I          Early Maryland County Courts.


           court (pp. 80-81, 84). There is some question as to whether “Richard Helmes
           of the city of London, chirurgeon “, who through his attorney this same John
           Cherman, at the March, 1660, Charles County Court sued Giles Glover of
           Charles County for 950 pounds of tobacco, was ever actually in Maryland, but
           we do know that Mr. John Meekes, also styling himself “chirurgeon of Lon
           don “, practiced medicine and kept a store in Charles County from 1662 to
           1664, and possibly longer. At the November 1663 court Meekes was sued
           for slander by that rather unsavory individual, James Lee. There had been a
           gathering at Meekes' “stoare “, where they were all “very merry together “,
           and the chirurgeon is said to have accused Lee of having stolen “a bottle of
           rhum” from him. The case came before a jury which declared the whole epi
           sode “a dronken buisines “, refused to award damages, and divided the costs
           of the suit between the plaintiff and defendant (pp. 415-418). The Charles
           County record shows that Meekes filed several suits. One of these, for profes
           sional services, from December 1663 to April 1664, rendered to Humphrey
           Haggatt and his wife, is of considerable interest, as it itemized the fearful
           array of pills, boluses, mixtures, ointments, emplasters, cordials, clysters,
           restringent potions, troches, and suppositories administered to this much-dosed
           planter and his wife, as well as a “ blood-let “, the whole at a total cost of 1850
           pounds of tobacco (pp. 425-427). That Mr. Haggatt died is not surprising,
           but that his widow lived to marry the prominent planter, Richard Fowke,
           seems remarkable. Although Meekes won this suit he was not always to have
           his own way, for his surgeon apprentice, John Helmes, perhaps a relative of
           the “Richard Helmes, chirurgeon of London” who has just been mentioned,
           sued his master for neglect at the county court held January 1663/4. The ap
           prentice, complaining of the condition of his clothes, petitions “your worships
           to judge playnly wheather it bee apparrell sutable for prentises of that imploy
           ment “, adding that he had “ but one shirt which is at Present on his back Besids
           the Rest of his Apparrell very bear and thin for this time of the year “. The
           court ordered “that Mr. John Meekes shall Cloath the sayd helmes from top
           to toe fit for a Prentis “(p. 431).
             The most remarkable figure in the medical world that presents itself in
           Maryland at this period is the Portugese Jew, “Doctor Lumbrozo” of Charles
           County, called successively Jacob Lumbrozo, Jacob alias John Lumbrozo, and
           finally John Lumbrozo. That he was a qualified physician is most unlikely.
           He appears in these and other early Maryland records variously as physician,
           attorney, ordinary keeper, and planter, and in the courts as charged with
           blasphemy, abortion, attempted rape, and receiving stolen goods. As he is men
           tioned in one place in the record as “the black man “, he was possibly from
           one of the Portugese African colonies, although when he was denizated, Sep
           tember JO, 1663, he was described as “late of Lisbone in the Kingdome of
           Portugall having been a long time within this our Province” (Arch. Md. iii,
           488. We also find him quoting poetry as the attorney for a woman suing for
           defamation of character (p. 319-320) as glibly as he is said to have quoted
           Scripture to a married woman with whom he was enamoured to gain her con-