Miasma Is Not Always Produced By A Luxuriant
Vegetation With An Ardent Climate; For Many Parts Of Brazil,
Even Where There Are Marshes And A Rank Vegetation, Are
Much More Healthy Than This Sterile Coast Of Peru.
The
densest forests in a temperate climate, as in Chiloe, do not
seem in the slightest degree to affect the healthy condition
of the atmosphere.
The island of St. Jago, at the Cape de Verds, offers another
strongly marked instance of a country, which any one
would have expected to find most healthy, being very much
the contrary. I have described the bare and open plains as
supporting, during a few weeks after the rainy season, a thin
vegetation, which directly withers away and dries up: at this
period the air appears to become quite poisonous; both natives
and foreigners often being affected with violent fevers.
On the other hand, the Galapagos Archipelago, in the Pacific,
with a similar soil, and periodically subject to the same
process of vegetation, is perfectly healthy. Humboldt has
observed, that, "under the torrid zone, the smallest marshes
are the most dangerous, being surrounded, as at Vera Cruz
and Carthagena, with an arid and sandy soil, which raises
the temperature of the ambient air." [5] On the coast of Peru,
however, the temperature is not hot to any excessive degree;
and perhaps in consequence, the intermittent fevers are not
of the most malignant order. In all unhealthy countries the
greatest risk is run by sleeping on shore. Is this owing to
the state of the body during sleep, or to a greater abundance
of miasma at such times?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 564 of 776
Words from 151125 to 151394
of 208183
