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. Typhoid is not the only possibility, but burning fever, the flux (diarrhea), and the bellyache—symptoms listed in the early accounts—indicate typhoid. Other diseases that may have caused the seasoning were dysentery, influenza, and malaria; and these may have been the seasoning during some of the later summers of the century.
Whatever diseases may have caused the seasoning, it plagued the colony summer after summer. A Dutch ship captain wrote of it as it was in Virginia in the summer of 1633:
There is an objection which the English make. They say that during the months of June, July, and August it is very unhealthy; that their people, who have then lately arrived from England, die during these months like cats and dogs, ... when they have the sickness, they want to sleep all the time, but they must be prevented from sleeping by force, as they die if they get asleep.
Sir Francis Wyatt, twice governor of Virginia wrote, "but certaine it is new comers seldome passe July and August without a burning fever—this requires a skilful phisitian, convenient diett and lodging with diligent attendance." The skillful physician could not limit himself, however, to the curing of the seasoning; he had many other maladies in Virginia with which to contend: dietary disorders, malaria, plague, yellow fever, smallpox, respiratory disorders, and a host of other diseases.
Beriberi and scurvy, both dietary diseases, handicapped the colony throughout the century, and probably had acute manifestations during the Starving Time of 1609-10. The colonists during the early years at Jamestown often boiled their limited rations in a common kettle, thus destroying what little valuable vitamin content the food may have had; eggs, vegetables, and fruits which would have countered the disease were not available. The swellings and the deaths without obvious cause described by the early commentators may have resulted from beriberi (the disease did not have a name until the eighteenth century).
Another dietary disease troubling the colonists but, unlike beriberi, known by name and at times properly treated, was scurvy. Mention has been made of the outbreak of this disease aboard the ships, and of the stops made in the West Indies to eat the health-restoring citrus fruits, but in the case of the colonists at Jamestown the fruit was non-existent. A belief, also held, that idleness caused the disease did little to bring about measures to promote proper treatment. Because the incapacitating aspects of the disease could produce the appearance of idleness, numerous ill persons must have been innocently stigmatized. Their situation became hopeless when denied rations because the authorities wished to discipline the apparently lazy.
Insomuch as the ague (or malaria) exacted a high toll in seventeenth-century Europe—especially in England—it would be reasonable to assume that, with typhoid and dietary disorders, this disease caused most of the illness in Virginia. When emphasis has been placed, by authorities, upon the location of Jamestown as a disease-producing factor, the implication has often been that the swampy area was a mosquito and malaria breeding place. A number of historians have asserted that malaria produced the highest mortality figures at Jamestown. Much is also made of the tragic circumstance that the arresting agent for the disease, cinchona bark or quinine, was known on the European continent by mid-seventeenth century but that little use was made of it.