The restoration of the patient to health is not the only important
aspect of medical practice; the prevention of illness is also vital to
the health of a community. Much more attention is given to preventive
medicine in the twentieth century than in the seventeenth, but the
value of cleanliness, fresh air, and quarantine was known. Hygienic
measures taken, or recommendations made, by public authorities make
clear the fact that the cause of disease was not commonly thought to be
supernatural by the educated and responsible. Contemporary accounts
make known the widespread disapproval of foul ships, crowded quarters,
marshy land, stagnant air, bad food and drink, excessive eating, and
exposure to a hot sun.
Lord De la Warr laid down regulations for Jamestown designed to
eliminate the dangers of dirty wash water ("no ... water or suds of
fowle cloathes or kettle, pot, or pan ... within twenty foote of the
olde well"); and of contamination from sewage ("nor shall any one
aforesaid, within lesse than a quarter of one mile from the
pallisadoes, dare to doe the necessities of nature"). The order argued
that if the inhabitants did not separate themselves at least a quarter
of one mile from the palisaded living area that "the whole fort may be
choaked, and poisoned with ill aires and so corrupt." The colonists by
the same order had to keep their own houses and the street before both
sweet and clean.
Any doubt that an awareness existed of the dangers of infection by
contact, at least from diseases with observable bodily symptoms, should
be dispelled by the quarantine measures taken by the colonel and
commander of Northampton County in 1667 during an epidemic of smallpox.
He ordered that no member of a family inflicted with the disease should
leave his house until thirty days after the outbreak lest the disease
be spread by infection "like the plague of leprosy." Enlightened
authorities in Europe took similar precautions.