Letter 2474

Sloane had asked Godfrey if he knew anything of Mr Pokellman. Godfrey offers a biography of the man. Pokellman speaks Danish and Swedish, studied medicine in Leiden, witnessed the defeat of the Swedish army, laboured ‘at the minerale Worcks of the King of Denmark’, tried his hand at selling oysters from ‘the thamse to the River Elbe’, and sought his fortune in the English plantations in ‘jamaica or Virginia’. Godfrey recommends Pokellman as a family physician and consultant on ‘minerall Essayes’. Godfrey requests that Sloane send any ‘cocuillage or petrefacts’, as he wants to send specimens to a friend in Leipzig. Ambrose Godfrey Sr. (1660-1741) was a chemist. He was first employed by Robert Boyle and went on to work at Apothecaries’ Hall. Godfrey analyzed the chemical properties of stones, waters, and other materials for Hans Sloane and the Royal Society. His work was published in the Philosophical Transactions from 1731 to 1736 (Lawrence M. Principe, Godfrey, Ambrose, the elder (16601741), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10865, accessed 14 Aug 2013]).