Bohune, Lawrence (—1622)
The exact date of the arrival of Dr. Lawrence Bohune, first physician-general to the colony of Virginia, is not known, but it was within the first half of the year 1610, and he was the first physician-general of the London Company appointed for service in the colony.
Of the one hundred and five settlers who reached Jamestown Island on the thirteenth of May, 1607, after one hundred and forty-six days out from London, Thomas Wotton, William Wilkinson and Post Ginnet were listed as "Chirurgeons," and Thomas Field and John Harford as apothecaries.
Wotton was the fleet's physician, and 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 here 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 diligence 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 pharmacopœia was enlarged by the use of sundry new vegetables and minerals, rhubarb being found "to be of service in cold and moist bodies for the 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 undertaken 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 interest.
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 conditions 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 arranging for new medical supplies, new colonists, 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 Guadeloupe 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 obtain water, they fell in with two large ships who feinted to be Hollanders until they had secured the advantage 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 combat 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 skuppers 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 tribute was paid the memory of the gallant Bohune.
Purchas used the incident in "Purchas his Pilgrimage," and Captain John Smith recited an account of it in his History of Virginia. George Deseler wrote of it in Amsterdam, and "Tho. Hothersell, late zitysone and groser of London being an I witness an interpreter in this exployte," left a description in manuscript which is still in existence.