PRINCIPAL DISEASES. 
77 
SECT. IX.— PRINCIPAL DISEASES. 
If any one supposes that the South is a paradise, 
where sickness and son-ow find no place, he is mistaken. 
We are all of the earth, earthy, and more or less liable to 
disease. The South is not exempt. 
On the other hand, if any one supposes that the South 
is a hotbed of disease, generating, more than any other 
region, diseases foul, pestiferous, and incurable, he is equally 
mistaken. 
The South is as healthy as the North. There, reader, 
we assure you, is the result of forty years' observation, 
made by intelligent physicians in both sections of the 
country. 
Let the bills of mortality be produced, and we have no 
fears for the correctness of our statement. 
New Orleans is as healthy as Boston ; Charleston is as 
healthy as New York. 
We have the same miasmatic diseases here which pre- 
vail generally in the valley of the Mississippi, from Minne- 
sota to Louisiana. 
We have intermittent fever in its simple, inflammatory, 
and congestive forms ; remittent bilious fever, in the same 
varieties. We have also typhoid fever, with its self-limited, 
lingering pecuUarities ; scarlet fever, which runs its course, 
as everywhere else ; and, in certain localities, as in New 
Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, Savannah, and other seaports, 
we have had occasionally the yellow fever, which has long 
since become disarmed of its terrors by an enlightened 
medical profession. 
The scourge of nations — epidemic cholera;— has never 
been so prevalent in the South as in the North and West 
