Manuscript volume, February 1837-December 1838, physician’s day book of William Blackstone Nott detailing his medical activities in what was then Union and Spartanburg Districts of South Carolina.

Entries indicate that Nott performed a variety of procedures on both white residents and those enslaved by them, including setting broken bones, treating lacerations, lancing abscesses, pulling teeth, letting blood, and administering emetics, cathartics, cough mixtures, blister plasters, and quinine and opium pills.

Numerous visits were made to the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company, an iron-manufacturing facility located near the now abandoned town of Cooperville in present day Cherokee County, South Carolina, to treat African-American slaves working for the company. Of interest also is an October 1838 account with Governor Pierce Mason Butler documenting Nott’s involvement with the South Carolina Jockey Club.

Born in Union District in 1795, William Blackstone Nott was the oldest son of Abraham Nott, famed South Carolina judge and legislator, and Angelica Mitchell. He attended South Carolina College, leaving the institution in 1814 before receiving a degree, and later studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Nott died at Limestone Springs, S.C., in 1864. He was the older brother of both Josiah Clark Nott, a noted antebellum physician and scientist, and South Carolina College professor Henry Junius Nott.