Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/198

 BOHUNE

BOHUNE

the first doctor in the American Colonies. His stay in the new world must have been a short one, since the ancient archives contain but little regarding him.

A letter to the company under date of July 7, 1610, signed by Lord Delaware and the members of the Council, reads in part:

"I only will entreate yee to stand favourable unto us for a new supply in such matters of the two-fold physicke, which both the soules and bodies of our poor people heere stand much in need; the specialties belonging to the one, the phisitions themselves (whom I hope you will be careful to send to us) will bring along with them the peculiarities of the other we have sent herein, inclosed unto us by Mr. Dr. Boone, whose care and industrie for the preservation of our men's lives (assaulted with straunge fluxes and agues), we have just caused to commend unto your noble favours; nor let it, I beseech yee, be passed over as a motion slight and of no moment to furnish us with these things, so much importuning the strength and health of our people, since we have true experience how many men's lives these physicke helps have preserved since our coming in, God so blessing the practice and dili- gence of our doctor, whose store is now growne thereby to so low an ebb, as we have not above three weekes physicall provisions."

The colonists were as yet unacclimated, and much sickness prevailed, so that Dr. Bohune's pharmacopoeia was en- larged by the use of sundry new vege- tables and minerals, rhubarb being found "to be of service in cold and moist for the bodies purginge of fleame and superfluous matter."

Dr. Bohune was a share-holder in the London Company and a member of the General Court which met on January 26, 1619 and February 2, 1620. At the former session he was joint claimant with James Swift for such lands as were patentable to those "who have under- taken to transport to Virginia great

multitudes of people with store of cattle," and they gave the number of immigrants so transported by them as three hundred. He subsequently purchased Swift's inter- est and received an indenture in his own name on November 15, 1620.

At a session of the General Court held on December 13, 1621, it was ordered: "Mr Doctor Bohune havinge desired yt hee might be a Phisition generall for the Company according to such condi- tions as were formerly set downe by way of Articles unto which place they had allotted five hundred acres of land and twenty Tenants to be placed thereuppon att the companies charge."

The confidence extended to Dr. Bohune in this new precedence seems fully earned, but he was not long spared to enjoy its benefits and honors. Near the end of the year he was again in England arrang- ing for new medical supplies, new colo- nists, and the introduction of the silk worm into Virginia.

Early in the next year he embarked with eighty-five immigrants on the " Margaret and John." At Gaudaloupe they took on six Frenchmen, raising the number of passengers, including the crew, to one hundred and three "soules" — ■ men, women and children. While off the West Indies, on March 19, 1621, which they neared to water, they fell in with two large ships who feinted to be Hol- landers until they had secured the ad- vantage of position, when they broke the Spanish colors and fired upon the English ships. Nothing daunted by the sheer force of their size and superiority of battery the "Margaret and John" gave battle. Six hours the unequal com- bat lasted with the most desperate courage on the part of the English, and then — they beat off the enemy with the loss of the latter's captain, making " their skup- pers run with blood, coloring the sea in their quarter."

In this heroic defense Dr. Bohune fell, while encouraging the crew to resistance. Seven others were killed outright, two died and twenty were wounded. The victory fired the English mind and high