CALCAREOUS MANURES-PRACTICE. 



149 



will not be useless, if it should serve to elicit more full or correct ones from 

 other sources. 



Nothing better than this one subject deserves investigaton by medical 

 men, acting under the direction of government. The materials for informa- 

 tion are now abundant, in the experience and observation of the nume- 

 rous farmers who have marled or limed their lands long enough to judge 

 of the effects on health ; and whether upon true or false grounds, the opi- 

 nion among such persons seems now (1842) almost universal, (so far as I 

 have heard opinions expressed,) that the prevalence of autumnal diseases, 

 the product of malaria, has been invariably and manifestly lessened since 

 the lands were in part marled or limed. My individual experience and ob- 

 servations on this point, now of nine years' more extent than when the first 

 fruits thereof were stated in a foregoing part of this chapter, concur with 

 the more general and loose information derived from others, in confirming 

 my position. It sometimes happens that the very fact of an opinion being 

 universally admitted prevents the obtaining such proofs of its truth as 

 would certainly have been ready, if the opinion had been questioned and 

 denied by many skeptics. And such is the state of the proposition now 

 under consideration. Even in the few years which have passed since I 

 first advanced the opinion that the use of calcareous manures served to 

 improve health, that opinion has become so general, and is deemed so cer- 

 tain and unquestionable, by those persons who have used those manures, 

 that but few facts can be learned of them sufficiently exact to serve as proofs ; 

 because no person has deemed it necessary to collect and preserve proofs of 

 what none doubted. When asking for such proofs, as I have often done, of 

 cultivators and residents in various parts of the marl region, I have rarely 

 obtained any, except new declarations, from every person interrogated, of 

 concurrence and entire faith in the general opinion that marling or liming 

 had served gi'eatly to abate the prevalence of autumnal diseases. Such ge- 

 neral belief and confidence in an opinion so recently entertained and pro- 

 mulgated, cannot be altogether founded on error. 



When my opinions of the beneficial operation of calcareous earth in soil, 

 or mixed with putrescent matter, in destroying or disarming the sources of 

 disease, were first published, and until after the last publication of the same 

 in 1835, I had no knowledge that similar grounds had been taken by any 

 other person. But since, in the recent publications of a French writer, 

 M. Puvis, I have found the same general opinion expressed, and many im- 

 portant facts given in confirmation. However, while I gladly accept the im- 

 portant aid of M. Puvis' facts, as proof, I do not admit the correctness of his 

 reasoning thereupon. Some of the former will be quoted in the following 

 passages. For his full views, see the translations of his essays ' On Lime 

 as Manure,' and ' On Marl,' both contained in vol. iii. of the Farmers' Re- 

 gister. 



" The results of marling may be considered in a point of view more ele- 

 vated, and still more important than that of the fertility which it gives to 

 the soil; they may perhaps have much influence on the healthiness of a 

 country where it becomes a general practice. 



" Although it may not have been yet uttered by others, this opinion ap- 

 pears founded on strong probabilities, on strong analogies and precise facts, 

 all of which appear to give it a sufficient certainty. 



"It is known that the calcareous principle is one of the most powerful 

 agents to resist putrefaction. It is employed to make healthy places inha- 

 bited by men and animals, in which sickness or contagion is feared; it 

 serves to neutralize the emanations of dead bodies undergoing putrefaction ; 

 it destroys the deleterious exhalations which escape from privies, and which 

 sometimes cause the death of those who are employed to cleanse them. 



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