302 On Malaria: 



disease, where the soil which they intersect may be incapable 

 of that. In Italy, in France, in Spain, and in Greece, and 

 almost invariably in the American states, they are not only 

 qauses of malaria, but among the most common ones. The 

 great seats of that poison in those countries, are the vallies and 

 plains which give passage to rivers, whether on entering the sea 

 or otherwise ; and out of these, there is a very small proportion 

 marshy, compared to those which are merely meadow and 

 pasture, and which, very often also, are the seats of cultivation. 

 Did meadow lands not produce malaria, there could be few 

 of those tracts abandoned in summer, compared to those which 

 it is nearly impossible to inhabit after the heats are once esta- 

 blished, while, to refer to individual places, would be to form a 

 catalogue of no small length. 



With respect to our own country, whoever shall please to 

 inquire, will find that fevers occur in autumn, in those situations, 

 particularly in hot seasons, when they are unknown in the drier 

 lands, and more especially in the cultivated ones ; nor can 

 there be any reason to doubt that it should be so, when our 

 climate has been proved capable, like the southern countries of 

 Europe, of producing this poison from the same class of soils. 

 And whoever also will inquire, will often find great surprise 

 expressed by country practitioners, at the occurrence of fevers 

 in rural and detached situations, where the commonly esteemed 

 cause, contagion, cannot be suspected ; while he who may 

 pursue his inquiries on this principle, will be able to explain 

 the causes without difficulty, from the presence of some spot or 

 tract of this nature. And, I must add, that it is not even 

 necessary that such pasture-lands should be flat meadows, as 

 I could easily produce instances of endemic fevers, almost 

 amounting to epidemics in the last summer, where the lands, 

 being wet and poachy however, were not only elevated, but 

 formed the declivities of hills. 



There is one case of land, which, as to ourselves, is not worth 

 noticing, as it does not occur among us. — I mean rice-fields ; 

 and if I here enumerate them, it is for the sake of preserving 

 the integrity of the subject. But it gives me an opportunity of 

 introducing one or two remarks which do concern us : the most 

 important of which is, that meadow-lands will be pernicious in 



