Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 Part 2

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 a.s.sistance 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... [to] cure his hurt."

Twice in 1608, Captain Newport had brought immigrants and supplies to the colony and, in the summer of 1609 about 400 pa.s.sengers 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 circ.u.mvent starvation, const.i.tuted 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 (one for "steelinge of 2 or 3 pints of oatemeal had a bodkinge thrust through his tounge and was tyed with a chaine to a tree untill he starved"); and the denial of an allowance of food to men who were too sick to work ("soe consequently perished").

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:

as the ruins of some auntient [for]tification then that any people living might now inhabit it: the pallisadoes... tourne downe, the portes open, the gates from the hinges, the church ruined and unfrequented, empty howses (whose owners untimely death had taken newly from them) rent up and burnt, the living not hable, as they pretended, to step into the woodes to gather other fire-wood; and, it is true, the _Indian as fast killing without as the famine and pestilence within_.

The Indians, however, would not make a direct a.s.sault 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."

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.

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. ("It soone then appeared most fitt, by general approbation, that to preserve and save all from starving, there could be no readier course thought on then to abandon the countrie.")

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 [the hot and violent ague] had not long left me, til (within three weekes after I had gotten a little strength) I began to be distempered with other greevous sicknesses, which successively and severally a.s.sailed 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 a.s.saulted my weak body, with strong paines; and afterwards the gout (with which I had heeretofore beene sometime troubled) 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 const.i.tution, 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 c.u.mulative 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 b.l.o.o.d.y Indian ma.s.sacre occurred in which more than 350 white men, women, and children died. Not only did the ma.s.sacre 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 ma.s.sacre.

So tenuous was the colony's ability to maintain an adequate and healthful living standard, that the destructive and disrupting impact of the ma.s.sacre 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.

The origin of the winter's epidemic, according to contemporaries, lay in the infectious conditions of numbers of the immigrants who had been poisoned during the ocean voyage "with stinking beer" supplied to the ships by Mr. Dupper of London. It is more likely that the pestilent fever of the winter was a respiratory disease rather than a disorder resulting from "stinking beer." Another commentator on the winter called attention to the continued "wadinge and wettinge" the colonists had to endure, bringing them cold upon cold until "they leave to live."

Whether continual wadings and wettings brought on respiratory diseases, or bad beer dietary, is debatable, but the critics of the Company used the dreadful winter of 1622-23 to discredit its administration. They pointed out that the Company had sent large numbers of immigrants to Virginia without proper provisions, and to a colony without adequate means of providing food and shelter for them. Many of these persons had subsequently died during the winter of 1622-23.

The Company, embarra.s.sed by failures in Virginia--many of which resulted directly from unhappy combinations of famine and disease--and plagued by political dissension and economic difficulties, had its charter annulled in May, 1624. One of the most adversely critical--and somewhat prejudiced--tracts written against the Company summed up conditions in the colony after fifteen years under its direction:

There havinge been as it is thought not fewer than tenn thousand soules transported thither ther are not through the aforenamed abuses and neglects above two thousand of them at the present to be found alive, many of them alsoe in a sickly and desperate estate.

Soe that itt may undoubtedly [be expected that unless the defects of administration be remedied] that in steed of a plantacion it will shortly gett the name of a slaughterhouse....

The Company did not live on after 1624 to acquire such a name, but during its short--and unhealthy--existence the effects of disease on history were manifest. Company instructions gave attention to health requirements; ocean sailings depended upon health conditions; famine and disease almost caused the early abandonment of the colony; strong administrators left, for reasons of health, a Virginia sorely in need of leadership; poor health conditions resulting in lowered morale undermined local leaders; and the over-all economic welfare of the colony suffered from the long-term and short-term effects of famine and disease. The intimate or personal hardships endured by the individual settlers because of disease and famine cannot be enumerated, but the persistent influence that the summation of all the individual suffering had on the general spirit and ethics of early Virginia cannot be overlooked.

Disease and famine did not cease to influence Virginia history in 1624, but their great importance during the first two decades has been emphasized because they were then a factor exerting a major influence, perhaps the predominant one.

