In Virginia, the prior occupants had accumulated medical knowledge, too, and the Indians practiced in a manner not completely unlike that of the whites: bloodletting, purging, and sweating (all to the end of relieving the body of ill humors or morbid matter). The Indians, however, did not believe it right or good to impart their knowledge to the layman, Indian or European; therefore, cross-fertilization between the two schools of medicine was limited. In planning for the colony, the London Company took into account that health would influence the fortunes of the new settlement. The Company warned the original settlers to choose a site in a healthful location, but the colonists elected Jamestown Island which was low and moist. Provided two surgeons by the Company, the original settlers needed not only more surgeons but physicians as well: the surgeons could treat the wounds, sprains, and breaks of a military-colonizing expedition, but physicians were needed to meet conditions that developed in Jamestown. In subsequent boatloads of settlers, physicians did come--and some were well-trained and experienced--but the small number that arrived during the period when the London Company administered the colony (1606-24) could not meet the demands of disease and famine. During the first summer more than one-half the original settlers perished: during the Starving Time (1609-10) the population dropped from 500 to 60 and in the spring these 60 almost abandoned Virginia. A deadly combination of new environment, famine, and epidemic disease, such as typhoid, played a major part in determining the course of events during the first two decades of the colony's life, and near death. After Virginia became a Crown colony, famine and disease no longer influenced affairs so greatly, not because of the wise administration of the Crown, but because the colonists had better learned what was necessary to cope with health conditions in the New World. No longer did they consider disease and famine minor threats compared to those from the Indians and Spaniards. They planned their ocean voyages so as to arrive in the fall and thus avoid the dread summer sickness while still too weak from the voyage to resist it; they located their outer settlements on higher and drier land, at the end of the century even moving their capital to Williamsburg, known for its temperate and healthful climate.