Produced by Mark C. Orton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Assistant Professor of History, Washington and Lee University
VIRGINIA 350TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CORPORATION WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA 1957
COPYRIGHT©, 1957 BY VIRGINIA 350TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CORPORATION, WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet, Number 21
[Transcriber's Notes: Research indicates the copyright on this book was not renewed.
The Table of Contents was not printed in the original text but has been added here for the convenience of the reader.]
CHAPTER ONE European Background and Indian Counterpart to Virginia Medicine 1
CHAPTER TWO Disease and The Critical Years At Jamestown 12
CHAPTER THREE Prevalent Ills and Common Treatments 31
CHAPTER FOUR Education, Women, Churchmen, and The Law 60
Acknowledgements and Bibliographical Note 77
European Background and Indian Counterpart to Virginia Medicine
The origins of medical theory and practice in this nation extend further than the settlement at Jamestown in 1607. Jamestown was a seed carried from the Old World and planted in the New; medicine was one of the European characteristics transmitted with the seed across the Atlantic. In the process of transmission changes took place, and in the New World medicine adapted itself to some circumstances unknown to Europe; but the contact with European developments in theory and practice was never--and is not--broken.
Because of this relationship between European and American medicine, an acquaintance with seventeenth-century European medicine makes it possible to give additional support to some of the information in the early sources about medicine in colonial Virginia. In addition, knowledge of the European background allows reasonable speculation as to what happened in Virginia when the early sources are silent.
In discussing the background for American medicine it is not necessary to make a firm distinction between England and the rest of Europe. As today, science--in this case, medical science--frequently ignored national boundaries. The same theories relative to the structure of the body (anatomy), to the functions of the organs and parts of the body (physiology), and to other branches of medical science were common to England and Europe. Medical practice, like theory, varied but in detail from nation to nation in Western Europe.