nnection with the London Company and its
colony did not lapse, however, for Bohun received an appointment as
physician-general for the colony in December, 1620. At sea, on the way
to fill his post, the physician-general found his ship engaged with two
Spanish men-of-war. In the course of battle, an enemy shot mortally
wounded the man who had survived great hazards at Jamestown.

After the departure of Bohun with Lord De la Warr, no physician or
surgeon of equal stature or reputation took up residence in Virginia
until Dr. John Pott arrived almost ten years later. It is likely that
there was a shortage not only of outstanding medical men during these
years, but also of medical assistance in general. Sir Thomas Dale,
acting as deputy governor in the absence of De la Warr, wrote in the
spring of 1611 that "our wante likewise of able chirurgions is not a
little." Other requests for physicians and for apothecaries were
dispatched to the London Company during this period.

However, despite the seeming shortage of medical assistance, the
colonists survived such disorders as the summer seasoning much more
frequently than in the first years at Jamestown. An account of Virginia
written between 1616 and 1618 noted of the settlers that:

They have fallen sick, yet have recovered agayne, by very small
meanes, without helpe of fresh diet, or comfort of wholsome
phisique, there being at the first but few phisique helpes, or
skilful surgeons, who knew how to apply the right medecine in a new
country, or to search the quality and constitution of the patient,
and his distemper, or that knew how to councell, when to lett
blood, or not, or in necessity to use a launce in that office at
all.

Bohun died in March, 1621, and the Company named his successor as
physician to the colony in July. The conditions under which Dr. John
Pott accepted the post reveal the qualifications and needs of the
seventeenth-century medical man on his way to the New World, and the
inducements offered by the Company. He was a Cambridge Master of Arts
and claimed much experience in the practice of surgery and "phisique."
In addition, he made much of his expertness in the distilling of water.
The company allowed Pott a chest of medical supplies, a small library
of medical books, and provisions for the free passage of one or more
surgeons if they could be secured.

Additional economic inducements helped persuade Pott--and other
ph