Washington was much more likely to take notice of deaths than of increases. "Dorcas, daughter of Phillis, died, which makes 4 Negroes lost this winter," he wrote in 1760. He strove to safeguard the health of his slaves and employed a physician by the year to attend to them, the payment, during part of the time at least, being fifteen pounds per annum. In 1760 this physician was a certain James Laurie, evidently not a man of exemplary character, for Washington wrote, April 9, 1760, "Doctr. Laurie came here. I may add Drunk." Another physician was a Doctor Brown, another Doctor William Rumney, and in later years it was Washington's old friend Doctor Craik. I have noticed two instances of Washington's sending slaves considerable distances for medical treatment. One boy, Christopher, bitten by a dog, went to a "specialist" at Lebanon, Pennsylvania, for treatment to avert madness, and another, Tom, had an operation performed on his eyes, probably for cataract. When at home the Farmer personally helped to care for sick slaves. He had a special building erected near the Mansion House for use as a hospital. Once he went to Winchester in the Shenandoah region especially to look after slaves ill with smallpox "and found everything in the utmost confusion, disorder, and backwardness. Got Blankets and every other requisite from Winchester, and settied things on the best footing I could." As he had had smallpox when at Barbadoes, he had no fear of contagion. Among the entries in his diary are: "Visited my Plantations and found two negroes sick ... ordered them to be blooded." "Found that lightening had struck my quarters and near 10 Negroes in it, some very bad but by letting blood recovered." "Found the new negro Cupid ill of a pleurisy at Dogue Run Quarter and had him brot home in a cart for better care of him.... Cupid extremely ill all this day and night. When I went to bed I thought him within a few hours of breathing his last." However, Cupid recovered. In his contracts with overseers Washington stipulated proper care of the slaves. Once he complained to his manager that the generality of the overseers seem to "view the poor creatures in scarcely any other light than they do a draught horse or ox; neglecting them as much when they are unable to work; instead of comforting and nursing them when they lye on a sick bed." Again he wrote: