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tion the imprudences which their inexperience or their intemperateness led them to commit.[1]
As the area of the clearings enlarged, a great improvement in the public health was observed, extending even to those persons who had recently arrived in Virginia. In his answers to the interrogatories of the Commissioners of Plantations in 1671, Governor Berkeley stated that it was then rare that an unseasoned hand died, although at one time the mortality had been in proportion of one to five.[2]
- ↑ As early as 1649, it was the habit of some Virginians to retire into Maryland as soon as the heats of summer arrived. There, it is stated, they enjoyed uninterrupted good health. Bullock’s Virginia, p. 4. In 1687, Howard, at that time Governor of the Colony, wrote to the King, that he would withdraw himself during the vehement heat and “almost indispensable sickness of this place (Jamestown) in the dog days,” to some more healthy climate, he had tried several summers, and found them so prejudicial to his health that the physicians had advised him to change the air. Colonial Entry Book, No. 83, pp. 145-147; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1687, p. 73, Va. State Library. For the effects of intemperance, see Beverley’s History of Virginia, pp. 241-242.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. II, p. 515.
