Page:A Physical and Topographical Sketch of the Mississippi Territory, Lower Louisiana, and a Part of West Florida.djvu/35

 It is not my intention, in this place, to enter upon an inquiry into the relation which marsh effluvia bear to the health of the inhabitants of places where it abounds. So many gentlemen have wreathed their brows with the laurels of ingenuity, by volunteering their services in this gaseous investigation, that the simple enumeration of their several names, would be exceeding the limits which time has prescribed to this essay. Yet had it been within my power to give an analysis of the atmosphere of this country, I certainly would have done it; as it doubtless would be an important consideration in the pathology of its diseases; especially at this enlightened era in science,—when the torch of Philosophy, guided by the hand of Chymistry, is illuminating the most intricate arcana of nature, in spite of the massy barriers erected by ages of superstition and ignorance.

The low temperature of our nights in May, June, July, and August, owing to heavy dews, together with, perhaps, the want of a sufficient quantity of oxygen in the atmosphere, owing to the great admixture of hydro carbonick air with it, accumulates such a surface of excitability, and the stimulus of the solar heat during the day is so excessive, that the sanguiferous system, unable any longer to resist, begins to take an unhealthy action, evincing its morbid appearances generally in some of the following forms, viz.—Intermittent, mild remittent, and yellow remittent fevers, cholera, diarrhœa, dysenteria, hepatitis, splenitis, or tumor-splenis, urticaria, phrenitis, erysepelas,