A systematic treatise, historical, etiological, and practical, on the principal diseases of the interior valley of North America : as they appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian, and Esquimaux varieties of its population / By Daniel Drake, M. D. Ed. by S. Hanbury Smith and Francis G. Smith.
- Daniel Drake
- Date:
- 1854
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A systematic treatise, historical, etiological, and practical, on the principal diseases of the interior valley of North America : as they appear in the Caucasian, African, Indian, and Esquimaux varieties of its population / By Daniel Drake, M. D. Ed. by S. Hanbury Smith and Francis G. Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![fermentation are arrested for want of a solvent—if too much, the atmo- sphere, indispensable to the process, is excluded; or the evolved gases are absorbed and retained. 3. Its presence is essential to those chemical actions, in certain soils, which are believed, by some writers, to generate exhalations that occasion the Fever. 4. It is equally indispensable to the production of both animalcules and microscopic plants. 5. Both evaporation and condensation are known to be accompanied by electrical perturbations. Thus water is a necessary element, in all the hypotheses which have been framed to account for autumnal fever. But a contrary and salubrious influence'has been ascribed to water ; for it is held by many that this fluid absorbs the noxious gas or gases, which they believe to produce the Fever, and thus limits its prevalence. According to this opinion, the deep water in the centre of a basin, may imbibe and retain the noxious gases, which the shallow waters of its margins have contributed to generate; and, in support of the hypothesis, it has been affirmed that the vicinity of cataracts and rapids is more unhealthy than the banks of the rivers in which they occur. The absorbed gases are supposed to be there liberated by the agitation of the water. The medical topography of B Vol. I. presents several facts bearing on this hypothesis. Thus Wetumpka, at the foot of the long rapids of the Coosa River; Loaisville, at the falls of the Ohio River; and Manmee City, at the termination of the rapids of the Mau- mee River, are all infested with autumnal fever; but other towns, on the same rivers, are likewise scourged with that disease : and Oswego River, which drains the Montezuma swamps of Western New Fork, has at its mouth a great number of mills, yet the inhabitants sutler but little from that disease. It prevails still less at the Falls of Niagara ; and finally, at Zanes- ville, where a natural waterfall has been augmented by artificial means, and on the Kentucky River, where there are series of pools and dams, there is no special prevalence of the Fever. Thus the facts furnished by our Valley, do not prove that waterfalls eliminate a gas which is the cause of the disease under consideration. IV. Temperattuf..—The (act that autumnal fever prevails perpetually and virulently, within the tropic-, but ceases long b ifore we reach the polar circle, demonstrates that a high temperature is one of the conditions sary to its production. Should it be ascribed to heat alone? The answer must be in the negative; for places having tl aperature, but vary- ing in other conditions, are verj different!] affected with autumnal fever. Thus the people of Mobile Bay suffer greatly, while those who live on the adjoining oak and pine terrace escape ; and the summer heat of the southern portions of the great desert is intense, but those who traverse it. and keep at a distance from its water-courses, i - in unaffected, [t cannot](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21026816_0036.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
