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.

CHAPTER THREE

Prevalent Ills and Common Treatments

COMMON AND UNCOMMON DISEASES

As has been noted, the seasoning caused great distress and a high
mortality among the new arrivals to the colony throughout the
seventeenth century. These Virginians--authorities on medicine or
not--had, for the origins of this malady, their own explanations which
furnish clues for more recent analysis. The general term "seasoning" is
of little assistance to the medical historian attempting to understand
three hundred year-old illnesses in twentieth-century terms.

According to seventeenth-century contemporaries, the pathology of
seasoning might be described as follows. The immigrants disembarked
from their ships tired and underfed--generally in poor health. From
their ships they took up residence in a Jamestown without adequate food
supplies of its own, and without shelter for the new arrivals. Many of
the new settlers had to sleep outside, regardless of the weather, for a
number of days after arrival. Then they exposed themselves to the
burning rays of the sun, the "gross and vaporous aire and soyle" of
Jamestown, and drank its foul and brackish water.

The foul and brackish drinking water would seem to be the most probable
casual agent in the opinion of more recent medical authority. In this
water, Dr. Blanton believes, lurked the deadly typhoid bacillus--the
killer behind the mask of the seasoning. Ty