Read Ebook: Medicine in Virginia 1607-1699 by Hughes Thomas Proctor

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plant in a low or moist place, because it will prove unhealthfull. You shall judge of the good air by the people; for some part of that coast where the lands are low, have their people blear eyed, and with swollen bellies and legs: but if the naturals be strong and clean made, it is a true sign of wholesome soil.

The idea that climate had an influence upon human physiognomy did not originate with the London Company. In an essay dating back to the fifth century B.C. and preserved among the works of the Hippocratic school the ancient--but in the seventeenth century still influential--authorities argued that human physiognomies could be classified into the well-wooded and well-watered mountain type; the thin-soiled waterless type; the well-cleared and well-drained lowland type; and the meadowy, marshy type.

The London Company's instructions to the first permanent settlers to avoid low-lying, marshy land, if followed, might have saved the colonists from some of the sicknesses they were to endure, but other considerations dictated the choice of the Jamestown site; the peninsular, about thirty miles upstream, provided natural protection and a good view up and down the river. The danger from the ships of other European peoples seemed more immediate and formidable than those from the mosquito, with its breeding place in the nearby swamp, and from the foul and brackish drinking water.

As the century progressed, the settlers pushed inland from Jamestown and the low-lying coastal region, up onto the drier land. The danger from typhoid, dysentery, and malaria grew steadily less. In choosing home sites--once the confines of the peninsula were left behind and the fear of attack from Indian or European was less--the early planters took into consideration the dangers of the fetid swamp and muggy lowland.

That the promotion of health did play a part in the selection of sites for settlement is borne out by the re-location of the seat of government from the languishing village of Jamestown to Middle Plantation or Williamsburg. After an accidental fire destroyed a large part of Jamestown at the end of the century, the people indicated a desire to move away from an environment, recognized as unhealthful, to Middle Plantation, known for its temperate, healthy climate as well as for its wholesome springs. The inhabitants had contemplated a move earlier in the century for health reasons but authorities in England and governors in Virginia acted to prevent the abandonment of the only community even approaching the status of a town.

The move away from Jamestown would probably appear a wise measure even to the twentieth-century physician; to the seventeenth-century physician, who often saw a close relationship between climatic conditions and disease, the move seemed imperative. A man well-versed in science and medicine, living in Jamestown a decade or so before the town was abandoned, exemplified this medical theory when he wrote that an area was unhealthy according to its nearness to salt water. He had observed that salt air, especially when stagnant, had "fatal effects" on human bodies. In contrast, clear air had beneficial effects.

Considerations of health and the effects of disease not only influenced the settlers in their choice of living sites but also in many of their other activities. Political, economic, and social history in seventeenth-century Virginia was determined in part by health and disease.

DISEASE AS A DETERMINING FACTOR IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE COLONY

Death from disease and incapacitation from disease are challenges to which every civilization--and human community--must successfully respond in order to survive. Historian Arnold J. Toynbee has emphasized the vital character of the challenge and response relationship in the history of all communities. A particular challenge to which early Jamestown almost succumbed was disease. The actions--or inactions--of the settlers under the London Company, 1607-1624, demonstrated especially well the influence of the challenge of disease upon the early history of Virginia.

During the first year of the settlement at Jamestown, disease worked as an important factor in the realm of politics. In this connection, Edward Maria Wingfield, chosen first president of the governing council in Virginia, found himself removed from office, imprisoned, and sent home by the spring of 1608, all as a result of charges brought against him that for the most part were petty and contradictory. Pettiness and contradictions, in this instance, were rooted in the miserable conditions which the colonists had to endure their first summer: famine and sickness not only demoralized the colonists but were killing them faster than they could be buried.

Wingfield left office as president of the council after the first summer spent in Jamestown. The sickness that caused much tension during his tenure was probably the malady loosely described by early Virginians as the "seasoning." The complex of symptoms ascribed to the seasoning bothered the settlers throughout the seventeenth century. Even as late as 1723 a recent arrival in Virginia wrote that "all that come to this country have ordinarily sickness at first which they call a seasoning of which I shall assure you I had a most severe one." During the first two summers, 1607 and 1608, however, this seasoning inflicted the most distress, judging by the seriousness with which contemporaries described it.

One of these contemporary accounts, written by George Percy who sailed to Virginia with the first settlers in 1606-07, described the distress caused by seasoning and famine during the summer of 1607. The awfulness of that summer is made more dramatic by the manner in which Percy introduced the subject. Having described the voyage over, which was relatively pleasant with the stopover in the beautiful West Indian islands, and having entertained the reader with startling accounts of the habits of the savages in Virginia , Percy abruptly began listing the names of the dead as his narrative moved into the late summer months:

The sixt of August there died John Asbie of the bloudie flixe. The ninth day died George Flowre of the swelling.... The fifteenth day, their died Edward Browne and Stephen Galthorpe. The sixteenth day, their died Thomas Gower Gentleman. The seventeenth day, their died Thomas Mounslic....

