After a cooler and rainy July, August heat and humidity is in full swing. For most of us, it is an excuse to escape into air-conditioned interiors and quaff iced beverages of all sorts, complain about the heat and await cooler fall temperatures. For our early modern counterparts, however, the heat and humidity they encountered in North America and the Caribbean were much more threatening.
Before the Scientific Revolution transformed how we view the human body, our forbearers living in the eighteenth century viewed the world through the lens of the Ancient Greeks. The physician and philosopher Galen (129-210 AD) proposed that the body (and the environment) were made up of four humors. Any one of these humors out of balance created illness. Accordingly, purgatives, emetics, and bleeding were the logical treatments to restore balance. The environment held tremendous power over one’s health and wellbeing; changes could even affect human character and alter it entirely.
Early modern English viewed their island home as the climate best suited to produce a balance in the body’s humors. Imagine their shock when they settled along the Atlantic Coast and in the Caribbean, where excessive heat and humidity were widespread.
In her travel narrative, Journal of a Lady of Quality, Scotswoman Janet Schaw remarked frequently on the temperature of the places she visited in the Caribbean and North Carolina. In 1775, while visiting her brother in Wilmington, Schaw related that she and a female companion spent much of their time indoors, dressed only in a single petticoat and wrapper. They even received a male acquaintance while in dishabille, normally unthinkable in proper English society. “I know your delicacy will be shocked,” Schaw wrote, “but he is too much oppressed himself to observe us.” Here, the excessively hot and humid climate has rendered the two women insensible of their immodesty and their male caller is himself too warm to take notice of their state of undress. The climate has altered their character.
So as hot and sweaty as we might be during these August days, at least we can rest assured that the heat is not altering our character…at least not more than can be restored with a glass of ice cold sweet tea.
By Lindy Cummings, Tryon Palace Research Historian
Tryon Palace • 529 South Front Street • New Bern, NC 28562 • 252-639-3500 • www.tryonpalace.org