Woodall was also interested in the Virginia Company, to which he subscribed 37l. 10s., but is said not to have paid it. In the disputes between the party of Sir Edwin Sandys [q. v.] and that of Sir Thomas Smith (1558?–1625) [q. v.], Woodall sided with Smith, whose surgeon he was. On 18 July 1620 he was suspended from the court of the company pending an inquiry into his ‘foule aspercion uppon Sir Edwin Sandys.’ On 20 Oct. 1623 he voted for the surrender of the company's charters to the crown. He had been very active in promoting the exportation of cattle to Virginia to supply the colonists with milk, and disputes about his cattle are mentioned in the correspondence between the English privy council and the governor of Virginia (Cal. State Papers, Amer. and West Indies, 1574–1660, pp. 53, 238, 291).
In 1628 Woodall published ‘Viaticum, being the Pathway to the Surgeon's Chest.’ It contains a list of instruments and directions for the treatment of surgical cases. The ordinary surgeon was allowed a chest worth 17l., and the surgeon-major one of 48l. value, and Woodall praises the discretion of Charles I in improving the army medical department. The ‘Viaticum’ was republished as a sequel to an enlarged work, ‘The Surgeon's Mate, or Military and Domestique Surgery, with a Treatise for the Cure of the Plague,’ in 1639 (London, folio; 4th edit. 1655). It is dedicated to Charles I, with secondary dedications to Sir Christopher Clitherow and the East India Company, and to William Clowes (1582–1648) and the Barber-Chirurgeons, and two pages of commendatory verses by George Dun, a warden of the mystery, are prefixed. Descriptions are given of the instruments of surgery, of drugs and their preparations, of a number of injuries, of operations, and of some diseases, ending with a general account of alchemy, a treatise of the signs used, and several pages of chemical verses. The description of scurvy is very full, and is the result of extended personal observations, and the book is said to be the earliest in which lime-juice is prescribed for its treatment (Brown, Genesis U.S.A., ii. 1050); it had, however, been used in 1593 by Hawkins (see Herbert Spencer, Study of Sociology, libr. ed. p. 159). Woodall mentions with respect the practice of two physicians to St. Bartholomew's whom he had known, William Harvey (1578–1657) [q. v.] and Peter Turner (1542–1614) [q. v.] On 20 Nov. 1627 he went to Portsmouth to attend the wounded from the Isle of Rhé, and on 30 Sept. 1641 was appointed an examiner of surgeons. He died in September 1643, leaving by his wife, Sara Henchpole, three sons and one daughter.
Woodall's works show some power of observation, and indicate a desire to extend the practice of his art within the domain of pure medicine, with a dread of, rather than reverence for, physicians. Like most of his contemporaries he uses many pious expressions, and has a tendency to quote a little Latin and to write doggerel English verse, but his English style is not so good as that of William Clowes (1540–1604). He had a secret remedy called aurum vitæ for the plague. His portrait, in a skull-cap and ruff, engraved by G. Glover, is at the foot of the title-page of the ‘Surgeon's Mate’ of 1639.
[Works; Young's Annals of the Barber-Surgeons; Original manuscript Journals of St. Bartholomew's Hospital; Cal. State Papers, Colonial, American, and East Indian, passim (in the index to the latter he is erroneously entered as William Woodall); Brown's Genesis of the United States; Visitation of London (Harl. Soc.) ii. 365.]
WOODARD, NATHANIEL (1811–1891), founder of the Woodard schools, born on 21 March 1811, was fifth son of John Woodard of Basildon Hall, Essex. He was educated privately, and matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1834. At the same time he married Miss Eliza Harriet Brill. He graduated B.A. in 1840 and M.A. in 1866. He was ordained deacon in 1841 and priest in 1842. His first curacy was at Bethnal Green; his second at St. James's, Clapton; his third at New Shoreham. At New Shoreham he opened in 1847 a small day school, of which he appointed the Rev. C. H. Christie headmaster; to the school he gave up the vicarage where he resided, and moved his family into lodgings.
In 1848 Woodard first became deeply impressed with the lack of good schools for the middle classes, which should offer definite church of England teaching and the advantages of the educational system of the great public schools at a comparatively small expense. There were public schools for the higher classes and national schools for the poor, but the middle classes seemed to be left out in the cold. In 1848 he issued his first pamphlet on the subject, ‘A Plea for the Middle Classes;’ and in 1852 he issued his second pamphlet, ‘Public Schools for the Middle Classes.’ Meanwhile in 1848 he entered on his great educational work by opening at Shoreham a boarding-school under the Rev. E. C. Lowe (subsequently provost of St. Nicolas College). A number of houses were taken and occupied, and in 1850 Woodard resigned his curacy and devoted his
