Thomas Proctor Hughes

“ The seventeenth century, the age of Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz, René Descartes, and other giants of physical science, was a period of remarkable progress in the field of physics. It is not surprising then that theorists in the field of medicine, noting the truths discovered by conceiving of nature as a great machine functioning according to laws that could be expressed in mathematical terms, should have attempted to explain the human body as a machine. ”

“ Therefore Virginia, a colony of seventeenth-century Europe, started life burdened with a heritage of deadly and widespread disease and inadequate medicine. Not only did the ships that brought the settlers to Jamestown Island bring surgeons and medical supplies but also medical problems frequently more serious than the men and supplies could cope with. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After Virginia became a Crown colony, famine and disease no longer influenced affairs so greatly, not because of the wise administration of the Crown, but because the colonists had better learned what was necessary to cope with health conditions in the New World. No longer did they consider disease and famine minor threats compared to those from the Indians and Spaniards. They planned their ocean voyages so as to arrive in the fall and thus avoid the dread summer sickness while still too weak from the voyage to resist it ”

“ 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 Indians, like Molière's stage physician, believed in the value of the purge. Every spring they deliberately made themselves sick with drinking the juices of a medicinal root. The dosage purged them so thoroughly that they did not recover until three or four days later. The Indians also ate green corn in the spring to work the same effect.
The Indian medicine man, like his European counterpart, frequently dispensed medicines or drugs. As has been the custom among many men in the medical profession, the medicine man would not reveal the secrets of his medicines. ”

“ Infant mortality was high and the life expectancy low. Hardly a household escaped the tragedy of death of the young and the robust; historians have sensed the influence omnipresent death had upon the attitudes and aspirations of the European and American of earlier centuries. School children today learn of such a dramatic killer as the bubonic plague, but even its terrible ravages do not dwarf the toll of ague (malaria) , smallpox, typhoid and typhus, diphtheria, respiratory disorders, scurvy, beriberi, and flux (dysentery) in the colonial period. ”

“ Seventeenth-century Europe relied heavily upon ancient authority in the realm of medical theory. The European and colonial Virginia physician, surgeon, and even barber (when functioning as a medical man) consciously or unconsciously drew upon, or practiced according to, theories originated or developed by Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) and Galen (131-201 A.D.) . Hippocrates is remembered not only for his emphasis upon ethical practices but also for his inquiring and scientific spirit, and Galen as the founder of experimental physiology and as the formulator of ingenious medical theories. ”

“ In America, historians agree, the differences based on specialization of practice between surgeons and physicians soon tended to disappear, a superior education often being the only attribute or function of a physician not shared by the surgeon. ”

“ In Europe and England, where medical education was institutionalized to a far greater extent than in colonial Virginia, education explains much of the difference in social status between physician and surgeon. The surgeon learned by apprenticeship to an experienced member of his guild while the physician had to meet certain educational and professional requirements, depending upon local or national law. The best medical education of the period could be had at the great centers of Leyden, Paris, and Montpellier. Cambridge and Oxford also offered a degree in medicine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Common sense dictated a freeing of the body of the corrupt or corrupting matter; drugs were a means to this end.
The use of drugs for vomiting, sweating, and other forms of purging seems excessive in the light of present-day medical knowledge, and at least one seventeenth-century Virginia student of medicine also found such use of drugs by his contemporaries open to criticism. In the opinion of the Reverend John Clayton, Virginia doctors were so prone to associate all drugs with vomiting or other forms of purging that they even thought of aromatic spirits as an inferior "vomitive." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cinchona, discovered in Spanish America and known in seventeenth-century Europe, had demonstrable effects in the treatment of malaria but, because it was an additive rather than a purgative, physicians rejected it on theoretical grounds. Its eventual acceptance later revolutionized drug therapeutics, but this revolution did not affect seventeenth-century Virginia.
The emphasis that the contemporary medical men placed upon the purging of the body—the vomiting, sweating, purgings of the bowels, the draining, and the bleeding—cannot be considered irrational or quaint. ”

