322 RURAL MICHIGAN 



It was the cholera in 1832, and the nameless pesti- 

 lence that struck down men, women and children 

 in Shiawassee County in 1848, and that afflicted 

 Oceana County in 1865. The rank vegetation that 

 moldered on the moist earth was popularly pre- 

 sumed to yield a fever-laden miasma, when disturbed 

 by the plow, and even the sap that exuded from the 

 green logs that formed the walls of the house and 

 which soured and stank in the heat of summer, was 

 considered to have a similar capacity for a baneful 

 influence on the health of the dwellers therein. Even 

 the waters of the streams were deemed poison-bearing 

 and productive of a deadly affluvia on occasion. Two 

 maladies were endemic: the "Michigan rash," which 

 caused merriment as well as annoyance and lacked 

 malignity ; and the "shakes," or ague, which was as 

 characteristic a feature of Michigan pioneer exist- 

 ence as candles and stick-chimneys. "We could 

 always tell when tlie ague was coming on," says 

 A. D. P. Van Buren, "by the premonitory symp- 

 toms — the yawnings and stretchings; and if the per- 

 son understood the complaint, he would look at his 

 finger-nails to see if they were turning blue. No 

 disease foretold its coming by such unerring signs 

 as the 'fever 'n ager.' ... At first the yawns and 

 the stretchings stole upon you so naturally, that for 

 a time you felt good in giving way to them; but they 

 were soon followed by cold sensations, that crept 

 over your system in streaks, faster and faster, and 

 grew colder and colder as in successful undulations 



