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.
During the first year of the settlement at Jamestown, disease worked as
an important factor in the realm of politics. In this connection,
Edward Maria Wingfield, chosen first president of the governing council
in Virginia, found himself removed from office, imprisoned, and sent
home by the spring of 1608, all as a result of charges brought against
him that for the most part were petty and contradictory. Pettiness and
contradictions, in this instance, were rooted in the miserable
conditions which the colonists had to endure their first summer: famine
and sickness not only demoralized the colonists but were killing them
faster than they could be buried.
Wingfield left office as president of the council after the first
summer spent in Jamestown. The sickness that caused much tension during
his tenure was probably the malady loosely described by early
Virginians as the "seasoning." The complex of symptoms ascribed to the
seasoning bothered the settlers throughout the seventeenth century.
Even as late as 1723 a recent arrival in Virginia wrote that "all that
come to this country have ordinarily sickness at first which they call
a seasoning of which I shall assure you I had a most severe one."
During the first two summers, 1607 and 1608, however, this seasoning
inflicted the most distress, judging by the seriousness with which
contemporaries described it.
One of these contemporary accounts, written by George Percy who sailed
to Virginia with the first settlers in 1606-07, described the distress
caused by seasoning and famine during the summer of 1607. The awfulness
of that summer is made more dramatic by the manner in which Percy
introduced the subject. Having described the voyage over, which was
relatively pleasant with the stopover in the beautiful West Indian
islands, and having entertained the reader with startling accounts of
the habits of the savages in Virginia ("making many devillish gestures
with a hellish noise, foming at the mouth, staring with their eyes,
wagging their heads and hands in such a fashion and deformitie as it
was monstrous to behold"), Percy abruptly began listing the names of
the dead as his narrative moved into the late summer months:
The sixt of August there died John Asbie of the bloudie flixe. The
ninth day died George Flowre of the swelling.... The fifteenth day,
their died Edward Browne and Stephen Galthorpe. The sixteenth day,
their died Thomas Gower Gentleman. The seventeenth day, their died
Thomas Mounslic....
The remainder of the description of the significant events of the month
of August is given over entirely to the listing of the deaths. Seldom
did Percy give the cause of individual deaths, but as the narrative
moved into September and near the end of the seasoning period, Percy
stopped his grim listing to comment in general terms upon the unhappy
experience.
According to his diagnosis--and perhaps he was enlightened by Thomas
Wotton and Will Wilkinson, the two surgeons who arrived with the first
settlers--the heavy death toll of August resulted from such ailments as
fluxes, swellings, and burning fevers as well as from famine and
attacks by the Indians.
Percy was of the opinion that the colonists at Jamestown suffered more
during the summer and winter of 1607 than any other Englishmen have
during a colonization venture. Weakened by the debilitating summer and
unable during that period to make the necessary provisions for the
winter, the settlers, their ranks depleted, also fared poorly during
the next five months.
In describing their distress, he revealed the conditions that bred the
diseases and illnesses to which the colonists fell prey. They lay on
the bare ground through weather cold and hot, dry and wet, and their
ration of food consisted of a small can of barley sod in water--one can
for five men. Drinking water came from the river which in turn was salt
at high tide, and slimy and filthy at low. With such food and drink,
the small contingent within the fort lay about for weeks "night and day
groaning in every corner ... most pittifull to heare."
Fortunately during the course of the winter the Indians did come to the
relief of the colonists with provisions, but before this help was
substantial, Percy observed:
If there were any conscience in men, it would make their harts to
bleed to heare the pitifull murmurings and out-cries of our sick
men without reliefe, every night and day, for the space of sixe
weekes, some departing out the world, many times three or foure in
a night; in the morning, their bodies trailed out of their cabines
like dogges to be buried.
Over one-half (approximately 60) of the original settlers perished
during the summer of 1607 and the seasoning was to prove a hazard
throughout the remainder of the century. Its effects became less
serious, however, as the Company and the colonists, profiting from the
earlier experiences began to plan departures from England so that the
immigrants would arrive in Virginia in the fall: another example of the
influence of disease.
Governor Yeardley, writing some years later--in 1620--reminded the
Company's officials in England of the advantages of a fall arrival. He
had just witnessed the distress of immigrants from three ships that had
arrived in May:
had they arrived at a seasonable time of the year I would not have
doubted of their lives and healths, but this season is most unfit
for people to arrive here ... some [came] very weak and sick, some
crazy and tainted ashore, and now this great heat of weather
striketh many more but for life.
At least twenty more immigrants died during the second summer (1608)
and the misery and discontent of the survivors of the summer's
sicknesses account--in part, at least--for the disposal of another
council president, John Ratcliffe. Returning to Jamestown after an
exploratory trip up Chesapeake Bay, Doctor Walter Russell, one of the
company, found the latest arrivals to Virginia "al sicke, the rest,
some lame, some bruised, al unable to do any thing but complain of the
pride and unreasonable needlesse cruelty of their sillie President."
The wrath of these sick--and doubtless somewhat querulous and
irrational men--was appeased by the removal of the "sillie" president.
The ability of Captain John Smith, who succeeded to the presidency of
the council in the fall of 1608, to impose his strong will upon the
inhabitants of the peninsula, and to exert such a great influence upon
the course of events is explained, in part, by the depletion of ranks
and the demoralization of spirit caused among them by the dreadful toll
of disease. When other members of the council died, Smith did not
replace them and, rid of strong opposition, he ruled as a benevolent
despot.
Smith's departure from the colony in October, 1609, had as its
immediate cause--according to Smith--the impossibility of his obtaining
proper medical attention in Virginia for burns acquired from a
gunpowder explosion. When Smith sailed, his enemies, of which there
were a considerable number, breathed freer air, but the colony
subsequently suffered without his strong, authoritative voice.
Supporters of Smith argued that if that "unhappy" accident had not
occurred, he could have stayed on and solved the many problems that
were to beset the colony. On the other hand, it is pointed out that the
wound would have been better treated at Jamestown than on board ship,
and that Smith used the wound, which was not too serious, as an excuse
to escape from the administrative troubles that plagued him.
The powder blast was described by friends of Smith as tearing a nine or
ten-inch square of flesh from his body and thighs, and as causing him
such torment that he could not carry out the duties of his position.
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 assistance 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 passengers 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 circumvent starvation,
constituted 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 assault 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 assailed 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 assaulted 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 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 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 cumulative 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 bloody Indian
massacre occurred in which more than 350 white men, women, and children
died. Not only did the massacre 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
massacre.
So tenuous was the colony's ability to maintain an adequate and
healthful living standard, that the destructive and disrupting impact
of the massacre 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, embarrassed 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.