The Doctors Stumble • 143This advertisement stopped just short of offering to treat patients rather
than simply selling medicines. William Boghurst was much more than a dis-
pensing chemist, however. Indeed, it would be virtually impossible to distin-
guish his caregiving and diagnosis from that of Nathaniel Hodges. “I com-
monly drest 40 soares in a day, held their pulse [and remained] a quarter of
an hour to give judgment and informe myself in the various tricks of it,” he
recounted.^10 Nor was he satisfied with one visit. “I most commonly gave
judgment whether people would live or dye at the first visit, almost always at
the second, and whether they would have carbuncles, buboes or blains;
whether they would have a fever or noe.”
In his journal Boghurst recorded that he was not at all afraid and doc-
umented a tale of service unlikely to have been made up. He visited people
inside their infected homes, as well as seeing patients in his waiting room,
and “commonly suffered their breathing in my face [as they were dying].”
Backed by experience, he refrained from bleeding his patients. He ate and
drank with them and sat by their beds until the end. Even in their final
hours, Boghurst would not desert them, lingering until they breathed their
last and closing their mouth and eyes. If no friends or relatives were around,
he would help coffin them up and see them to their graves.
As though immune to disease, Boghurst “passed through a multitude and
continuall dangers... being engaged throughout the day until 10 at night,
attending patients in one house after another.” Recounting his caregiving
acts, he wrote of “dressing soares and being always in their breath and sweat
without catching the disease.” This self-testimonial rang true; he praised
plague nurses he encountered “who were in like danger.”
Serving the Public
Their memory will doubtless survive time, who died in the discharge of their duty,
and their reputation flourish who (by Gods providence) escaped [death].
—Dr. Nathaniel Hodges,Letter to a Person of Quality( 1666 )How many brave spirits had stayed on to fight the infection with their her-
bal or chemical cures, therapies handed down from the Black Death’s care-
givers, and anything else they could think of? How many of them would out-
live this fright of the mind? With four-fifths of the College of Physicians
and an unknown number of apothecaries and surgeons in flight from the