University of Virginia Library

XXIV. Health of the University

The University precincts were unable to show that
they were proof against those alarming epidemics of
disease which were so common in those times, even when
the precautions then considered sufficient had been taken
to prevent their occurrence. It was an age when the
true laws of hygiene had not yet been intelligently

grasped. The necessity for constant vigilance in maintaining
systematically the highest degree of cleanliness on
private and public premises, was not, in actual practice
at least, owing to the slipshod slave service, always energetically
complied with. The climate of the mountain
region,—which was so loudly trumpeted for its salubrity,
and in the main, deservedly so,—was subject to recurrences
of a malignant type of typhoid fever; and it was
this distemper which broke out at the University again
and again during the first half century of its existence.
That, in these early years, it should do so was a fact to
be expected in the light thrown on the causes of this fever
by modern research and observation. The water, which
was undefiled enough in its origin on the roofs, or on the
watershed of the academic mountain, was drawn, not
directly from one open central receptacle for immediate
distribution in the pavilions and dormitories, but from
scattered closed cisterns, to which it had been first
allowed to flow. These petty reservoirs depended upon
a periodical cleaning out for their purity; and even with
frequent drawing off of their water with this purpose in
view, deleterious substances must have often percolated
in through the interstices of natural drainage.

Moreover, the dormitories were, to a certain extent,
shut off from untainted and invigorating draughts of
fresh air. The Lawn, though open to the south, the
direction of the prevailing wind, was often close in its
atmosphere in comparison with the high and breezy tops
of the neighboring ridges. The two Ranges faced respectively
east and west, and the bitter cold and the torrid
heat which their situation exposed them to at certain
seasons of the year, may have caused something more
than discomfort to the occupants of those rooms. As
early as 1825, there was an impression that East Range

especially was liable to the recurrence of typhoid fever.
Major Spotswood, who had leased the hotel at the
southern end of this Range, lost, as we have already mentioned,
three of his servants by this disease, and for a
time was forced, with his family, to find refuge in a
vacant pavilion. The inefficient services of that day furnished
by lazy, untrained slaves, who had been hired out
only too often because their characters were bad, was an
additional cause of these outbursts of distemper. There
were perpetual complaints of the state of neglect in which
so many of the dormitories were suffered to remain, and
the word "filthy" was frequently on the lips of the chairman
when constrained to inspect them in person. Not a
quarter of a session passed that he was not compelled to
remonstrate with some of the hotel-keepers for their inattention
to this dangerous condition, and he again and
again, in words of sharp impatience, reported them to
the Faculty for this reason.

Perhaps, a partial cause at least of the sickness that so
often occurred was the one we have already censured;
namely, the ill-judged regulation which required the young
men to leave their rooms before the sun had dissipated
the cold humidity of the mountain air, to attend classes,
frequently before breakfast, to bolt that meal by candlelight,
and to go back to the same ill-heated and ill-ventilated
lecture-room, out of which they had groped their
way half an hour earlier.

There was no real provision for the sick among the
students; no hospital to which they could be carried where
their needs would be met by constant and skilful nursing.
When stricken, they remained in their comfortless and
lonely dormitories, without any attendance beyond that
afforded by the visiting physician and one untrained, unsympathetic
servant. It is far from improbable that the

natural depression caused by their forlorn situation in
illness had its influence in aggravating the epidemics that
so often occurred. Occasionally, a hotel-keeper would
provide a room in his own house for a sick boarder; this,
Colonel Richeson, a kindly man, did in 1827; but it was
an act of benevolence too risky for the keeper's family
to have been frequently repeated. Richeson's unselfish
conduct suggested to the proctor, Brockenbrough, the
advisability of erecting another story on the top of each
hotel for use as a private hospital for the exclusive benefit
of the young men occupying the dormitories assigned
to that hotel; but although this plan was submitted to the
rector, Madison, it does not appear to have won the
Board's approval,—quite probably because they anticitpated
that it would put the families of the keepers in
jeopardy, and also diminish the privacy of their homes.

