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 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 (such as would be enjoyed at
Middle Plantation) 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.