The remainder of the description of the significant events of the month of August is given over entirely to the listing of the deaths. Seldom did Percy give the cause of individual deaths, but as the narrative moved into September and near the end of the seasoning period, Percy stopped his grim listing to comment in general terms upon the unhappy experience.

According to his diagnosis--and perhaps he was enlightened by Thomas Wotton and Will Wilkinson, the two surgeons who arrived with the first settlers--the heavy death toll of August resulted from such ailments as fluxes, swellings, and burning fevers as well as from famine and attacks by the Indians.

Percy was of the opinion that the colonists at Jamestown suffered more during the summer and winter of 1607 than any other Englishmen have during a colonization venture. Weakened by the debilitating summer and unable during that period to make the necessary provisions for the winter, the settlers, their ranks depleted, also fared poorly during the next five months.

In describing their distress, he revealed the conditions that bred the diseases and illnesses to which the colonists fell prey. They lay on the bare ground through weather cold and hot, dry and wet, and their ration of food consisted of a small can of barley sod in water--one can for five men. Drinking water came from the river which in turn was salt at high tide, and slimy and filthy at low. With such food and drink, the small contingent within the fort lay about for weeks "night and day groaning in every corner ... most pittifull to heare."

Fortunately during the course of the winter the Indians did come to the relief of the colonists with provisions, but before this help was substantial, Percy observed:

If there were any conscience in men, it would make their harts to bleed to heare the pitifull murmurings and out-cries of our sick men without reliefe, every night and day, for the space of sixe weekes, some departing out the world, many times three or foure in a night; in the morning, their bodies trailed out of their cabines like dogges to be buried.

Over one-half of the original settlers perished during the summer of 1607 and the seasoning was to prove a hazard throughout the remainder of the century. Its effects became less serious, however, as the Company and the colonists, profiting from the earlier experiences began to plan departures from England so that the immigrants would arrive in Virginia in the fall: another example of the influence of disease.

Governor Yeardley, writing some years later--in 1620--reminded the Company's officials in England of the advantages of a fall arrival. He had just witnessed the distress of immigrants from three ships that had arrived in May:

had they arrived at a seasonable time of the year I would not have doubted of their lives and healths, but this season is most unfit for people to arrive here ... some very weak and sick, some crazy and tainted ashore, and now this great heat of weather striketh many more but for life.

At least twenty more immigrants died during the second summer and the misery and discontent of the survivors of the summer's sicknesses account--in part, at least--for the disposal of another council president, John Ratcliffe. Returning to Jamestown after an exploratory trip up Chesapeake Bay, Doctor Walter Russell, one of the company, found the latest arrivals to Virginia "al sicke, the rest, some lame, some bruised, al unable to do any thing but complain of the pride and unreasonable needlesse cruelty of their sillie President." The wrath of these sick--and doubtless somewhat querulous and irrational men--was appeased by the removal of the "sillie" president.

The ability of Captain John Smith, who succeeded to the presidency of the council in the fall of 1608, to impose his strong will upon the inhabitants of the peninsula, and to exert such a great influence upon the course of events is explained, in part, by the depletion of ranks and the demoralization of spirit caused among them by the dreadful toll of disease. When other members of the council died, Smith did not replace them and, rid of strong opposition, he ruled as a benevolent despot.

Smith's departure from the colony in October, 1609, had as its immediate cause--according to Smith--the impossibility of his obtaining proper medical attention in Virginia for burns acquired from a gunpowder explosion. When Smith sailed, his enemies, of which there were a considerable number, breathed freer air, but the colony subsequently suffered without his strong, authoritative voice.

Supporters of Smith argued that if that "unhappy" accident had not occurred, he could have stayed on and solved the many problems that were to beset the colony. On the other hand, it is pointed out that the wound would have been better treated at Jamestown than on board ship, and that Smith used the wound, which was not too serious, as an excuse to escape from the administrative troubles that plagued him.

The powder blast was described by friends of Smith as tearing a nine or ten-inch square of flesh from his body and thighs, and as causing him such torment that he could not carry out the duties of his position. The wound was probably complicated by the fact that the accident had occurred when Smith was in a boat many miles from Jamestown. He had had to cover the great return distance after having plunged into the water to ease his agony, and without having the assistance of either medicines or medical treatment. Whatever the seriousness of the wound, supporters of Smith maintained that he was near death and had to leave Jamestown in order to secure the services of "chirurgian and chirurgery... cure his hurt."

