276 EFFECTS OF CALXING ON HEALTH. 



loaded. If these advantages can indeed be obtained, they would 

 be cheaply bought at any price necessary to be encountered for the 

 purpose. 



The foregoing part of this chapter was first published in the 

 Farmers' Register (for July, 1833), as supplementary to the pre- 

 vious edition of this Essay. That publication drew some attention 

 from others to the subject, and served to elicit many important 

 facts, of which I had been before altogether ignorant, in support 

 of the operation of calcareous earth in arresting the effects of 

 malaria, and the usual autumnal diseases of the Southern States and 

 other similar regions. These facts, together with the result of my 

 own personal experience, extended through two more autumns (or 

 sickly seasons, as commonly called here and farther south), since 

 the first publication of these views, will now be submitted. Most 

 of the facts derived from other persons relate to one region, the 

 11 rotten lime-stone lands" of southern Alabama; but that region is 

 extensive, is of remarkable and well known character and pecu- 

 liarities, and the evidence comes from various sources, and is full, 

 and consistent in purport. The facts will be here presented in an 

 abridged form. The several more full communications, from which 

 they are drawn, may be referred to in the Farmers' Register, vol. 

 I., pp. 152, 214, and 277. 



The first fact brought out was that, in the town of Mobile, near 

 the Gulf of Mexico, the streets actually had been paved or covered 

 with shells thus presenting precisely such a case as I recom- 

 mended, though not with any view to promoting cleanliness or 

 health. The shells had been used merely as a substitute for stones, 

 which could not be so cheaply obtained. Nor had the greatly im- 

 proved healthiness of Mobile, since the streets were so covered 

 (of which there is the most ample and undoubted testimony), been 

 attributed to that cause, until the publication of the foregoing 

 opinions served to connect them as cause and effect. This can 

 scarcely be doubted by those who will admit the theory of the 

 action of calcareous earth ; and the remarkable change from un- 

 healthiness in Mobile, to comparative healthiness, is a very strong 

 exemplification of the truth of the theory. But it is not strange, 

 when so many other causes might (and probably did) operate to 

 arrest disease, that none should have considered the chemical 

 operation of the shelly pavement as one of them, and still less as 

 the one by far the most important. The paving of streets (with 

 any material), draining and filling up wet places, substituting for 

 rotting wooden buildings new ones of brick and stone and espe- 

 cially the operation of destructive and extensive fires all, we 

 know, operate (and particularly the last) to improve the healthi- 

 ness of towns ; and all these operated at Mobile, as well as shell- 

 ing the streets. Neither was the shelling so ordered as to produce 



