The mission to Siam, and Hué the capital of Cochin China in the years 1821-2. From the journal of the late George Finlayson ... With a memoir of the author by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S / [George Finlayson].
- George Finlayson
- Date:
- 1826
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The mission to Siam, and Hué the capital of Cochin China in the years 1821-2. From the journal of the late George Finlayson ... With a memoir of the author by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S / [George Finlayson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![mosquitoes. Inhospitable, therefore, is the shade or shelter they afford to man *. One great purpose which these plants serve, is that of preventing the encroachment of the sea upon the land. They even overcome this ten- dency, and produce the opposite effect, as the coasts of Singapore manifestly evince. It may readily be conceived, therefore, how ill judged is the practice of destroying barriers of this sort. * Much stress has been laid on the apparent insalubrity of marshes of this sort; and it has been maintained that in many parts they are the chief, if not the sole, cause of the] most fatal of intertropical diseases, remittent fever. Humboldt, in his Essay on New Spain, lays great stress on the effect produced by the growth of Rhizophora Mangle, Pothps, Arum, and of the other plants which flourish in a marshy soil charged with saline particles, in the production of yellow fever. Without calling into question the insalubrity of marshy situations in general, there appears great reason to believe that we are still ignorant of the actual causes of this frightful disease. The settlement of Singapore is possessed in an eminent degree of the circumstances which are thought to be most conducive in producing the disease. Yet here it is as yet un- known. An intertropical climate on the margin of the sea, a continually high temperature, rapid and intense evaporation, a hu- mid and extensive series of saline and fresh water marshes exposed to a burning sun, the vegetative impulse in a degree of activity un- equalled perhaps in any other part of the globe, the occasional suspension of herbaceous vegetation by long-continued heat, ac- companied by drought, profusion of vegetable matter, as leaves, felled wood, fruits, &c., intermixed with animal matter, forming fomit.es in every stage of the putrefactive process, are amongst the more conspicuous of the causes to which the occurrence of this disease is usually attributed : and here all the causes enumerated operate with tenfold force.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29349321_0096.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
