Mr. Dr. Boone [Bohun] whose care and industrie for the preservation of our men's lives (assaulted with strange fluxes and agues), we have just cause 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 ... since we have true experience how many men's lives these physicke helpes have preserved since our coming, God so blessing the practise and diligence of our doctor, whose store has nowe growne thereby to so low an ebb, as we have not above 3 weekes phisicall provisions; if our men continew still thus visited with the sicknesses of the countrie, of the which every season hath his particular infirmities reigning in it, as we have it related unto us by the old inhabitants; and since our owne arrivall, have cause to feare it to be true, who have had 150 at a time much afflicted, and I am perswaded had lost the greatest part of them, if we had not brought these helpes with us. Dr. Bohun sought medical supplies from abroad, but he also experimented with indigenous natural matter such as plants and earths in an effort to replenish his dwindling supplies and to discover natural products of value in the New World. Judging by a contemporary account, Bohun, professionally trained in the Netherlands, used drugs therapeutically according to the conventional theories of the humoral school. Despite the disfavor in which frequent purgings are held today, it must be allowed that those being treated then sounded a plaintive call for more of Bohun's "physicke." The colony lost his services when he left to accompany Lord De la Warr to the West Indies. His connection 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: