On Malaria, QK 



brious, it would be the province of Valencia; while Carthagena 

 is almost invariably fatal even to those who, as labourers, are 

 compelled to resort to it for the needful work of its port, even 

 during a few days. 



Of France, little as it has hitherto been suspected by those 

 who, associating the term malaria with Italy, have been accus- 

 tomed to consider it as peculiar to that country, it would 

 scarcely be untrue to say that it contains as large a portion of 

 insalubrious territory as Italy itself, and produces fever and 

 disease of as great severity and extent, not merely on its sea 

 coasts, but over very extensive tracts in its interior. And this 

 insalubrity may be conjectured, when there are entire districts 

 in which the average of life does not exceed twenty, and in 

 which the entire people are diseased from their births to their 

 graves. Such tracts are found chiefly on the course of the 

 Loire, and some other of the great rivers; and among them, 

 Bresse in the Lyonnais, the plain of Forez, and Sologne in the 

 Orleannais, are of the most notorious ; while the coasts of 

 Normandy, and the whole of low Britanny, are similarly sub- 

 ject to eternal intermittents, or to epidemic seasons of autumnal 

 fevers, amounting to absolute pestilences. And how English 

 families have suffered in this country from the incautious 

 choice of residences in such places, will be easily ascertained 

 by whoever shall be at the trouble of making the necessary 

 inquiries. 



But as I dare not pursue this extensive subject, I can only 

 suggest to our countrymen the utility of making themselves 

 acquainted with this matter, and with this dangerous geo- 

 graphy, before encountering the hazards which await them; 

 Avhile to physicians I need still less name the necessity of that 

 knowledge, since it is so often their duty to choose and recom^ 

 mend for their patients, and since no man can feel much at his 

 ease who finds that he has sent into a land of malaria the 

 patient who has already been suffering from its diseases, or 

 that where he speculates on the cure of a consumption, that 

 cure is attained through the death of the patient, at Avignon, 

 or at Poitiers, or Nantes, or in some or other of the numerous 

 places subject to this most fearful poison. 



It remains only to give a brief enumeration of the disesises 



