Most, if
not all, got colds and coughs, which afterwards turned to scurvy, whereof
many died.
How can we wonder that the crowded and tempest-tossed voyagers, many of
them already suffering, should have fallen before the trials of the first
winter in Plymouth? Their imperfect shelter, their insufficient supply
of bread, their salted food, now in unwholesome condition, account too
well for the diseases and the mortality that marked this first dreadful
season; weakness, swelling of the limbs, and other signs of scurvy,
betrayed the want of proper nourishment and protection from the elements.
In December six of their number died, in January eight, in February,
seventeen, in March thirteen. With the advance of spring the mortality
diminished, the sick and lame began to recover, and the colonists,
saddened but not disheartened, applied themselves to the labors of the
opening year.
One of the most pressing needs of the early colonists must have been that
of physicians and surgeons. In Mr. Savage's remarkable Genealogical
Dictionary of the first settlers who came over before 1692 and their
descendants to the third generation, I find scattered through the four
crowded volumes the names of one hundred and thirty-four medical
practitioners. Of these, twelve, and probably many more, practised
surgery; three were barber-surgeons. A little incident throws a glimmer
from the dark lantern of memory upon William Direly, one of these
practitioners with the razor and the lancet.
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