On Malaria, 303 



summer, in J)roportion as they have been wet the preceding 

 winter, and that the danger will be especially considerable, 

 should they have been inundated, as is often the case in some 

 of our flatter counties. The other is, that the act of breaking 

 up such moist pasture-lands for cultivation, is often hazardous, 

 as it is amply proved that malaria is thus produced or extricated 

 in unusual quantity or virulence: this effect, in the hotter 

 climates, being often such as to produce the almost immediate 

 death of the labourers employed in it. Hence, to note a pre- 

 caution as to the prevention of disease, for which no opportunity 

 will here occur in noticing the ordinary remedies against mal- 

 aria, it is a matter of prudence in all such cases to break up 

 meadow-lands in winter, when malaria is not produced ; or, if 

 this cannot be done, in the early part of the summer, rather than, 

 in spring or autumn, the two seasons in which the disorders 

 produced by malaria are most active. 



Woods, including coppices and thickets of whatever nature, 

 comprise the next class of soils or places which I may notice 

 as productive of malaria. Of the pernicious properties of those 

 in warm chmates, the evidence is too abundant to admit of doubt. 

 In Africa, in the East Indies, and generally in the torrid cli- 

 mates, woods, forests, jungles, bamboo and reed thickets, and many 

 more varieties than I need distinguish, are the most noted causes 

 of the fevers which have so generally been the sources of disease, 

 whether to permanent residents, or to armies engaged in such 

 territories. They are, in fact, proverbial : the question is, 

 whether they are similarly pernicious in our own country. On 

 general principles, they ought to be so, though, in the same 

 proportion as any other pernicious soils are, less extensively and 

 severely ; and that they are in reality injurious, is proved by a 

 variety of experience. Sussex is one of the counties well 

 known to be productive of autumnal fevers, and even of inter- 

 mittents, if less popularly celebrated than the fens of Lincoln- 

 shire or the marshes of Essex. The inhabitants, at least, know 

 this full well ; and he who may examine into the localities, will 

 easily find, that if they are not produced by the woods, there is 

 no other cause ; while, to confirm the reality of this cause, I 

 could easily point out, in various parts of England, endemic 

 diseases the produce of such woods and coppices, even in dis- 



