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MEDICAL INQUIRIES
AND
OBSERVATIONS.
BY BENJAMIN RUSH, M. D.
PROFESSOR OF THE INSTITUTES AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE,
AND OF CLINICAL PRACTICE, IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF PENNSYLVANIA.
IN FOUR VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
THE SECOND EDITION,
REVISED AND ENLARGED BY THE AUTHOR.
PHILADELPHIA,
PUBLISHED BY J. CONRAD &, CO. CHESNUT-STREET, PHILADELPHIA ;
M. & J. CONRAD & CO. MARKET-STREET, BALTIMORE; RAPIN,
CONRAD, & CO. WASHINGTON; SOMERVELL & CONRAD, PETERS-
BURG; AND BONSAL, CoNRAD, & CO. NORFOLK.
PRINTED BY T. fc? G. PALMER, 116, HIGH-STREET.
1805.
PREFACE.
IN this second edition of the follow-
ing Medical Inquiries and Observations, the
reader will perceive many additions, some
omissions, and a few alterations.
A number of facts have been added to the
Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits
upon the Body and Mind, and to the Obser-
vations upon the Tetanus, Cynanche Tra-
chealis, and Old Age, in the first volume ;
also to the Observations upon Dropsies,
Pulmonary Consumption, and Hydrophobia,
contained in the second volume.
The Lectures upon Animal Life, which
were published, a few years ago, in a pam-
a
IV
phlet, have received no other additions than
a few notes.
The phenomena of fever have not only-
received a new title, but several new terms
have been adopted in detailing them, chiefly
to remove the mistake into which the use of
Dr. Brown's terms had led some of the au-
thor's readers, respecting his principles. A
new order has likewise been given, and
some new facts added, to the inquiry upon
this subject.
In the Account of the Yellow Fever of
1793, many documents, interesting to the
public at the time of their first publication,
are omitted \ and many of the facts and ob-
servations, which related to the origin of the
fevers of 1794 and 1797, now form a part
of a separate inquiry upon that subject, in
the fourth volume.
The histories of the yellow fever as epi-
demics, and of its sporadic cases, have been
published in the order in which they have ap-
peared in Philadelphia, to show the influence
of the weather upon it, and the impropriety
and danger of applying the same remedies
for the same epidemic, in different and even
successive seasons. The records of the
first cases of yellow fever, which have ap- *
peared in each of the twelve years that have
been noticed, are intended further to show
the inefficacy of all the means, at present
employed, to prevent its future recurrence?
In the fourth volume, the reader will find
a retraction of the author's former opinion
of the yellow fever's spreading by contagion.
He be^s forgiveness of the friends of science
aruLhumanity, if the publication of that opi-
nion has had any influence in increasing
the misery and mortality attendant upon that
disease. Indeed, such is the pain he feels,
in recollecting that he ever entertained or
propagated it, that it will long, and perhaps
always, deprive him of the pleasure he might
otherwise have derived from a review of his
attempts to fulfil the public duties of his pro-
fession.
VI
Considerable additions are made to the'
facts and arguments in favour of the domes-
tic origin of the yellow fever, and to the
Defence of Blood-letting.
The Account of the Means of Preventing
the Usual Forms of Summer and Autumnal
Disease, appears for the first time in this
edition of the author's Inquiries. Part of
the facts intended to prove the yellow fever
not to be contagious, were published in the
sixth volume of the New-York Medical Re-
pository. The reader will perceive, among
many additions to them, answers to all the
arguments usually employed to defend the
contrary opinion.
The Inquiry into the Comparative State
of Medicine, in Philadelphia, between the
years 1760 and 1766, and 1805, was deli-
vered, in the form of an oration, before the
Medical Society of Philadelphia, on the 18th
of February, 1804. Some things have been
omitted, and a few added, in the form in
which it is now offered to the public.
vu
If this edition of Medical Inquiries and
Observations should be less imperfect than
the former, the reader is requested to ascribe
it to the author having profited by the ob-
jections he encouraged his pupils to make
to his principles, in their inaugural disserta-
tions, and in conversation ; and to the many
useful facts which have been communicated
to him by his medical brethren, whose names
have been mentioned in the course of the
work.
