he 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.

England, and especially London with its surrounding marshes, suffered
acutely with the ague during the century. Englishmen arriving in the
New World were well aware of the dangers of this disease and made some
effort to avoid the bad air, and the low and damp places. In 1658 the
ague took such a toll that a contemporary described the whole island of
Britain as a monstrous public hospital. Unfortunately, Thomas Sydenham,
whose prestige in England was great and whose works on fevers were
influential, paid scant tribute to cinchona bark (quinine) which was
known but thought of, even by Sydenham, as only an alleged curative
offering too radical a challenge to current techniques. According to
humoral doctrine, fever demanded a purging, not the intake of
additional substances.

Unfortunately, public hygiene and sanitation enlisted few adherents.
Epidemics of the seventeenth century have been judged the most severe
in history. In Italy physicians ahead of their times proposed the
draining of marshes and pools of stagnant water, and recommended the
isolation of persons with contagious diseases. But it was the great
London fire of 1666 that rid that city of its infested and infected
places, not an enlightened municipality.

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 European or Englishman, however, did not originate the practice of
medicine in Virginia for the Indian had had to struggle with the
problems of disease and injury long before the seventeenth century.

INDIANS AND THEIR MEDICINE

Seventeenth-century Americans found the medical practices of the
Indians interesting enough to include descriptions of them in their
accounts of the New World.