10 - Providence, Prudence, and Patience

Summary

Infidelity, profaneness, heresy, blasphemy, and the most offensive breaches of common morality, have scarce ever appeared with more insolence in that province, and tho' for these things the Lord does yearly visit, sending pestilential diseases among men and beasts, which yearly sweep away numbers of both, yet none regard those things.

Levi Durand, 1747

I did perceive that the fever and agues were generally gotten by carelessness in their clothing, or intemperance…. What I write is not to encourage any to depend upon natural causes, but prudently to use them with an eye to God, the Great Lord of the universe and dispenser of human affairs.

John Archdale, 1707

PROVIDENCE

In late November 1774, a delighted George Ogilvie wrote from Myrtle Grove plantation that his overseer's three-year-old son was “running about in his shirt rejoicing that the frost has killed the mosquitoes.” Only the day before, the mosquitoes had been as thick as during the summer. Several earlier frosts had not “been severe enough to destroy these Devils in miniature.” Neither Ogilvie nor anyone else at the time realized that mosquitoes were more than a source of annoyance and red, sometimes agonizingly itchy bumps. But many people noticed that frost killed more than mosquitoes. If hard enough, it ended the seasonal reign of fever. Many people looked forward to “Dr. Frost” with pleasure. He might arrive later in some years than expected, but unlike the local doctors, his prescriptions were always effective.