For the departure, in the modes of prac-
tice adopted or recommended in these In-
quiries, from those which time and experience
have sanctioned, in European and in East
and West-Indian countries, the author makes
the same defence of himself, that Dr. Bag-
livi made, near a century ago, of his modes
of practice in Rome. " Vivo et so'ibo in aere
Romano" said that illustrious physician.
The author has lived and written in the cli-
mate of Pennsylvania, and in the city of
Philadelphia.
November 18^/z, 1805.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
page
AN inquiry into the natural history of medicine
among the Indians of North- America, and a com-
parative view of their diseases and remedies with
those of civilized nations 1
An account of the climate of Pennsylvania, and its
influence upon the human body 69
An account of the bilious remitting fever, as it ap-
peared in Philadelphia in the summer and autumn
of 'the year 1780 115
An account of the scarlatina anginosa, as it appeared
in Philadelphia in the years 1783 and 1784 135
An inquiry into the cause and cure of the cholera in-
fantum 153
Observations on the cynanche trachealis 167
An account of the efficacy of blisters and bleeding, in
the cure of obstinate intermitting fevers 177
An account of the disease occasioned by drinking cold
water in warm weather, and the method of curing
it 181
An account of the efficacy of common salt in the cure
of hemoptysis 1 89
X
page
Thoughts on the cause and cure of pulmonary con-
sumption 197
Observations upon worms in the alimentary canal,
and upon anthelmintic medicines 215*
An account of the external use of arsenic in the cure
of cancers 235
Observations on the tetanus 245
The result of observations made upon the diseases
which occurred in the military hospitals of the
United States, during the revolutionary war 267
An account of the influence of the military and politi-
cal events of the American revolution upon the hu-
man body 277
An inquiry into the relation of tastes and aliments to
each other, and into the influence of this relation
upon health and pleasure 295
The new method of inoculating for the small-pox 309
An inquiry into the effects of ardent spirits upon the
human body and mind, with an account of the
means of preventing, and the remedies for curing
them 335
Observations on the duties of a physician, and the
methods of improving medicine; accommodated to
the present state of society and manners in the
United States 385
An inquiry into the causes and cure of sore legs 401
An account of the state of the body and mind in old
age, with observations on its diseases, and their
remedies 425
AN INQUIRY
INTO THE
NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
AMONG THE
INDIANS OF NORTH- AMERICA;
AND A
COMPARATIVE VIEW
OF THEIR
DISEASES AND REMEDIES WITH THOSE OF
CIVILIZED NATIONS.
Read before the American Philosophical Society, held at
Philadelphia, on the 4th of February, 1774,
VOL. I.
AN INQUIRY, &c.
Gentlemen*-,
I RISE with peculiar diffidence to address you
upon this occasion, when I reflect upon the enter-
tainment you proposed to yourselves from the elo-
quence of that learned member, Mr. Charles
Thompson, whom your suffrages appointed to this
honour after the delivery of the last anniversary
oration. Unhappily for the interests of science, his
want of health has not permitted him to comply
with your appointment. I beg, therefore, that
you would forget, for a while, the abilities ne-
cessary to execute this task with propriety, and
listen with candour to the efforts of a member,
whose attachment to the society was the only qua-
* This Inquiry was the subject of an Anniversary Ora-
tion. The style of an oration is therefore preserved in many-
parts of it.
4 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
lification that entitled him to the honour of your
choice.
The subject I have chosen for this evening's
entertainment, is " An inquiry into the natural
" history of medicine among the Indians in North-
" America, and a comparative view of their "dis-
" eases and remedies, with those of civilized na-
" tions." You will readily anticipate the diffi-
culty of doing justice to this subject. How shall
we distinguish between the original diseases of the
Indians and those contracted from their inter-
course with the Europeans? By what arts shall
we persuade them to discover their remedies?
And lastly, how shall we come at the knowledge
of facts in that cloud of errors, in which the cre-
dulity of the Europeans, and the superstition of the
Indians, have involved both their diseases and re-
medies? These difficulties serve to increase the
importance of our subject. If I should not be
able to solve them, perhaps I may lead the way to
more successful endeavours for that purpose.
