66 Marshes and their Effects on Human Health. 
basin, with a north-eastern and south-western outlet. Through 
this basin lies an almost unbroken line of swamp, in some places, 
to be sure, too much elevated to become the receptacle of stagnat- 
ing waters and vegetable substances gathered to decay. Through, 
and in the immediate vicinity of this lowland, passes the western 
rail road, on which operations were commenced in 1838. 
The place had been remarkable for the health and longevity of 
its inhabitants from its early settlement, which commenced about 
the middle of the last century. Influenzas, to be sure, were some- 
times prevalent, and consumptions carried their victims to the 
grave in good old age. But fevers were of so rare occurrence, 
that visitations from them were seldom feared. 
The autumn of 1840, however, was destined to open a new era 
in our statistics of health, for that season the typhoid prevailed 
with almost unmitigated malignity, in the neighborhood to which 
its operations were mostly confined. Scarcely a house would be 
passed in which some of the inmates were not smitten, and in 
many of the dwellings death found his victim. The territory 
where the disease prevailed most, was about a mile and a half in 
length, along the base of the Taconic, and its ravages were prin- 
cipally confined to one street, though there were many severe 
cases in other parts. It was in vain that the origin of the disease 
was sought, and equally vain and futile were many of the causes 
to which its existence was then attributed. 
Those who remember the summer of 1840, will recollect that 
in western Massachusetts and eastern New York it was a season 
of much heat and great drought. Those who saw the operations 
of grading the rail road through this region know very well, that 
in raising the embankments through the swamps, especially the 
lower one that seemed almost a bottomless abyss, the sinking of 
the earth carried on, caused much decomposing matter to be 
thrown up and exposed to the influence of the sun through that 
hot dry summer. The early rains of autumn were in no way cal- 
culated to retard the decomposing process to which, these huge 
masses of matter had been exposed by the chief of nature's causes, 
