Past Pandemics And Medical Practices During the Revolutionary War Period
Burning and eating a pot of toads to prevent smallpox and other remedies.
European settlers in America had left behind a continent where common medical treatments included practices such as attempting to prevent smallpox by burning a pot of toads to ash and consuming their remains. The settlers found a new continent that was rich with clean water, old-growth forests that were abundant with wildlife, and an indigenous population that had little exposure to newcomers or experience with outsiders.
In the winter of 1609, three shiploads of men and boys arrived on a peninsula in Virginia in what would later be named Jamestown. Colonists struggled to produce enough food to survive and the early settlements of Jamestown and Plymouth lost many to starvation, malnutrition and partly as a result, increased diseases. Malnutrition and disease decimated the population, including smallpox and tuberculosis. Faced with extinction, the colony officially disbanded only to be rejuvenated shortly thereafter with new shipments of food and supplies from England.
On December 11, 1620, the Pilgrims landed in what they called Plymouth, named after their town of departure in England, and began building houses, living on the ship in the meantime. Scurvy and other malnutrition diseases, and pneumonia were prevalent with the settlers. The Pilgrims continued to live on the ship for months while houses were being built on the land. They too suffered from smallpox, TB, dysenteries, and other diseases as well.
And the epidemics of Europe that were brought to North America were not just known tot he colonists. It is widely known that European diseases wiped out much of the indigenous population in America as well. The native populations were ill-equipped to combat new illnesses.
The colonists included Puritans, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Huguenots, Jews, German Protestants, English prisoners, and Africans who were sold into slavery.
Although the colonists brought foods like hardtack biscuits (flour, water, and salt), beer, salt, dried beef, salt pork, oats, peas, wheat, butter, sweet oil, mustard seed, ling or codfish, cheese, vinegar, aqua-vitae (brandy), rice, bacon, and cider. They commonly stewed squash, peas, onions, beans, and carrots, but they predominately ate a meat-based diet. The North American diet included corn, pork, beef, venison, possum, hard cider, whiskey, beer, berries, apples, and other fruit. While this may sound delectable to our modern palettes at any given time food stores might be low and meat on the hoof was hard to find.
The 13 colonies had a population of two million by 1750. The Continental Army was established in 1775, along with state militias, for conflicts with British, French and Native American Indians, Sadly, the soldiers who were living in crowded conditions out in the elements, on boats, and under stress, often had the greatest need for nutrition and sometimes had sparse military rations. Typically, they received a daily portion of meat, hardtack, dried beans, and a few ounces of rum. Although they did have water canteens colonial America was not an era when staying hydrated was a priority as it is today. And the water colonists found for drinking was sometimes brackish, slimy, and downright non-potable. Chlorine tablets and water filters wouldn’t be invented for a long time to come. Drinks of the period included brandy, hard cider, rum, beer made from pumpkin and parsnips.
The colonies, which were often wooded with old-growth forests, had no roadbeds and rivers and lakes were the superhighways at the time. In most cases, wagons had no springs or other improvements so land travel, whether on foot, horseback, or wagons was bone-jarring and slow. There was a lack of an understanding of microbes from raw sewage. This meant that drinking from wells or freshwater could lead to all sorts of maladies from parasites and viruses. Dysentery (bleeding diarrhea and mucus in the feces) was very common and could lead to severe dehydration and result in death.
Medical practices were practiced essentially the same as they were in Europe during the 1700s. There was a long-held notion that human health depended upon maintaining a balance between the four humors of Hippocratic medicine. These included black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Of all those humors, blood was the most accessible and received the most attention. If it was decided that you either had bad blood or too much blood, the medical people of the day would use lances to drain blood or a leech or two to remove it. This practice was known as bloodletting, which was seen as a standard treatment for a lot of diseases. And as time went on, physicians also began to consider indigenous American flora for remedies, learning from the indigenous people.
It is no wonder disease was rampant. Fewer than half of American men and even fewer women could read by the mid-1700s. Not only were microbes not associated with diseases, people still were living with assumptions of diseases being equivalent to the symptoms. Febrile (fever) diseases, which would later be found to be from a number of possible causes, including microbial infections, parasites, and so forth, were often all treated the same.
Latrines, outhouses, and indoor chamberpots were the best technology for tending to nature’s needs and running water and indoor plumbing was an invention of the future. Colonists used corn cobs or leaves in lieu of toilet paper, while the wealthy used cloth. Toilets would not be commonplace until the 1850s.
Right from the beginning, Europeans brought diseases with them such as smallpox, ague (malaria), consumption (TB), yellow fever, typhus, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and diphtheria, to name a few. Smallpox killed as many as 90 percent of the Native American Indians. Most of these diseases had no cures. Malaria had epidemic ourbreaks during the 1700s in Philadelphia and killed thousands. Yellow Fever, which still has no cure, killed thousands as well.
Some diseases had a higher survival rate than others and some medicines would eventually be found to be toxic. Living in overcrowded conditions, whether in tents, ships, or barracks, people were unwittingly exposed to all kinds of what would become known as germs of communicable diseases.
