The climate of the United States and its endemic influences. Based chiefly on the records of the Medical Department and Adjutant General's Office, United States Army / By Samuel Forry.
- Samuel Forry
- Date:
- 1842
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The climate of the United States and its endemic influences. Based chiefly on the records of the Medical Department and Adjutant General's Office, United States Army / By Samuel Forry. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![rated. Should moisture be wanting or water super-abound, the same result may be predicted. Even admitting that these ‘ water- courses” were rocky channels, enough of organic remains may have been deposited by the recent ‘‘ mountain-streams” to produce, when acted upon by the moisture of dews, the results that followed. In the recent Statistical Reports of the British army, the reporter arrives at the conclusion, from an examination of the subject in every quarter of the globe, that the prevalence of intermittent and remittent fever does not depend materially on the influence of moisture or high temperature ; aye, and more than this, it is alleged ‘‘ that though the vicinity of marshy or swampy ground: appears to favor the develop- ment of that agency [malaria,] it does not necessarily prevail in such localities, nor are they by any means essential either to its existence or operation.” This opinion is based, among other facts, upon the circumstance that intermittents are very rife in Upper Canada, whilst in Nova Scotia, under circumstances apparently similar, the inhabi- tants enjoy an exemption; and that yellow fever frequently appears at Ireland island, one of the Bermudas, arocky and barren spot, con- taining no marsh and little or no vegetation. In reply to this, it may be said that in reference to the cause of yellow fever, we know but little, and are wholly unauthorized to ascribe it positively to paludal origin ; and as to the induction by which intermittent fever is traced to the agency of a: marshy locality, notwithstanding the exceptions adduced in Nova Scotia, (a cause for the exemption on the coast of New England having been assigned,) the every day experience of our army surgeons and of the practitioners of our newly settled regions, confirms its truth. In Canada andthe United States, it is a fact well known from their earliest history, that although cultivation renders a climate more salubrious, yet its endemic diseases, for several years after the soil is cleared from its more bulky vegetable productions, often become more severe than previously, and not unfrequently assume an epi- demic character. The surface of the earth exposed to the sun’s rays, yields a more noxious effluvium than when protected from its action by a dense and exuberant vegetation. Thata partially culti- vated region is more sickly than a wilderness or country in the high- est state of agricultural improvement, is a well known fact. The soldier, the hunter, and the wild borderer, suffer less from disease than the actual settler.. The diseases of the former class are mostly of an inflammatory character resulting from fatigue and exposure ; but as soon as the permanent settler begins to fell the forest, leaving the 27](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33288379_0321.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