When the epidemic of typhoid began in the winter of
1829, there were no ameliorations of this character
whatever for the afflicted students. The first announcement
of that outbreak was made by the chairman on
January 22; and at the same time, he gave warning that
the disease might be contagious. There were already fifteen
young men down in bed with it. He was constrained
to report that most of the dormitories were in a very unclean
state, in consequence of their not having been
scoured since the beginning of the session. The Faculty,
at their meeting on the same day, decided to convert a
vacant hotel into an infirmary, but the space open to use
was too contracted for the comfortable accommodation
of so many patients. At the start, Dr. Dunglison was
sanguine of soon stamping out the disease, for he found
the cases to be of a mild character, though the debility
seemed to linger for an unusual length of time. But the
outlook did not long continue so propitious, and on the

31st, the Faculty were hastily called together again, and
decided that it was imperative that the intermediate examinations
should be suspended. Forty-four of the
students had already left the University, and eighteen
were busily packing up in expectation of an early departure.
Hardly a week had gone by when the Faculty were
again hurriedly in session. Two additional cases of fever
had developed; one of them in a very aggravated form;
and there was now good reason for thinking that the distemper
was highly infectious. Already one of the students
had died, and it was doubtful whether several
others would survive. There was an alarming turn for
the worse in the complexion of all the new cases, and in
consequence, the Faculty determined to stop all lectures
until the first of March, which would enable every student,
not already infected, to leave. At the same time, the
professors let it be known that they were willing to
continue to teach, however few members of their original
classes might stay on to listen. Sixty-two of the
students had already withdrawn, while twenty of the remaining
fifty-five were victims of the distemper.

There being no improvement by February 1, the University
was then closed, with the announcement that the
return of the young men was to be postponed beyond
March 1 for an indefinite time. As a change for the
better began to manifest itself after that date, the first
of April was appointed as the day of the re-opening, but
the absent students were advised to engage rooms and
board,—for a time at least,—without the precincts.
This would seem to indicate that the epidemic had not
spread from the dormitories into the country roundabout.
Seventy young men had, by April 10, resumed
their studies. Only one case of sickness was then reported
as present within the limits, and this belonged to

a disease which was not of a contagious or infectious
nature. It will be recalled that, when the institution was
first opened, one reason given for prolonging the session
through the summer was that this would tend to enlarge
the patronage from Eastern Virginia and the States
further South, owing to the proverbial healthfulness of
Piedmont Virginia at that season. Regret was now felt
by some that the original arrangement had been altered.
Two students, who had hastened to their homes in the
Tidewater region, had died after their arrival, and it
was correctly presumed that they had carried the infection
with them in a form that had quickly developed after
they had begun to breathe the warmer atmosphere of the
lower country. "If summer vacations continue from
July to September," remarked the proctor, Brockenbrough,
warningly, "I think it probable we shall not have
many students from that quarter."

The explanations of the cause of this typhoid outbreak
which were heard differed in character. The proctor,
Brockenbrough, a man of excellent practical sense,
thought that it was due to the following condition:
"Few of these young men," he said, "were accustomed
to sleep in rooms with the outdoor opening immediately
upon them, which are thrown open by daylight of a cold
morning, after a hot fire the night before. This led to
colds, the first symptoms of the disease." Dr. Somervail
of Essex county, whose two wards had been students
at the University, but had escaped the disease, remarked
that it could not spring from the air, "for this was common
to that and the adjoining county, but must come from
something in the place itself, though undiscovered. I
am told some of the dormitories have cellars under them,
and others are near the ground, and here the fever began,
and most of the sick were. It is said the rooms near the

ground were floored over shavings. Chips, which may
be now in a state of decay and lacking air, may have
caused the sickness."