“ The chief example used to convey the injustice of fees for visits and drugs was that many colonists preferred to allow their servants to hazard a recovery than to call a medical man. Although an inhumane attitude, the colonists reasoned that the physician or surgeon would charge more than the purchase price of the servant. ”

“ There were several ways in which a seventeenth-century Virginia physician could acquire his education or training. He could have received a medical degree in England or on the continent and then gone to America. On the other hand, he might have learned without formal education—perhaps by attending lectures and by experience—and then established himself in Virginia where he was accorded professional status. A man born in Virginia could return to the Old World for training or formal education and then practice in Virginia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By spring of 1610 the challenge of famine, pestilence, and disease had proven too great; the warfare of Europeans and savages, for which the settlers had made provisions in the selection of the Jamestown site, had not proven as great a threat as disease and famine. Under the command of Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, who had only just arrived with plans for the future of the settlement, the small band of survivors boarded ship to abandon an abortive experiment in European colonization. ”

“ In this passage Clayton's medical theory resembles closely the orthodox medical beliefs of the century. The great English practitioner Sydenham, for example, emphasized the relationship between the weather and disease. Also the analogy between the behavior of blood and wine was then conventional, and the supposed connection between the "sour" blood and indigestion with the resulting acid humors is in accord with Galenism. The remedy—and a most logical one—was medicine to combat the acidity and to restore the tone or balance to the stomach. Acid stomach has a long history. ”

“ The London Company actively supported a program to develop the drug resources of the New World, and the hope of finding them had originally been one of the incentives for the colonization of Virginia. Even as early as the sixteenth century, authors and promoters in England of the American venture had held up the promise of a profitable trade in drugs—sassafras, for example—as a stimulus for exploration and colonization. Sassafras had market value as it was widely used in cases of dysentery, skin diseases, and as a stimulant and astringent ”

“ One of the most interesting Virginia court cases of the century had as its principal subject a woman accused of the power to cause sickness. In an age when weapon salve was wiped on the weapon and not the wound, and when astrology was intimately associated with the practice of medicine, it is not surprising to find, also, the witch and her power to cause disease. Goodwife Wright stood accused of such powers in the colony's general court on September 11, 1626. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Drug therapeutics, clysters, and bloodletting did by no means exhaust the seventeenth-century physician's treatments and remedies. The works of European painters of the century remind us of uroscopy or urine examination. One of the outstanding paintings illustrating the technique is by artist Gerard Dou who has the young doctor intently examining the urine flask while taking the pulse of a pretty young lady. Unfortunately, such revealing pictorial representations of life and medicine in colonial Virginia do not exist. ”

“ Smallpox caused such a scare in 1696 that the assembly, in session at Jamestown, asked for a recess—another example of the influence of disease upon political history. Earlier, in 1667, a sailor with smallpox, if the contemporary account can be accepted, landed at Accomack and was solely responsible for the outbreak of a terrible epidemic on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. A measles epidemic during the last decade of the century may actually have been smallpox as the two diseases were often confused by contemporaries. ”

“ Because the incapacitating aspects of the disease could produce the appearance of idleness, numerous ill persons must have been innocently stigmatized. Their situation became hopeless when denied rations because the authorities wished to discipline the apparently lazy.
Insomuch as the ague (or malaria) exacted a high toll in seventeenth-century Europe—especially in England—it would be reasonable to assume that, with typhoid and dietary disorders, this disease caused most of the illness in Virginia. ”

“ Medicine was associated in many minds not only with the powers of evil but also with the forces for good. The clergyman in colonial America often practiced medicine, and the layman in some localities of Virginia could turn to the local parson for medical assistance. ”

“ A few women dispensed medicine and enjoyed reputations as doctors, but it was in the field of obstetrics and as midwives that they made their most important contributions. Although women did what might be described generally as nursing, their contribution in this area was relatively insignificant when compared with the importance of the female nurse today. Any discussion of the place of women in seventeenth-century medicine should note the relationship between women, witchcraft, and medicine. ”

“ 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. ”