Thomas Dover
He is remembered for his common cold and fever medicine Dover's powder, his work with the poor in Bristol, and his privateering voyage alongside William Dampier and Woodes Rogers that rescued castaway Alexander Selkirk, the real-life inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.
His great-grandfather William Cole had been president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford during the reign of Mary I of England but was expelled for displaying Protestant sympathies.
Thomas's paternal grandfather Robert Dover was a lawyer and poet who moved the family to Saintbury, near Chipping Campden, where he founded and presided over the Cotswold Olimpick Games from 1612 until around 1650.
[1][2] His son John Dover served as a Royalist cavalry captain during the English Civil War; defeated, he retired as a gentleman farmer at Barton-on-the Heath, where Thomas was born.
[4] It is likely that he attended Chipping Campden Grammar School, and in 1680 was admitted into Magdalen Hall at the University of Oxford, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1684.
While in Sydenham's clinic Dover contracted smallpox and was treated via the unusual regimen of blood-letting and a daily diet of twelve bottles of beer laced with vitriol.
During this time, he contracted smallpox and was treated with the "cooling method" by Sydenham,[3] described by Dover in his 1732 book Ancient Physician's Legacy to his Country: "I had no fire allowed in my room, my windows were constantly open, my bedclothes were ordered to be laid no higher than my waist.
He was soon able to afford his first house in the fashionable Queen Square,[3] home also to Woodes Rogers,[7] a sea captain with whom Dover would embark on a new career.
They discovered a fire lit by Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor left on the island in 1705 because he considered the ship he was aboard, the Cinque Ports, as not being seaworthy.
His four-year stay on the island and eventual rescue were the inspiration for the novel Robinson Crusoe written by Daniel Defoe, a friend of Woodes Rogers.
[3][10] Dover returned to his medical roots and directed the surgeons in their work, ordering them to bleed the ill in both arms and to give them a diluted sulphuric acid drink.
Around this time his wife died and he lost most of his fortune due to bad investments including as much as £6,000 in the collapse of the South Sea Company.
[3][5] His past experience of contracting smallpox and the care he received from Sydenham suddenly became particularly relevant when there was an outbreak in London, with Dover successfully replicating the "cooling method".
Though he shows some degree of wisdom regarding pharmacology,[3] his knowledge of medicine is described as being small[5] while his descriptions of some diseases are presented in the "flimsiest fashion" and "outrageous inaccuracies are set down with no little dogmatism".
One anonymous report in 1733 challenges the use of the liquid metal as a cure for syphilis and starts hinting towards mercury poisoning:[3] "A young gentleman ... had the venereal disease caused by fast living.
