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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It Has Been Known To Prevail In The Canaries, The
Bermudas, And Among The Small West India Islands, In Dry Places
Formerly Distinguished For The Great Salubrity Of Their Climate.
Examples Of The Propagation Of The Yellow Fever In The Inland Parts
Of The Torrid Zone Appear Very Doubtful:
That malady may have been
confounded with remitting bilious fevers.
With respect to the
temperate zone, in which the contagious character of the American
typhus is more decided, the disease has unquestionably spread far
from the shore, even into very elevated places, exposed to cool and
dry winds, as in Spain at Medina-Sidonia, at Carlotta, and in the
city of Murcia. That variety of phenomena which the same epidemic
exhibits, according to the difference of climate, the union of
predisposing causes, its shorter or longer duration, and the degree
of its exacerbation, should render us extremely circumspect in
tracing the secret causes of the American typhus. M. Bailly, who,
at the time of the violent epidemics in 1802 and 1803, was chief
physician to the colony of St. Domingo, and who studied that
disease in the island of Cuba, the United States, and Spain, is of
opinion that the typhus is very often, but not always, contagious.
Since the yellow fever has made such ravages in La Guayra,
exaggerated accounts have been given of the uncleanliness in that
little town as well as of Vera Cruz, and of the quays or wharfs of
Philadelphia. In a place where the soil is extremely dry, destitute
of vegetation, and where scarcely a few drops of water fall in the
course of seven or eight months, the causes that produce what are
called miasms, cannot be of very frequent occurrence.
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