The occasion at hand was the Third Annual Philly Phyzz Phest.
Physick may have been the "Father of American Surgery." But along the way (in 1807) he'd also "invented," almost inadvertently, what some consider to be America's first soda pop. (He'd added fruit syrup to the bubbly waters to disguise the carbolic taste.)
So past a table where children were invited to use quill pens to add their signatures to those of the original signers on facsimiles of the Declaration of Independence were demonstrations (involving balloons, baking soda and vinegar) of carbon dioxide production and two-ounce samples of a Physick descendant's approximation of the old-fashioned soda.
It is called Dr. Physick Black Cherry Soda, a refreshingly fizzy, if otherwise unremarkable soft drink (available at the house, the Franklin Fountain, and Christ Church Burial Ground, among other outlets) whose claim to fame, ostensibly, is that it cribs from the doctor's recipe and employs, as was the custom at the time, cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup.
It is more than a little ironic, when you consider the history, that sodas (Dr. Physick's among them) that began life as curatives - Physick's fizz was for gastric distress - would grow to become agents of sickness (obesity and diabetes among them).
They were victims, in a sense, of their own excess: Sodas that Physick once instructed local pharmacist Townsend Speakman to hand-mix each day, supplying one unsweetened (at first) glass daily to patients who paid $1.50 for a month's regimen, soon became heavily and incessantly marketed.
Advances in carbonation, whose sole provenance once was natural mineral waters, proceeded apace: One nudge came from spin-off technology from a U.S. Navy contract in 1875 to develop a torpedo propellant.
