ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly surveys the state of European science before comparing colonial developments in both science and arts. The arts and sciences of colonial America were based, inevitably, on European concepts and models. American scientists and artists tended to support and expand the theories of Europeans rather than develop original theories and styles. Health care was a perennial problem for colonial Americans. Immigrants literally took their lives in their hands when they journeyed to America. Seventeenth century physicians, both colonial and European, subscribed to a distorted view of the ancient medical theories of Hippocrates and Galen who maintained that the human body contained four humors, or liquids: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile, and four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. While colonial painters were deliberately following European conventions, other colonial artisans, most of them unknown, produced works of art in a distinctively American style.
