284 SUPPOSED SALUTAEY EFFECT 



lona you may bathe tranquilly in the Bio Never! amidst 

 these carnivorous reptiles. The jaguars of Maturin, Cuma- 

 nacoa, and the isthmus of Panama, are timid in comparison 

 of those of the Upper Orinoco. The Indians well know 

 that the monkeys of some valleys are easily tamed, while 

 others of the same species, caught elsewhere, will rather die 

 of hunger than submit to slavery.* 



The common people in America have framed systems 

 respecting the salubrity of climates and pathological pheno- 

 mena, as well as the learned of Europe ; and their systems, 

 like ours, are diametrically opposed to each other, according 

 to the provinces into which the New Continent is divided. 

 At the Bio Magdalena the frequency of mosquitos is 

 regarded as troublesome, but salutary. These animals, say 

 the inhabitants, give us slight bleedings, and preserve us, in 

 a country excessively hot, from the scarlet fever, and other 

 inflammatory diseases. But at the Orinoco, the banks of 

 which are very insalubrious, the sick blame the mosquitos 

 for all their sufferings. It is unnecessary to refute the 

 fallacy of the popular belief that the action of the mosquitos 

 is salutary by its local bleedings. In Europe the inhabit- 

 ants of marshy countries are not ignorant that the insects 

 irritate the epidermis, and stimulate its functions by the 

 venom which they deposit in the wounds they make. Far 

 from diminishing the inflammatory state of the skin, the 

 stings increase it. 



The frequency of gnats and mosquitos characterises un- 

 healthy climates only so far as the development and multi- 

 plication of these insects depend on the same causes that 

 give rise to miasmata. These noxious animals love a fertile 

 soil covered with plants, stagnant waters, and a humid air 

 never agitated by the wind ; they prefer to an open country 

 those shades, that softened day, that tempered degree of 



* I might have added the example of the scorpion of Cumana, which 

 it is very difficult to distinguish from that of the island of Trinidad, Jamaica, 

 (Jarthagena, and Guayaquil ; yet the former is not more to be feared than 

 the Scorpio europseus (of the south of France), while the latter produces 

 consequences far more alarming than the Scorpio occitanus (of Spain and 

 Barbary). At Carthagena and Guayaquil, the sting of the scorpion 

 (alacran) instantly causes the loss of speech. Sometimes a singular 

 torpor of the tongue is observed for fifteen or sixteen hours. The patient, 

 when stung in the legs, stammers as if he had been struck with apoplexy. 



