Despite this incident, we have the word of Morgan that "a large, though unassorted stock of medicines" was collected in Boston when the British evacuated.[35] Hospital Surgeons Ebenezer Crosby and Frederick Ridgley reported that "at the evacuation of Boston ... all the Mates of the Hospital that could be spared from Cambridge ... were employed in packing up and sending off [to Cambridge] drugs, medicines and other hospital stores, collected by order of Dr. Morgan, the quantity of which appeared great."[36]
Inasmuch as few medicines were listed in the inventory of stores left by the British on the wharfs and in the scuttled ships in the harbor,[37] it appears that most of these drugs obtained in Boston were confiscated from the homes, offices, and shops of the Loyalists who fled when the British evacuated. Morgan reported that he had taken possession of the medicines and furniture of Dr. Sylvester Gardiner's shop, and a small stock of drugs from the office of Dr. William Perkins, a private practitioner.[38] No inventory of these supplies has been located thus far, but a contemporary biographer of Sylvester Gardiner records that the confiscated drugs from his shop "filled from 20 to 25 wagons."[39] This is not unlikely because Gardiner's apothecary shop was one of the largest and most prosperous in the Colonies prior to the Revolution.[40]
Soon after the British evacuated Boston, the Greenleaf apothecary shop in Boston was again supplying medicines to the Continental Army. The Greenleaf ledger[41] shows that on May 25 the shop sold nearly £4 worth of "Sundry Medicines ... [to] the Committee of War, State of Massachusetts Bay." Then, on June 20, the Massachusetts Assembly resolved that "Dr. John Greenleaf of Boston be requested to supply the Chief Surgeon of ... Colonels Marshall's, Whitney's and Craft's Regiments ... with medicines as may be necessary...."[42] A short time later the Assembly advanced "up to £50 to Greenleaf for purchasing such medicines as he cannot supply from his own store."[43]
The Greenleaf ledger shows that over £32 worth of medicines were sold for Colonel Whitney's regiment and over £36 worth for Colonel Marshall's regiment between June 13 and November 20, 1776. Thus, drugs were available; but until the fall of '76, Greenleaf was having difficulty in obtaining an abundant supply.