Chapter III · THE VOYAGE OF THE SHIP HANNIBAL OF LONDON, IN 1693 (continued 2)

Friday the 19th. In the morning ’twas my unhappiness to be seized with violent convulsions in my head, together with a vertigo, so that I could not stand, and all things I look’d on turn’d round. The vertigo was much allay’d soon, but the convulsions continued so 71severe upon me, that I was forced for most part to keep my bed, till we made the island of Scilly, which was upon the 22d of May, in which time the hearing of my left ear was much impair’d, I having lost the hearing of my right ear upon the coast of Guiney, by a former fit. And now, having none to look after me (my doctor having died of the plague in Barbadoes), my deafness increased daily.

When I came to London, thro’ the kindness and good-will of my friends and acquaintance, who were sorry to see me return in that condition, I was advised to a great many applauded physicians, who all pretended they would cure my deafness. I went under the care of several of them, who were the most celebrated in that famous city, by whose orders I was tormented by the apothecaries, with doses of nasty physick every day, for four or five months time, and butcher’d by the surgeons with blisters, issues, setons, &c. and spent about 100 guineas among them, without receiving a farthing benefit; wherefore I did conceive it more prudence to bear my deafness as contentedly as I could, than any longer to undergo so much misery and charge to no purpose; accordingly I shook hands with the doctors, and being rendered unfit for my employment by my deafness, I settled my affairs in London, took my leave of it, and came down to Wales, among my relations in Brecknock, my native town, there to spend the rest of my life as easily as I can, under my hard misfortune.

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