 21 John Adams to Abigail Adams, May 29, 1775, L. H. Butterfield, ed., Adams Family Correspondence (2 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 1,207; Young to Henry Ward, March 26, 1776, in Bemhard Knollenberg, ed., Correspondence of Governor Samuel Ward .. . (Providence, 1952), 201—3. 22Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (2 vols., Princeton, 1951), I, 148-49; "To the Public!' Pennsylvania Journal, July 5,1775.