CHAPTER THREE

Prevalent Ills and Common Treatments

COMMON AND UNCOMMON DISEASES

As has been noted, the seasoning caused great distress and a high mortality among the new arrivals to the colony throughout the seventeenth century. These Virginians--authorities on medicine or not--had, for the origins of this malady, their own explanations which furnish clues for more recent a.n.a.lysis. The general term "seasoning" is of little a.s.sistance to the medical historian attempting to understand three hundred year-old illnesses in twentieth-century terms.

According to seventeenth-century contemporaries, the pathology of seasoning might be described as follows. The immigrants disembarked from their ships tired and underfed--generally in poor health. From their ships they took up residence in a Jamestown without adequate food supplies of its own, and without shelter for the new arrivals. Many of the new settlers had to sleep outside, regardless of the weather, for a number of days after arrival. Then they exposed themselves to the burning rays of the sun, the "gross and vaporous aire and soyle" of Jamestown, and drank its foul and brackish water.

The foul and brackish drinking water would seem to be the most probable casual agent in the opinion of more recent medical authority. In this water, Dr. Blanton believes, lurked the deadly typhoid bacillus--the killer behind the mask of the seasoning. Typhoid is not the only possibility, but burning fever, the flux (diarrhea), and the bellyache--symptoms listed in the early accounts--indicate typhoid.

Other diseases that may have caused the seasoning were dysentery, influenza, and malaria; and these may have been the seasoning during some of the later summers of the century.

Whatever diseases may have caused the seasoning, it plagued the colony summer after summer. A Dutch ship captain wrote of it as it was in Virginia in the summer of 1633:

There is an objection which the English make. They say that during the months of June, July, and August it is very unhealthy; that their people, who have then lately arrived from England, die during these months like cats and dogs, ... when they have the sickness, they want to sleep all the time, but they must be prevented from sleeping by force, as they die if they get asleep.

Sir Francis Wyatt, twice governor of Virginia wrote, "but certaine it is new comers seldome pa.s.se July and August without a burning fever--this requires a skilful phisitian, convenient diett and lodging with diligent attendance." The skillful physician could not limit himself, however, to the curing of the seasoning; he had many other maladies in Virginia with which to contend: dietary disorders, malaria, plague, yellow fever, smallpox, respiratory disorders, and a host of other diseases.

Beriberi and scurvy, both dietary diseases, handicapped the colony throughout the century, and probably had acute manifestations during the Starving Time of 1609-10. The colonists during the early years at Jamestown often boiled their limited rations in a common kettle, thus destroying what little valuable vitamin content the food may have had; eggs, vegetables, and fruits which would have countered the disease were not available. The swellings and the deaths without obvious cause described by the early commentators may have resulted from beriberi (the disease did not have a name until the eighteenth century).

Another dietary disease troubling the colonists but, unlike beriberi, known by name and at times properly treated, was scurvy. Mention has been made of the outbreak of this disease aboard the ships, and of the stops made in the West Indies to eat the health-restoring citrus fruits, but in the case of the colonists at Jamestown the fruit was non-existent. A belief, also held, that idleness caused the disease did little to bring about measures to promote proper treatment. 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 a.s.sume that, with typhoid and dietary disorders, this disease caused most of the illness in Virginia. When emphasis has been placed, by authorities, upon the location of Jamestown as a disease-producing factor, the implication has often been that the swampy area was a mosquito and malaria breeding place. A number of historians have a.s.serted that malaria produced the highest mortality figures at Jamestown. Much is also made of the tragic circ.u.mstance that the arresting agent for the disease, cinchona bark or quinine, was known on the European continent by mid-seventeenth century but that little use was made of it.

Dr. Blanton, the authority on seventeenth-century Virginia medicine, in contrast argues that "there is not evidence ... that malaria was responsible for a preponderating part of the great mortalities of the Seventeenth Century in Virginia." He bases this conclusion on a number of facts: he has been able to find only five or six references to the ague (malaria) in the records of the century; because the ague was well-known he does not believe its symptoms, such as the racking chill, would have escaped notice. On the other hand, he does not doubt the presence of the ague in Virginia throughout the century even though it did not cause the most distress.