Today in Salem: Betty and Abigail are huddling in a corner in a wild panic, gasping and wheezing and unable to speak. The stinking gum has joined the long list of herbs, seeds, roots, and all manner of strange substances that have made no difference whatsoever in the girls’ condition. Even prayer, constant prayer, hasn’t helped.
Rev Parris and his wife are at their wits’ end, and summon the only village doctor. He’s 78, and his horse walks almost as gingerly as he does. His great-niece Elizabeth Hubbard follows on her own horse and carries her uncle’s box, as far behind as is acceptable. She’s 17 and has been living with him as a servant for quite some time. He and his wife are amiable enough, and they treat Elizabeth well, but she’s a teenage girl after all, and always hungry to socialize with other girls.
The parsonage is cold, but the doctor and Elizabeth hardly notice as they turn in circles of their own, watching the spinning and convulsing girls. He grabs their arms and stumbles a little, looking into their eyes as much as he can until he proclaims what the neighbors have been whispering for weeks: The girls are under an evil hand. But why?
LEARN MORE: What were Puritan doctors like?
The Puritans believed that all things were from God: good things like bountiful crops and summer rain, and bad things like disease and affliction. When bad things happened, it wasn’t because the person was sick. It was because they’d sinned and God was displeased. So, while a doctor tried to diagnose illness, he was also asked to find and explain the sin behind the affliction.
This put doctors almost on par with ministers, and their opinions were greatly respected. In fact, sometimes they were the ministers. This could explain why doctors were so poorly trained in medical practices. There were no medical schools or programs in America. Instead, doctors practiced what they knew from British medicine, which was usually passed down through the decades and had become obsolete years before.
That said, it’s likely that the doctor in Salem had at least some medical training, because he was actually called “doctor” — a title used only for the educated — and used “feseke” (phisic, or medicine). If a person’s illness exhausted all of a doctor’s knowledge, as it did with Betty and Abigail, the sick person was sometimes said to be afflicted by an evil source.
WHO was Elizabeth Hubbard?
Elizabeth lived as a servant with her great-uncle, Dr. William Griggs. She had a reputation for lying, having a strong imagination, and sometimes denied the Sabbath day.
Like many of the other young women who were servants, Elizabeth’s prospects were uncertain at best, or even non-existent. She was probably an orphan, with no physical or emotional support from direct family members. And she was a servant, with no dowry or connections.
By the end of the trial Elizabeth had testified against 32 people, 17 of whom were arrested, 13 of them hanged, and 2 who died in jail.
History isn’t clear about what happened to Elizabeth after the trials. Records exists for a woman named Elizabeth Hibbert, who married a John Bennett and had four children. But it isn’t known whether this was the same Elizabeth Hubbard. Case files: Elizabeth Hubbard