Dunglison himself was of the opinion that the distemper
rose and sank with the alterations in the state of the
atmosphere; but nevertheless he was careful to have
all the infected rooms fumigated, and the uninfected
thoroughly scoured. Mr. Madison also thought that the
disease had its origin in the air. "The fever, whatever
its cause," he said, "is well understood to have no respect
for places as ordinarily distinguished by healthiness or
the contrary. It prevailed in my family a few years
ago in a very mortal degree, notwithstanding the salubrity
of the situation, without any visible circumstance
that could account for it, and without prevailing in situations
adjoining of a like character. It is a fact, I believe,
that it visited a solitary family dwelling on the summit of
Peter's Mountain, the Chimburazo of our Lilliputian
Andes, where all the known atmospherical and local
causes, instead of explaining the phenomenon, ought to
have been safeguarded against it. As the radical cause
must be referred to some mutable condition of the atmosphere,
we must hope that a favorable change, if not already
commenced, will soon take place." Tucker, like
his colleagues, the other members of the Faculty, declared
that he had no explanation to offer. "I can hear
of nothing," he said, "which is common to those attacked,
either as to situation, diet, or habit of life." The Board
were forced to content themselves with the statement that
"it was one of those epidemics to which the most salubrious
situations were subject"; and that it raised "no reasonable
ground for apprehension in looking to the future."
It is quite probable that the real cause of the fever lay
in the contaminated water of the University cisterns, or

in the contents of the milk pitchers placed on the tables
of the several hotels. The distemper was, perhaps, aggravated
after it began, by the unwise exposure of the
young men to the chill and dampness before sunrise.

The University's enemies seized upon the occurrence of
the epidemic as a means of blackening its prospects and
damaging its reputation. An onslaught on that ground,
full of sly malevolence, was published in one of the
Richmond journals,—to which Dr. Dunglison made a
pointed and dignified reply. The fever was also brought
up by persons who attributed a strong irreligious leaning
to the institution; it was a proof, they said, that Providence
inflicts punishment on atheism, whether hospitably
entertained by men or by seats of learning. A clergyman,
who was later to become a distinguished bishop, did
not entirely cloak his approval of this explanation when,
not long afterwards, he delivered a sermon under the
roof of the Rotunda, and in the presence of the professors
and students. The injustice of the hinted slur,
as well as the inappropriate hour and spot for utterance,
aroused, as we shall see, lively indignation among the
listeners.

One natural result of this epidemic,—the first to befall
the University,—was to create a feeling of nervousness
during the years that immediately followed. In
1832, the whole country was menaced with an invasion of
cholera. Tucker, then the chairman, ordered the proctor
to cleanse the precincts thoroughly without delay.
"It is generally admitted," he wrote in August, "that
the cholera will find its way into all the inhabited parts
of the United States, villages as well as towns, and that
its malignancy can be partly mitigated by timely precautions."
The precautions upon which he insisted
were: (1) the whitewashing of all cellars and dormitory

walls, and the scrubbing of the woodwork; (2) the cleaning
up of the outside closets; and (3) the removal of all
kitchen slops to a distance. Thomas Jefferson Randolph,
a member of the Board, acknowledged, in a letter
to Cocke, that the "whole establishment" was now in a
most menacing condition. A large drain was at once
dug between the pavilions of Professors Davis and Emmet
on West Lawn, and all stagnant water about the
buildings and under the arcades was drawn off in the
endeavor to purify the grounds. Dr. Dunglison proposed
that a large barn standing on the University's
land should be so altered as to afford room for fifteen to
twenty negro patients. The hay which it contained was
carted away and the roof and frame-work repaired.

In the course of the ensuing spring, a panic was caused
by the discovery in the pond from which the ice for the
pavilions and hotels was obtained, of an anatomical
cadaver that had been dropped into its waters for preservation,
or mischief's sake, at an unknown date, by medical
students. It had, when brought to the surface, wasted
away to a skeleton.

The young men who were sick were still forced to be
physicked and nursed in their dormitories. Although it
was planned, in 1836, to allow a separate apartment for
them, yet no step, owing to the contracted income, seems
to have been taken at that time to carry this out. The
University doctors who professionally called on indisposed
students charged, like regular practitioners, for
their services: thus, in 1840, Cabell received, for six
visits, fees at the rate of one dollar a visit; and he added
one dollar and a half for medicines furnished, and two
dollars and a half for office prescriptions. Dr. Johnson's
stipend for five calls, in 1831, was four dollars and
a half altogether. He also performed dental work, for

which his surgical education had perhaps very well fitted
him; nor was this confined to mere tooth pulling; for in
1832, he demanded five dollars for filling three teeth
with fine gold. The gold had quite probably been supplied
by the patient. The like work of Dr. Porter, of
Charlottesville, was much more costly, as demonstrated
by a bill presented to a student named Pickett, which
amounted to thirty dollars.