Agriculture is the most Healthy and Honorable, as it is the most Natural and Useful pursuit of Man. 



VOL. X. 



ROCHESTER, N. Y. — NOVEMBER, 1849. 



NO. 11. 



THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE. 



O^ no subject do people at large more need instruc- 

 tion than on that of preventing disease, or of ■pre- 

 serving health. Believing that a cheap publication 

 placed within the reach of all, is the proper medium 

 through which to enlighten the popular understand- 

 ing, we shall offer no apology for introducing the 

 discussion of this important topic in our columns. 

 The writer has spent the two last summers in the 

 Southern States, and has very recently visited the 

 western country, and searched after the causes of 

 cholera in the cities of Detroit, Sandusky, Spring- 

 field, Chillicothe, Portsmouth, Cincinnati, Maysville, 

 and elsewhere. There is a large farm on the Sciota 

 bottoms, between Columbus and Circleville devoted 

 to the cultivation of broom corn, on which thirty-five 

 hands were attacked with the cholera, which proved 

 fatal to thirty-four of their number. The fatality at 

 Sandusky was only a little less, when the pestilence 

 was at the anno (| l its intensity. 



We had occasion to study this malady during its 

 prevalence in the city of Buffalo in the years 1832 

 and '34, as a practicing physician. It is not our 

 purpose to write an article for the perusal of the pro- 

 >n ; nor to review any of the several ingenious 

 theories invented to account for the production of 

 this or any other malignant, disorder. It is enough 

 to say that we do not believe that any excess or de- 

 ficiency in atmospheric electricity, nor the growth of 

 roscopic fungi in the human system, will account 

 for the killing of thirty-four persons out of thirty- 

 five attacked with cholera, on one plantation, and the 

 escape of all others on healthy farms hard by. In a 

 word, we believe that cholera, plague, ship fever, 

 yellow fever and fever and ague are the results of 

 local causes, which in most cases can be removed to 

 the inestimable advantage of the human family. 

 There has not been a single case of cholera in any 

 city or village in the large State of Georgia this 

 season. Something like this complaint has prevailed 

 on one or two rice plantations in the Savannah 

 swamps. Cholera was very severe early in the sum- 

 mer on the Mississippi from New Orleans upward. 



In 1817, says the London Times, "the overflow 

 of the river Ganges had swelled to a greater height 

 than usual the annual inundation of the marshy plains 

 adjacent. Cities and villages appeared like houses 

 in the midst of a temporary ocean, covered with in- 

 numerable boats, and traversed even by vessels of 

 100 tons burthen. The whole country round Jessore 



was one sheet of water, and those jungly marshes, 

 known as the Sunderiands, which are intersected by 

 the numberless streams forming the delta of the 

 Ganges, lay steaming in a moist calm air, neither 

 quite overflowed, nor yet quite dry, a hot-bed of pu- 

 trescent miasma. 



" It was under such circumstances, aggravated by 

 the heats of August, that the first seizure occurred 

 at Jessore. The mortality spread rapidly among the 

 population, afflicting chiefly the miserable Pariahs, 

 who earn, by excessive toil under a vertical sun, only 

 about 2£d a day, and who live in squalid ho 

 crowded and damp, in the filthiest quarters of the 

 town. In a few weeks 10,000 souls, a sixth of the 

 population, had perished. The civil courts were 

 closed, business was suspended, and the wealthier 

 inhabitants fled in crowds to the country. Within a 

 month the disease broke out in Calcutta, about 100 

 miles to the south-west, brought, as some say, by 

 fugitives from Jessore: originating spontaneously, as 

 others suppose, from the same cause in both places. 

 Here, also, it committed fearful ravages, destroying 

 daily 200 persons. Its migratory character soon 

 became terribly apparent; within a few weeks it had 

 devastated every town and village within an area of 

 several thousand square miles, from Sylhet in the 

 east, to Cuttack in the west, and from the mouth of 

 the Ganges upward to its confluence with the Jumna." 



In coming from Southern to Northern cities, we 

 were forcibly struck with the lack of cleanliness in 

 the latter where cholera has most prevailed, as 

 compared with the neatness of those at the South 

 where rigid sanitary measures have prevented the 

 disease. It is not pleasant to speak in terms which 

 imply censure of one's fellow citizens in any city or 

 place; but when he sees his neighbor's house on 

 fire, and knows that the whole family are asleep 

 under its roof, it is his duty to cry aloud, even if it 

 shall disturb the quiet slumber of the whole neigh- 

 borhood. The germs of pestilence in a city are 

 precisely like sparks of fire on the roof of an old 

 building, or " like the little leaven which leaveneth 

 the whole lump.*' 



Many a good man and many a good family have 

 been poisoned to death within the last six months by 

 drinking impure water and breathing impure air, 

 which impurities were as removable as they were 

 fatal. It was had tvaler more than a contaminated 

 atmosphere that killed the thirty-four persons on the 

 Sciota farm which we visited. If one were to im- 

 merse rotten potatoes or spoilt meat in water, and 



