That the London Company should have had the Henrico hospital built during its administration and made plans for the guest houses can be explained by the situation existing during the earlier days of the colony. The Company, engaged in a commercial venture and realizing by its own statement that "in the health of the people consisteth the very life, strength, increase and prosperity of the whole general colony," had sufficient reason to shelter and care for the colonists. Also, during the early days the number of incoming colonists was high relative to the number settled and with lodging to give or to let. The Company, in addition, knew that new arrivals fell victim most easily to seasoning and other maladies, and needed protection from the elements. Finally, the Company had to fill the void created by the absence of religious orders which, during prior European colonization and occupation of distant lands, had provided shelter and care. These hospitals are no longer mentioned after the dissolution of the London Company, nor were any other comparable measures taken during the century to institutionalize care for the sick. SURGICAL PRACTICE Much has been made of the lower status held by the surgeon as compared with that of the physician--during the seventeenth century. On the continent and in England, at this period, membership in separate guilds in part distinguished doctor and surgeon; in England, after 1540 and until 1745, surgeons held common membership with barbers in one corporate organization. In America, historians agree, the differences based on specialization of practice between surgeons and physicians soon tended to disappear, a superior education often being the only attribute or function of a physician not shared by the surgeon. Barbers held a unique position, but in performing phlebotomies, a minor operation, they retained associations with health and disease. Both barber and surgeon shared a certain expertness with tools, as they do today. Evidence abounds in the earlier records that the scarcity of medical men may have compelled surgeons in Virginia to practice internal medicine: surgeons prescribed medicine with the same frequency as doctors. The surgeons, however, did not abandon the treatment of wounds, fractures, and dislocations; notes on amputations during the century also exist. Nor is it reasonable to assume that the isolated physician of the Virginia countryside would always insist upon referring a patient to a surgeon. Dr. Francis Haddon, who had a large practice in York County, Virginia, and who is not identified as a surgeon, left recorded the course of treatment for an amputation--cordials, a purge, ointments, and bloodletting--and a dismembering saw, as well.