Again, later in the century, the General Assembly gave evidence of recognizing the importance of surgical care for soldiers when it voted for supplying a surgeon with "a convenient supply of medicines & salves, etc. to the value of five pounds sterling for every hundred men" to each of eight forts planned to protect the settlements against Indian attacks. Throughout the last half of the century references were made to surgeons ministering to companies of soldiers or to various garrisons and forts. Judging by the consistent employment of surgeons for military duties, it would appear that the profession of surgeon during the century was much more intimately associated with the military than was that of physician. The relationship between the surgeon and the military is similar to the early one between civil engineer and the army in Europe. HYGIENE The restoration of the patient to health is not the only important aspect of medical practice; the prevention of illness is also vital to the health of a community. Much more attention is given to preventive medicine in the twentieth century than in the seventeenth, but the value of cleanliness, fresh air, and quarantine was known. Hygienic measures taken, or recommendations made, by public authorities make clear the fact that the cause of disease was not commonly thought to be supernatural by the educated and responsible. Contemporary accounts make known the widespread disapproval of foul ships, crowded quarters, marshy land, stagnant air, bad food and drink, excessive eating, and exposure to a hot sun. Lord De la Warr laid down regulations for Jamestown designed to eliminate the dangers of dirty wash water ("no ... water or suds of fowle cloathes or kettle, pot, or pan ... within twenty foote of the olde well"); and of contamination from sewage ("nor shall any one aforesaid, within lesse than a quarter of one mile from the pallisadoes, dare to doe the necessities of nature"). The order argued that if the inhabitants did not separate themselves at least a quarter of one mile from the palisaded living area that "the whole fort may be choaked, and poisoned with ill aires and so corrupt." The colonists by the same order had to keep their own houses and the street before both sweet and clean. Any doubt that an awareness existed of the dangers of infection by contact, at least from diseases with observable bodily symptoms, should be dispelled by the quarantine measures taken by the colonel and commander of Northampton County in 1667 during an epidemic of smallpox. He ordered that no member of a family inflicted with the disease should leave his house until thirty days after the outbreak lest the disease be spread by infection "like the plague of leprosy." Enlightened authorities in Europe took similar precautions. CHAPTER FOUR Education, Women, Churchmen, and The Law THE PLACE OF WOMEN IN MEDICINE