266 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jail., 



ter you know as much about as I do — that is, the occurrence of 

 chills and fever in our new settlements, spreading westward for 

 forty or fifty years in our own time, while we, remaining quiet 

 upon our farms in the east, didn't have any, and couldn't under- 

 stand the trouble. 



Says Dr. Ezra Hunt in the Medical News of October 27, 1883: 

 "The tendency to deny the influence of any local cause for any 

 disease on the part of the resident community, is one as old as the 

 days of Hippocrates." 



Dr. Hunt might have said personal cause, too, for a search for 

 that is not popular. And we may observe that while shame and 

 self interest prevent the exhibition of both local and personal 

 causes, the narrowly selfish and time-serving physician is very apt 

 to acquiesce in charging disease to some remote origin, as that 

 will be more likely to remain in obscurity. 



Who went west ? Many young and inexperienced people; many 

 enterprising, pushing fellows; some children, some aged people; 

 many discontented folks not well fixed in the east, but yet with 

 the pluck to " dig out"; as many wise and shrewd women as jon 

 please to nominate. 



Well — how did they travel ? In the beginning — in the time we 

 are thinking of — they took the common road, of course — none too 

 good — halting at common camping places, and drinking from the 

 same springs and brooks. They traveled, in part at least, by long 

 routes, where one person, being sick, might pollute by his dejec- 

 tions the water and air of many following. This is pure theory, 

 no doubt, but is it not reasonable ? Knowing the carelessness of 

 men — saying nothing about filth in streams by actual purpose, for 

 that outrage was left to our own times to do — can we not see how 

 our western cousins ran the gauntlet of filth diseases in their air 

 and water, carried them to their new homes, and got such a pre- 

 judice against water — any water, and air also — that they were very 

 apt to boil the one before drinking, and some of them tried to shut 

 the air out of their houses, as some of our own frightened people 

 have done ? 



Was it an old style Tennessee preacher who dashed his water 

 with spirits, "because since the flood it tastes so strong of sin- 

 ners ?" 



Whoever started west in the early days soon struck the trail of 

 strange travel, where all manner of people were journeying — refu- 



