Study Guide Death
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Colonial Disease and Illness
Epidemics ravaged both white and Native populations in colonial New England. The source of these epidemics is not surprising: low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical knowledge. As Dr. William Douglass put it in 1760 about white medicine, “more die of the practitioner than of the natural course of the disease” (Duffy 4; cites Douglass). Relatively few doctors in colonial American had attended medical school: in 1721 only one of Boston’s ten “doctors” had a degree (Duffy 7). The drugs used were prescribed in excessively large and unmeasured qualities. Even if given properly the prescriptions were of questionable use: even Cotton Mather, a famous scientist, advocated the use of urine as an unparalleled “Remedy for Humane Bodies” (Duffy 8). As seen by the cures prescribed by Dr. Zerobabel Endecott, colonial medicine often appears in retrospect to be more like spells than medicine. Bleeding patients and inducing vomiting were common cures (Duffy 8-9). In addition to epidemics, famine and dietary sicknesses such as scurvy took their toll (Duffy 11).
Native American’s lack of immunity to European disease wrecked havoc on the Wampanoags and other New England Indians. Early epidemics in the 1616-19 and 1633 diminished New England’s Native population by as much as 90 percent (Bragdon 1996: 26). A smallpox epidemic in 1643 further ravaged the tribes (Bradgon 1996: 26). David Silverman estimates that the outbreaks of 1643 and 1645 decimated half of the Wampanoag population on Martha’s Vineyard (Silverman 2000: 68). Thomas Mayhew’s success in helping provide cures during the epidemic enhanced his prestige and helped secure converts to Christianity (Silverman 2000: 70). Native healers used both local herbs and spiritual practices to tend the ill: pawwaws functioned as sucking doctors and used spirit helpers to rid the body of sickness (Bragdon 1996: 204-05). While Puritans feared that pawwaws invocation of Spirits was satanic, they looked more favorably upon herbal healings and often learned from Native practices. In fact, native healing practices were deemed so successful by colonists that colonial doctors sometimes trained with native healers to learn about which roots, berries, blossoms, and herbs should be used and how (Kavasch 17). Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654), author of The English Physician Enlarged was one of the first to classify herbal medicine. Some of his cures are listed in the archive.
Mayhew speaks of an Indian healer who used herbal remedies: this tradition continued into the 20th century and was recorded by medicine woman and anthropologist Gladys Tantaquidgeon (1899-?; Mohegan), author of a work on the Folk Medicine of the Delaware and Related Algonkian Indians. The medicines applied by Jonah Hopowit and his wife probably fell into this category. Women played an important role in collecting and administering herbal medicines (Fawcett 141, 144-45; Grumet 57-59). Even so, disease continued to sweep the island: in 1690 a horrible epidemic hit the island and in 1737/38 a smallpox panic swept the island. Many of the men, women, and children mentioned in Indian Converts died in these disease cycles.
Items Related to Colonial Disease and Illness in the Archive
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