720 Queries and Ansiioers. 



ther potash is extracted from the refuse ? 3dly, Whether coffee is made of it ? 

 and, 4thly, To what other purpose is the refuse apphed ? The reason I ask 

 is, that I intend trying to extract sugar from the root on a small scale, for the 

 use of my own family, and for teaching my pupils. I give you my address 

 below for your own use; but wish, if you publish this article, that it should be 

 signed — A. D. G. Near Stockport, Nov. 2. 1836. 



Salubrity and Insalidmty of Situations ; in answer to Samuel Wright. — We 

 strongly recommend our correspondent to read Dr. M'Culloch's Essay on 

 Malaria. We are persuaded that very few persons are aware of the superior 

 degree of healthfulness of an elevated open situation, exposed to the south 

 rather than the north, and on a dry and, if possible, calcareous soil. Few 

 of us are aware, also, of the superior dryness produced in the floor and 

 the walls of ordinary houses, by raising the lowest living-floor 3 ft. or 4<ft. 

 above the surrounding surface. In labourers' cottages this is of the very last 

 importance, as we shall show on a future occasion. We shall, in the mean 

 time, extract some notices on the .subject from Dr. M'Culloch, and from what 

 we consider the most useful review of his book that has yet appeared, in the 

 American Quarterly Review, No. viii., for December, 1828. " Malaria (bad air), 

 miasma (niiaino, to infect), or marsh exhalation, is something which originates 

 in swampy, marshy, moist ground, wherein vegetables having grown, die, and 

 putrefy. Vegetables that die and become disorganised in cold weather do not 

 appear to produce this infectious malaria; nor do vegetables that die, and are 

 dried up by heat, in a dry place. Nor do we find it in places bare of vege- 

 tation, unless vegetable matter, liable to putrefy, be found there accidentally, 

 or brought there purposely. Nor do we find this miasmatous air prevalent in 

 the winter season : the months of July, August, and September, including, in 

 warm climates, one half of October, are the seasons when this pestilence chiefly 

 prevails. But it has been observed, that places producing remittent fevers in 

 the fall are liable to produce intermittents in springs. Places completely co- 

 vered with water do not produce malaria, although the margins of such places 

 do. This poison is now usually supposed to be a gas, acting by its chemical pro- 

 perties ; by others, it is presumed to be an exhalation, effluvium, or odour ; 

 the ancient opinion, at present not considered as worth investigation, is, that 

 the deleterious quality of the air impregnated with it is owing to animalcula. 

 Malaria, according to Dr. M'Culloch, is the source of more than half the dis- 

 eases to which the human race is subject, and of more than half the mortality 

 which depopulates mankind. It seems to be the angel of destruction, or- 

 dained to maintain the necessary proportion between population and the means 

 of subsistence. It detracts one half from the value of life in Holland; and at 

 least as much, and probably more, in Italy, The chances of life in England are 

 variously calculated from forty to fifty yecrs. In many parts of Holland they 

 are not more than about twenty-five. In many places of France they are 

 reduced by malaria to twenty and eighteen years. Sicily and Sardinia, and 

 much of Greece, are similarly affected. Lincolnshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire, 

 and the North Riding of Yorkshire are known seats of this pestilence in Eng- 

 land. Oliver Cromwell died of it; and, although we are become much better 

 acquainted with its effects and its habits than formerly, great ignorance still 

 prevails, even in England, on this interesting subject. People are not yet 

 aware of the many situations pregnant with latent disease, where danger is not 

 suspected ; nor are they aware of the anomalous forms of indistinct, but pain- 

 ful, suffering, attributable to this cause where the absence of intermittent or 

 remittent diseases induces a dangerous confidence and security. Dr. M'Cul- 

 loch is inclined to ascribe to this cause the following list of disorders : — 

 Yellow, remittent, intermittent, and nervous fever; dysentery, diarrhoea, 

 cholera, visceral obstructions; dropsy, oedema, obstructions of the liver and 

 spleen, neuralgia, and, in particular, that form of it, the tic douloureux ; to which 

 we would be strongly inclined to add the dengue of the Havanna and Charleston, 

 scrofula, and goitre; hebetude of intellect, and general lassitude; a Boeotian 