Twice in 1608, Captain Newport had brought immigrants and supplies to the colony and, in the summer of 1609 about 400 passengers had landed at Jamestown. These new arrivals, some of them already afflicted with the plague, others victims of various fevers, and all suffering from malnutrition, needed strong leadership to force them to plant busily and to lay in food supplies for the winter ahead. Supplies brought over aboard the ships could not possibly furnish nourishment for the coming months. Malnutrition as a factor contributing to sickness, and sickness as a factor preventing the labor necessary to circumvent starvation, constituted a vicious relationship.

The winter of 1609-10 after Smith's departure is remembered as the "Starving Time." During this period the number of colonists dropped from 500 to about sixty. Men, women, and children lived--or died--eating roots, herbs, acorns, walnuts, berries, and an occasional fish. They ate horses, dogs, mice, and snakes without hesitation after Indians drove off hogs and deer belonging to the colonists. The Indians also kept the settlers from leaving the protection of Jamestown to go out and hunt for food. When hunting was not made impossible by Indians, the settlers' own physical weaknesses often precluded energetic action.

The notorious, and possibly untrue, incident of the man whom hunger drove to kill and to eat the salted remains of his wife, is from the accounts of the Starving Time. Although this story had the support of a number of colonists, others maintain that it, and the entire episode of the famine, came out of the exaggeration of colonists who abandoned the venture and returned to England. Yet the verdict of historians establishes a Starving Time, and the high mortality of the winter must have an explanation.

To argue that all those who died, died of starvation would, on the other hand, be a distortion. Food deficiencies did not always lead directly to death but in many cases to dietary disease. These dietary diseases often terminated in death, but their courses might well not have been fatal if proper medical attention could have been given. In other cases food deficiency resulted in so weakened a physical condition that the body fell prey to infectious diseases which, again, could not be cured with the limited medical help available.

The Starving Time did not stand out as a time of want to be contrasted with a normal time of plenty. For many the winter of 1609-10 only brought to a crisis dietary disorders of long standing. One account of the early years describes the daily ration as eight ounces of meal and a half-pint of peas, both "the one and the other being mouldy, rotten, full of cobwebs and maggots loathsome to man and not fytt for beasts...."

Nor was the Starving Time the last time that the colonists would have to endure famine and privation. Although written to discredit the administration of Sir Thomas Smith as head of the Company during the years from 1607-19, an account of the hunger of these twelve years should be accepted as having some basis in fact. The account, written in 1624, reported as common occurrences the stealing of food by the starving and the cruel punishments meted out to them ; and the denial of an allowance of food to men who were too sick to work .

The starving colonists during these twelve years, according to the report, often resorted to dogs, cats, rats, snakes, horsehides, and other extremes for nourishment. Many, in those hungry times, weary of life, dug holes in the earth and remained there hidden from the authorities until dead from starvation. Although the report maintained that these events occurred throughout the twelve-year period, it is likely that many were concentrated during the Starving Time.

Famished, disease-ridden, demoralized, with many mentally unbalanced, the settlement at Jamestown languished in a distressful condition after the winter of 1609-10. Jamestown, in May, 1610 appeared:

The Indians, however, would not make a direct assault on the fort; they waited on disease and famine to destroy the remaining whites. How many of the graves now at Jamestown must have been dug during that terrible winter? The Starving Time has been characterized by historian Oliver Chitwood as "the most tragic experience endured by any group of pioneers who had a part in laying the foundations of the present United States."

Before leaving, the survivors of the winter had had a consultation with Gates and Somers about future prospects for the colony. Chiefly fear of starvation determined the decision to abandon the settlement: the provisions brought by Gates and Somers would have lasted only sixteen days. The colonists could hold out no hope of obtaining food from the Indians.

After embarking, the settlers, with Gates, Somers, and the new arrivals, had reached the mouth of the river when they met Lord De la Warr, the new governor of the colony, coming from England with fresh supplies and settlers. Heartened, the survivors of the Starving Time turned back to try the New World again.

In Lord De la Warr's company was Dr. Lawrence Bohun, a physician of good reputation, who subsequently distinguished himself serving the medical needs of the settlement. He could not, however, even in his capacity of personal physician, prevent Lord De la Warr from falling victim to the common ailments.

In 1610, Lord De la Warr wrote: "presently after my arrival in Jamestowne, I was welcomed by a hot and violent ague, which held mee a time, till by the advice of my physician, Doctor Lawrence Bohun I was recovered." Bohun, in the seventeenth-century tradition of treatment by clysters, vomitives, and phlebotomy, resorted to bloodletting. The letting, believed to free the body of fermented blood and malignant humors, probably gave the governor a psychological lift, if only a temporary one.

