many medical men to cross in America.

Throughout the century ship's surgeons abandoned their shipboard duties
to settle in the Virginia colony, and there seems little reason to
doubt that those remaining aboard ship took advantage of the
opportunity when in port to help meet the medical needs of the
colonists, thus supplementing the medical talent which had taken up
residence in Virginia.

The labors of the ship's surgeon at sea, no matter how valiant, could
not offset the miseries of the long sea voyage, and the sight of
Virginia's coast greatly cheered all hands. After the foul air, crowded
quarters, and inadequate provisions of the ship, many settlers must
have reacted to the Virginia land as Captain John Smith did: "heaven
and earth never agree better to frame a place for man's habitation." It
is not surprising then that the first permanent settlers were somewhat
less than careful when evaluating, against standards of health, the
possible sites for settlement.

THE SELECTION OF SITES FOR SETTLEMENT

In a fairly extensive set of instructions "by way of advice, for the
intended voyage to Virginia," the London Company, in 1606, took into
account the part that disease and famine could play in the life--or
death--of the colony. Probably knowing that the chances for survival of
the Spanish conquistadors had been enhanced by their superhuman
qualities in the eyes of the Indians, the Company urged that no
information on deaths or sicknesses among the whites be allowed to the
natives. More important, as the course of events was to demonstrate,
was the advice not to:

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 in