of the Mediterranean. ■ ii59 



the island, there is a good deal of wood, many ponds of stag- 

 nant water, and some marshes, the exhalations from which, in 

 hot weather, must give a malarious influence to the winds pas- 

 sing over their surfaces. The above is also the direction whence 

 the land breeze in the night reaches the anchorage ; and I have 

 often perceived the same fetid smell accompanying the first of 

 the evening breeze, which I have experienced at Port Royal, 

 Jamaica, at Messina, and off the Italian /iw/war^*. 



As to the modus operandi of these land breezes, impregnasted 

 with marsh vapour, it is difficult to say whether they act by 

 suddenly repressing the perspiration, from their being charged 

 with humidity, and of a relatively low temperature, or by de- 

 pressing or impairing the nervous energies in the same manncf 

 as the Sirocco does ; or whether they may even operate in 

 both ways on the animal system. It is, moreover, well known, 

 that fever is more often developed in the night time, or in the 

 evening, when the energies of the body are most exhausted from 

 labour, fatigue, and the excitement of a hot day ; while I have 

 particularly remarked, that its invasion in this climate is always 

 declared by symptoms of exhaustion and depression. These are 

 syncope, sudden failure of muscular strength, and disturbance 

 of the reparative functions, with the expulsion upwards or down- 

 wards, from the prinrae viae, of what the organs cannot digest or 

 assimilate. The adynamic state of the moving powers is ob--^ 

 served in the pallor of the surface, and the depressed state of 

 the pulse. During the summers in which I have seen fevers 

 prevalient at this anchorage, southerly and SE. winds occurred 

 by day, and at night it was either calm with heavy dews, or 

 else it was a land breeze possessed of the qualities above men- 

 tioned. The other localities of Corfu, if not so unfavourable, 

 possess no entire exception from the unhealthy impregnatiions* 

 which they impart to winds arriving at the anchorage. From* 

 the eastward, there cannot be any cool sea breeze by day in 

 the summer months ; as the expanse of sea is only seven miles 

 between the island and the bare and parched land of Albania, 

 while the greatest surface of sea is down the channel, which liesi 

 in a SE. and southerly direction, whence the breezes are w^rmy 

 moist, and relaxing. 



The change of the season, however, changes the influence of 



r2 



