Treating Disease: Colonists Relied on Natural Remedies to Cure Ailments
Jan 2009Though some of the illnesses and diseases that plagued the American Colonists of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as malaria and smallpox, still threaten parts of the world, medical treatments for many of those conditions have improved a great deal.
During the summer after the arrival of the first settlers at Jamestown in 1607, some of them experienced "cruel swellings," while others reported "burning fevers," according to Terry Bond, a historic interpreter for Jamestown Settlement. It would later be determined that the swellings were possibly caused by hypernatremia, or salt poisoning, which can result from heavily-salted foods or excessive salt in the available water system. Meanwhile, the fevers the Colonists experienced were likely a result of typhus (also called spotted fever) or typhoid fever spread through unsanitary living quarters or contaminated food and water. Encephalitis and malaria, two diseases contracted from mosquitoes, as well as dysentery (a digestive infection), were also serious health threats.
Common treatments for swelling included the use of comfrey, an herb that was ground and mixed with oil or wax to form a plaster. The mixture was then applied to the affected area. Settlers also drank beer with sugar, honey and spices added in the hope that drinking such a concoction would ease swelling. It was also widely believed that mixing roasted, ground "hartshorn" (deer antler) with beer would alleviate the symptoms of dysentery. Herbs such as willow bark and yarrow, which, according to Bond, were "readily available," were frequently used as blood thinners to help reduce fevers.
Two healing methods common in 18th-century Colonial Williamsburg were bleeding and purging. Doctors induced purging, or vomiting, in patients who suffered from dysentery, while bloodletting, according to the Colonial Williamsburg publication Physick, was used for "inflammatory conditions characterized by redness, swelling, pain, and heat." Blood was released through either a punctured vein, scarification (small incisions in the skin) or by applying leeches to the patient's skin. The amount of blood removed varied depending on the patient and his or her condition.
Despite efforts to treat certain diseases, some conditions still proved lethal. Lorena Walsh, a historian with Colonial Williamsburg, notes that "[Influenza], then as now, could be a killer," and that "colds were more fatal to those [already] weakened by other diseases." Smallpox was another deadly disease in Colonial times. "There was a major [smallpox] epidemic in Williamsburg in 1747-48 when at least 754 townspeople contracted it," Walsh says. "The disease was particularly fatal to Indians, who'd had no history of exposure to it."
Walsh also points out that unlike today, "Colonists tended to die of epidemic [widespread at a particular time] diseases like smallpox or endemic [common in a specific area] ones like malaria in their 20s, 30s and 40s, so many did not live long enough to [experience] chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer."
Like residents of Jamestown, residents of Colonial Williamsburg also relied on herbs to treat certain ailments. They ate rhubarb and prunes as laxatives, and they used cinnamon, cloves and ginger to treat gas, toothaches and nausea, respectively. Physicians prescribed opium for pain, diarrhea and severe coughing, and they prescribed medicinal cinchona bark, or "Jesuit's bark," for malaria.
Though Colonists turned to natural remedies when they became sick, they also knew that eating healthy foods and exercising were the keys to preventing illness. Says Bond: "Much like today, [the Colonists] understood the importance of a good diet."
Look for next month's installment of Health in History, part of an ongoing series examining health practices in Colonial Virginia.
