Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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A Few Individuals,
Even Creoles And Mulattoes, Were Sometimes Carried Off Suddenly By
Certain Irregular Remittent Fevers; Which, From Being Complicated
With Bilious Appearances, Hemorrhages, And Other Symptoms Equally
Alarming, Appeared To Have Some Analogy With The Yellow Fever.
The
victims of these maladies were generally men employed in the hard
labour of cutting wood in the forests, for instance, in the
neighbourhood of the little port of Carupano, or the gulf of Santa
Fe, west of Cumana.
Their death often alarmed the unacclimated
Europeans, in towns usually regarded as peculiarly healthy; but the
seeds of the sporadic malady were propagated no farther. On the
coast of Terra Firma, the real typhus of America, which is known by
the names vomito prieto (black vomit) and yellow fever, and which
must be considered as a morbid affection sui generis, was known
only at Porto Cabello, at Carthagena, and at Santa Martha, where
Gastelbondo observed and described it in 1729. The Spaniards
recently disembarked, and the inhabitants of the valley of Caracas,
were not then afraid to reside at La Guayra. They complained only
of the oppressive heat which prevailed during a great part of the
year. If they exposed themselves to the immediate action of the
sun, they dreaded at most only those attacks of inflammation of the
skin or eyes, which are felt everywhere in the torrid zone, and are
often accompanied by a febrile affection and congestion in the
head. Many individuals preferred the ardent but uniform climate of
La Guayra to the cool but extremely variable climate of Caracas;
and scarcely any mention was made of the insalubrity of the former
port.
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