FARMERS HOUSES. 315 



wind. At the same time, it will afford encourag'^raent to be assured that its 

 nature is known, as also some of the laws by which it is regulated, and that by 

 an easy attention to them the Samson may be shorn of his lock?, and the gr^-at 

 destroyer may either be avoided or rendered as harmless as the gentlest touch 

 of infancy. The name of this remorseless destroyer of human life is 



MIASM, 



From a Greek word, which means emanation; that is, arising from, because 

 it comes up from the surface of the earth. It is a short word ; but it brings 

 weary sickness and agonizing death to hundreds of thousands every year. It 

 will bring sickness and death, sooner or later, to many a reader of this article, 

 but a sickness and death which could have been avoided. 



Miasm is the principal cause of nearly every "epidemic" disease; that is, 

 of every sickness which "falls upon the people," attacking numbers in any 

 community, such as fever and ague, diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, bilious, in- 

 termittent, congestive, and yellow fevers. But it is gratifying to know that it 

 is an avoidable cause of disease. Money and wisely directed efforts can banish 

 it from almost any locality. All diat is needed is to know the laws of miasm, 

 and wisely adapt ourselves to them. 



In 1860 one of the daily papers of New Orleans stated ; 



"The yellow fever has broken out in the city imder every conceivable variety of circum- 

 stances : when the streets were clean and when tliey were tilthy : when the river was high 

 and when, it was low; after a prolonged diought, and in the midst of daily torrents ; when 

 the heat was excessive, and when the air was spring-like and pleasant; when excavations 

 and disturbances of the soil had been frequent, and when scarcely a pavement had been laid 

 ov a building erected. Almost the only fixed and undeniable fact connected with the disease 

 is, that its prevalence is simultaneous with the heats of summer, and that frost is its deadly 

 enemy." 



Here, then, are two important laws of miasm; and scientific observation 

 directed to that special point in all countries coniirms the two great truths, 

 that — 



First. Miasm pivvails in hot weather. 



Seond. Miasm cannot exist as a cause of disease in cold weather. 



Tliird. An inference is drawn embodying a third law of miasm, which ig, 

 that it is a cause of disease only from June to October in our latitudes. 



FourtJi. A fourth law of miasm is confirmed by the now historical fact that 

 for three summers yellow fever has not been known as an epidemic in Kew 

 Orleans, because, from the scientific views held by those in power in that city 

 in the early summer of 1861, it has been kept well drained. In other words, 

 it has been kept clean and dry. 



It is within the memory of the present generation that, some thii-ty years 

 ago or more, the city of Louisville, in Kentucky, was one of the most pesti- 

 lential spots in the habitable w^est. But by a wise system of filling and dram- 

 ing, it is now one of the healthiest, as well as one of the most beautiful cities 

 of the great valley. 



We have, then, arrived at four controlling fficts in reference to minsra : that 

 heat and moisture are essential to its production m any locality ; that it cannot 

 exist whei-e there is severe frost or great dryness. 



But as it is known the world over that miasm never exists in deserts, where 

 there is nothing but dry sand and a burning heat, it is clear that somethmg 

 more than heat is necessary to cause miasm. But it is further known that 

 when miasm is so malignant in localities where it is certain death to sleep on 

 shore for a single night, a man can go a mile and sleep on shipboard, and keep 

 in perfect health. This shows that something more than heat and moisture 

 are necessary to the production of miasm. The third element is vegetation — 

 anything that grows from the earth in the nature, of grass, leaves, or wood 



