the court's finding of "guilty" (although this was later
found "rigorous if not erroneous"). He died in 1642, having been
intimately involved in the life of the colony for twenty years.

Pott was the last of the outstanding figures who practiced medicine
under the direction of the Company, but Dr. Wyndham B. Blanton has
found mention of over 200 persons who served as physicians or surgeons
during some portion of the century. With only one exception, however,
none of these achieved as prominent a place in history as Bohun,
Russell, or Pott. Not only is the number of outstanding individuals in
the field of medicine less, but the general quality of medical
practice, in the opinion of Dr. Blanton, was not as high again during
the last three-quarters of the seventeenth century as it had been
during the administration of the Company (1607-1624) when Virginia
medicine included a representative cross-section of English medicine.

Any survey--no matter how brief--of the medical profession during the
century, however, should include mention of a man who, although not a
full-time professional physician, proves to be the exception to Dr.
Blanton's generalization about the prominence of individual medical men
and the quality of medical practice during the late 1600's. This man,
the Reverend John Clayton, is a noteworthy example of the intellectual
level an individual could attain and maintain while living in an area
that was still remote from European civilization.

Clayton, who is known to have been at Jamestown between 1684 and 1686
as a clergyman, also practiced medicine in addition to pursuing his
scientific interests. As a prolific writer he has left some of the
fullest and most interesting accounts of contemporary treatment and
diagnosis. His knowledge and methods cannot be taken as typical,
however, because his intellectual level was considerably above the
average in the colony.

This minister-scientist-physician wrote an account of his treatment of
a case of hydrophobia resulting from the bite of a rabid dog. With its
accomplished style, Clayton's account of his treatment of hydrophobia
is worthy of attention as an example of contemporary theory and
practice of the more learned kind. He wrote:

It was a relapse of its former distemper, that is, of the bite of
the mad-dog. I told them, if any thing in the world would save his
life, I judged it might be the former vomit of volatile salts; they
could not te