Sydenham, the famous physician, from whom probably he acquired his independent ideas of medical treatment, and possibly the germ of his lack of reverence for the College of Physicians. While living with Sydenham he had small-pox, and forty or fifty years later he described how the doctor treated him. First he was bled to the extent of 22 oz.; then he took an emetic. He only took to his bed when he became blind with the disease. In his bedroom he had no fire, the windows were always kept open, and the bedclothes were only allowed up to his waist. This was in the middle of January. For medicine, Dover says, "he made me take twelve bottles of small beer acidulated with spirit of vitriol every twenty-four hours," and he concludes, "I never lost my senses one moment."
Having resisted both the disease and the treatment, Dover is first heard of in practice in Bristol in 1684. He plodded along there until 1708, when at the age of forty-eight he set out with a privateering party on a voyage round the world. The expedition consisted of two ships, the Duke and the Duchess. Captain Woodes-Rogers, who has left an account of the voyage, was in chief command, and Dover on the Duke was his lieutenant. He must have had previous experience of seafaring life or he would never have been entrusted with the command of a vessel.
The buccaneers were away from England three years, and when they returned they brought with them a Spanish frigate of twenty-one guns, and a quantity of loot. One event of their voyage proved to be of world-famous importance. On February 2, 1709, Dover, on the Duke, touched at the island of Juan Ferdandez and took on board Alexander Selkirk who had lived alone on the island four years and four months, and whose story