De la Warr, who blamed the distress of the colony upon the failures of the settlers, soon had another taste of the illnesses which so many of the colonists endured during their first months in the New World. In his report to the Company explaining his early departure from the colony, he included one of the fullest surviving accounts of sickness at Jamestown during the first few years of settlement:

That disease had not long left me, til I began to be distempered with other greevous sicknesses, which successively and severally assailed me: for besides a relapse into the former disease, which with much more violence held me more than a moneth, and brought me to great weakenesse, the flux surprised me, and kept me many daies: then the crampe assaulted my weak body, with strong paines; and afterwards the gout afflicted mee in such sort, that making my body through weakenesse unable to stirre, or to use any maner of exercies, drew upon me the disease called the scurvy; which though in others it be a sicknesse of slothfulnesse, yet was in me an effect of weaknesse, which never left me, till I was upon the point to leave the world.

When a person of strong constitution, living under the best conditions the colony could provide, and accompanied by a well-trained physician, found himself thus incapacitated, it is no wonder that the rank and file of the colony failed to pursue energetically by hard work and exemplary conduct their own best interests.

The firmness of De la Warr, who was much more indulgent of his own than of others' disorders, brought additional stability to the colony, but the attack of scurvy, which current opinion believed could be relieved only by the citrous fruits of the West Indies, caused him, accompanied by Dr. Bohun, to set sail from Virginia in the spring of 1611 for the same island of Nevis praised so highly for its baths by the first settlers of 1607. Disease had robbed the colony of another outstanding leader during a period when strong leadership on the scene was imperative.

Although the colony had experienced its worst years of hardship before De la Warr departed and the worst years in the New World had been caused by famine and disease, sickness and starvation were still to have a noteworthy effect. Disease no longer threatened the colony's life, but it shaped its history.

In 1624 the charter of the Company was annulled and, in explaining this major development, account must be taken of the cumulative effects of sickness and hunger upon the Company's fortunes; the first summer's seasoning and the Starving Time, for example, had long-term economic repercussions as well as short-term results in human suffering.

The Company had been in financial difficulties for some years and by 1624 the treasury was empty and the indebtedness heavy. If the mortality rate had not been so high and the level of energy of the colonists so reduced, the Company might have prospered. For example, local trade with the Indians necessitated small ships for the effective transportation of cargo, but several attempts by the Company to send to America boatwrights to construct such ships failed because of the deaths of the boatwrights. The Company had hoped in 1620 to better its financial condition by developing an iron industry in the colony, but this project suffered from the effects of disease, too, as the chief men for the iron works died during the ocean voyage. The remainder of the officers and men sent to establish the works died in Virginia either from disease or at the hands of the Indians. The high cost to the Company of the labor and services lost because of the early deaths of persons still indentured for a period of years cannot be estimated. Nor can the number of goals set by the colonists and the Company but never fulfilled because of sickness be tabulated. As late as 1623 a colonist wrote that "these slow supplies, which hardly rebuild every year the decays of the former, retain us only in a languishing state and curb us from the carrying of enterprise of moment."

In suggesting the part that famine and disease played in the annulment of the Company's charter, the effects of one more period of intense suffering must also be considered. In March, 1622, a bloody Indian massacre occurred in which more than 350 white men, women, and children died. Not only did the massacre cause a subsequent period of disease, famine, and death among the survivors, but the heavy casualties inflicted directly by the Indians can be explained, partially, by the weakened condition and depleted ranks of the colonists before the massacre.

So tenuous was the colony's ability to maintain an adequate and healthful living standard, that the destructive and disrupting impact of the massacre brought a period of severe famine and sickness. After the raid the surviving colonists had to abandon many of the outlying plantations with their arable fields, livestock, and supplies. And having had the routine of life interrupted, the settlers--their numbers unfortunately increased by a large supply of new immigrants, sent by ambitious planners in England--came to the winter of 1622-23 poorly provisioned.

Toward the end of this winter, famine reduced the settlers to such conditions that one wrote to his parents that he had often eaten more at home in a day than in Virginia in a week. The beggar in England without his limbs seemed fortunate to the Virginian who had to live day after day on a scant ration of peas, water-gruel, and a small portion of bread. Another wrote that the settlers died like rotten sheep and "full of maggots as he can hold. They rot above ground." As in 1609-10, inadequate diet weakened the body and made it easy prey to infection.

During this winter the colonists--in addition to suffering from want of food--had to endure a "pestilent fever" of epidemic proportions matched only by the seasoning of 1607. About 500 persons died in the course of the winter.

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