Page:A Physical and Topographical Sketch of the Mississippi Territory, Lower Louisiana, and a Part of West Florida.djvu/36

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thalmia, icterus, and different kinds of hydropick affections.

In October, the yellow remittent fever, which is frequently epidemick in some of our most unhealthy situations (such as New Orleans) during the summer, now begins to disappear; and the only diseases to be met with are, mild remittents, dysenteries, obstructions of the chylopoetic viscera, and a few intermittents. But by no means in the proportion that has hitherto been supposed. While in the service of the United States, I kept a register of the sick at head-quarters, Mulberry Vale, five miles east of the Mississippi, and, as well as I am able to recollect at present, out of three hundred men whose health I had under my care during the summer and fall, there never were more than ten cases of intermittents, in one day's report, while the number of remittents have often amounted to more than fifty.

Those who have suffered from the diseases of the warm season, by the middle of November, from the fine weather which prevails at this season, begin to regain their strength, and usual vivacity; and from this time until the first of May, the people of this country enjoy as good health as perhaps any of their more northern neighbours. Added to a more moderate climate during this period, their systems have the advantage of being worn down to a reduced state of excitability, which enables them to resist the morbid tendency of the few catarrhal affec-