American colonists health in 1776 differed sharply from modern expectations. While their clothes and pastimes might look familiar if updated for today, their bodies were beset by chronic irritation, indigestion, skin conditions and slow-healing wounds that most people accepted as part of life.
Everyday suffering was shared in letters and conversation. Acute threats such as smallpox, typhoid, dysentery, yellow fever and diphtheria lingered behind routine aches and coughs. According to accounts from the period, illness touched everyone, regardless of wealth or legal status.
A Smithsonian medical historian notes that surviving instruments from the era help bridge the gap between written descriptions of rheum, dyspepsia and other complaints and the lived experiences of those who endured them. These objects reveal prevailing ideas about the body and care that words alone can obscure.
American colonists health and animal care overlapped
The few medical tools in common use were heavy, awkward and imprecise, reflecting a striking tolerance for pain. Devices such as bone saws, fleams and scarificators, used to open veins or score skin, underscored how closely humans were treated like other animals.
The same implements served on people and livestock, a practical choice in communities where animals often shared living spaces with families, except among the most genteel households. Cleanliness typically meant invigorating river baths rather than sanitation.
People changed clothes more than they washed, which fostered fungal and bacterial skin problems. Lice and bed bugs were widespread.
Scabies, ringworm and rashes were common beneath layers of stiff linen, odorous wool or coarse calico, leaving many with persistent itching, scratches and scabs.
Infancy was perilous. Some colonists and midwives practiced hardening, including cold-water immersion and early weaning.
By contrast, many Indigenous mothers nursed children into early childhood. Roughly one in three colonial infants did not reach age two.
Tools to purge ill humors
Those who reached adulthood often lived into their late 50s or early 60s if they avoided accidents and childbirth complications. Professional physicians were scarce.
Care commonly came from midwives, bonesetters who might also cut hair or remove cataracts, ministers, apothecaries and plantation root doctors versed in plant remedies. Institutions were limited, even though Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia had been founded a quarter-century earlier.
European colonists widely subscribed to humoral theory, which held that health depended on balancing yellow and black bile, blood and phlegm. Bloodletting and purging were standard, widely accepted practices well into the 19th century.
Surgeons, unaware of germs, washed bloody hands in dirty water and wiped them on stained aprons. To drain dangerous swellings or probe cavities, practitioners used a trocar and cannula, a sharp triangular-pointed instrument within a metal tube.
After piercing the body, the spear was removed and the tube left in place to allow fluids to flow in or out. In the absence of anesthesia, patients sometimes drank liquor to blunt the pain.
For many ailments, care from family and experienced neighbors could prove safer than the attentions of a trained doctor.
A mouthful of troubles
Mild scurvy was common due to diets poor in fresh produce, leading to bleeding gums, tooth loss and foul breath. Household manuals offered mouthwash recipes with tobacco ash, alum, sage, clove and sometimes charcoal, which also served as a tooth polish.
When extraction was needed, a practitioner might use a tooth key to grasp and twist out a diseased tooth, a painful but efficient alternative to fingers or forceps. With food preservation unreliable, colonists often ate sour milk and meat considered “high,” or near spoiled, contributing to dyspepsia and diarrhea.
Tobacco was a go-to remedy for indigestion, respiratory complaints, pain and oral afflictions. Laudanum from opium was also used, as were toxic substances such as mercury and antimony.
A life of daily discomfort
Although retrospective diagnosis is uncertain, people then faced ailments resembling diabetes, arthritis, cancer, anemia, rabies, colds and tuberculosis, with no reliable treatments or consistent diagnoses. Some medical theories were plainly wrong.
Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, argued that the dark skin of African Americans was a form of disease derived from leprosy, a view now thoroughly discredited. Many also believed birthmarks reflected a mother’s experiences during pregnancy.
Experiences that were sensible to people in 1776 can be hard to interpret today. Feelings change quickly and words can fall short.
Examining the material culture of care, from bloodletting tools to dental extractors, offers a clearer window into how people lived with their bodies. While we cannot know each colonist’s inner life, their medical objects show how they managed persistent physical distractions while laying the groundwork for enduring civic ideals.