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214  JAMES DERHAM.
BERONICUS,
A CHIMNEY-SWEEPER in Holland, united that occupation, which is considered the most unfavorable to mental improvement, with that of a poetic genius, and wrote many pieces of Latin verse.  And his poems, in two books, entitled, "Georgas, or the Battle between the Peasants and the Great," was translated and reprinted at Middlebury, in 1766.
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JAMES DERHAM,
ORIGINALLY a slave in Philadelphia, was sold by his master to a physician, who employed him in his shop as assistant in the preparation of drugs.  During the war between America and England, he was sold to a surgeon, and by that surgeon to Dr. Robert Dove, of New Orleans.  He learned the English, French, and Spanish languages, so as to speak them with ease.
2. He was received a member of the English church: and in the year 1788, when he was about twenty-one years of age, he became one of the most distinguished physicians in New Orleans.  "I

JAMES DERHAM.  215
conversed with him on medicine," says Dr. Rush, "and found him very learned.  I thought I could give him information concerning the treatment of diseases, but I learned more from him than he could expect from me."
3. The Pennsylvania Society, established in favor of the people of color, thought it their duty, in 1789, to publish these facts, which are also related by Dickson, page 184.  In the Domestic Medicine of Buchan, and in a work of Duplaint, we find accounts of a cure for the bite of the rattlesnake  I know not whether Derham was its discoverer, but it is a well-known fact that one of his color did make such a discovery, for which he received, from the General Assembly of Carolina, his freedom and an annuity of a hundred pounds sterling.

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-20 15:16:50