Researches upon the necropolis of New Orleans, with brief allusions to its vital arithmetic / by Bennet Dowler.

  • Bennet Dowler
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches upon the necropolis of New Orleans, with brief allusions to its vital arithmetic / by Bennet Dowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    VI i sultry heat of the sua, insupportable; audit is well known, thatthia labor is one of the hardest upon the negroes, even thou consti- tutions are much stronger than white people, and the heat no way dis- agreable nor hurtful to them ; but in us it created inflammatory fevers of various kinds, both continued and intermittent; wasteing and tor- menting flaxes, most excruciating cholics find dry belly-aehes ; tremors, vertigoes, palsies, and a long train of painful and lingering nervous dis- tempers; which brought on to many a cessation of both work and life. So general were these disorders, that during the hot season which lasts from March to October, hardly one half of the servants and the work- ing people, were ever able to do their masters or themselve the least service; and the yearly sickness of each servant, generally speaking, cost his master as much as would have maintained a negro for four years. Eeauchamp Plantagenet, in 1618, in his description of the Province of New Albion, in North Virginia, says: On my view of Virginia, I disliked Virginia, &c. According to his account, agues, and other diseases, prevailed greatly among the marshes :—No wonder the old Virginians affirm, the sickness there the first thirty years to have killed 100,000 men. And then generally five or six imported died, and noio in June, July and August chiedy, one in nine die imported, &c. In a pamphlet published in 1610, by the advice and direction of the Council of Virginia, entitled, a true declaration of the estate of the colony of Virginia, it is said : No man ought to judge of any country by the fens and marshes (such as is the place where Jamestown stan- deth.) Of a hundred and odd, which were seated at the falls [of the River,] under the government of Capt. F. West, and of a hundred to the seaward on the south side of the River (in the country of Nansa- mond,) under the charge of Capt. J. Martin, there did not so much as one man miscarry, when in Jamestown, at the same time, and ij\ the sams months, 100 sickened and half the number died. The vital statistics of southern climates, have been, inmost instances, based on Army Reports, relating to shifting masses of northern, dissipa- ted, unacclimated troops, among whom the ratio of mortality is high. But is this the true test of the insalubrity of a climate, except for that particular class ? As well might the ratio of mortality in a country be deduced from the mortality of its battle fields. The Mars of modern times, whose star culminated over central Europe, paled and foil under the inclemency of Russian skies. The sun never shone upon a more powerful army than that which Napoleon marched into Russia, in 1812. Of half a million of warriors, (who were successful in nearly every en- counter,) only 80,000 escaped. The residue perished in a lew weeks, chiefly from the coldness of a Russian winter. Rut this great mortality does not indicate the true ratio proper to the climate. The scope of this paper does not include the special investigation of the climate of New Orleans as it affects immigrants alone. Acclima- tion is a subject so difficult, so extensive, and so important, that it can- not bo disposed of in a summary manner. Accurate, popularized infor-
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