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CHAPTER III. 



Influence of Climate and Season in modifying the 

 Diseases of Mankind. 



" The time may come when, guided by yet undiscovered know- 

 ledge, new and more direct principles, the tendency to tubercular 

 and other morbid formations, may be surely checked, chronic in- 

 flammations cured, and fever suspended in its first movements." 



CONOLLY. 



A COMPLETE history of the mode in which the 

 diseases and mortality of the human race are 

 modified by external temperature, regimen, cloth- 

 ing, habitations, employments, and the various 

 modes of living, would afford more practical in- 

 formation in regard to the causes, prevention, 

 and right method of treatment, than all the sys- 

 tems that have been invented within the last two 

 thousand years ; for it would enable us to reduce 

 the heterogeneous and chaotic mass of facts that 

 constitute the sum of Medical Literature, to the 

 certainty of an exact science. And that such 

 an important undertaking might be, to a great 

 extent, accomplished in a short time, by the com- 

 bined exertions of a few enlightened individuals, 

 is manifest from what has been recently done in 