I shall first limit the tribes of Indians who are
to be the objects of this inquiry, to those who in-
habit that part of North- America which extends
from the 30th to the 60th degree of latitude.
When we exclude the Esquimaux, who inhabit
AMONG THE INDIANS. 5
the shores of Hudson's bay, we shall find a general
resemblance in the colour, manners, and state of
society, among all the tribes of Indians who inha-
bit the extensive tract of country above-mentioned.
Civilians have divided nations into savage, bar-
barous, and civilized. The savage live by fishing
and hunting; the barbarous, by pasturage or cattle;
and the civilized, by agriculture. Each of these
is connected together in such a manner, that the
whole appear to form different parts of a circle.
Even the manners of the most civilized nations
partake of those of the savage. It would seem as
if liberty and indolence were the highest pursuits
of man; and these are enjoyed in their greatest
perfection by savages, or in the practice of cus-
toms which resemble those of savages.
The Indians of North- America partake chiefly
of the manner of savages. In the earliest accounts
we have of them, we find them cultivating a spot
of ground. The maize is an original grain among
them. The different dishes of it which are in use
among the white people still retain Indian names.
It will be unnecessary to show that the Indians
live in a state of society adapted to all the exigen-
cies of their mode of life. Those who look for
6 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
the simplicity and perfection of the state of nature,
must seek it in systems, as absurd in philosophy,
as they are delightful in poetry.
Before we attempt to ascertain the number or
history of the diseases of the Indians, it will be ne-
cessary to inquire into those customs among them
which we know influence diseases. For this pur-
pose I shall,
First, Mention a few facts which relate to the
birth and treatment of their children.
Secondly, I shall speak of their diet.
Thirdly, Of the customs which are peculiar to
the sexes, and,
Fourthly, Of those customs which are common
to them both*.
* Many of the facts contained in the Natural History of
Medicine among the Indians in this Inquiry, are taken from
La Hontan and Charlevoix's histories of Canada; but the
most material of them are taken from persons who had
lived or travelled among the Indians. The author acknow-
ledges himself indebted in a particular manner to Mr. Ed-
ward Hand, surgeon in the 18th regiment, afterwards
brigadier-general in the army of the United States, who*
AMONG THE INDIANS, 7
I. Of the birth and treatment of their children.
Much of the future health of the body depends
upon its original stamina. A child born of healthy-
parents always brings into the world a system
formed by nature to resist the causes of diseases.
The treatment of children among the Indians,
tends to secure this hereditary firmness of consti-
tution. Their first food is their mother's milk.
To harden them against the action of heat and
cold (the natural enemies of health and life among
the Indians) they are plunged every day into cold
water. In order to facilitate their being moved
from place to place, and at the same time to pre-
serve their shape, they are tied to a board, where
they lie on their backs for six, ten, or eighteen
months. A child generally sucks its mother till
it is two years old, and sometimes longer. It is
easy to conceive how much vigour their bodies
must acquire from this simple, but wholesome nou-
rishment. The appetite we sometimes observe in
children for flesh is altogether artificial. The pe-
culiar irritability of the system in infancy forbids
stimulating aliment of all kinds. Nature never
calls for animal food till she has provided the child
during several years' residence at Fort Pitt, directed his in-
quiries into their customs, diseases, and remedies, with a
success that does equal honour to his ingenuity and diligence.
8 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
with those teeth which are necessary to divide it.
I shall not undertake to determine how far the
wholesome quality of the mother's milk is increased
by her refusing the embraces of her husband, du-
ring the time of giving suck,
II. The diet of the Indians is of a mixed nature,
being partly animal and partly vegetable. Their
animals are wild, and therefore easy of digestion.
As the Indians are naturally more disposed to the
indolent employment of fishing than hunting, in
summer, so we find them living more upon fish
than land animals, in that season of the year. —
Their vegetables consist of roots and fruits, mild
in themselves, or capable of being made so by the
action of fire. Although the interior parts of our
continent abound with salt springs, yet I cannot
find that the Indians used salt in their diet, till they
were instructed to do so by the Europeans. The
small quantity of fixed alkali contained in the ashes
on which they roasted their meat, could not add
much to its stimulating quality. They preserve
their meat from putrefaction, by cutting it into
small pieces, and exposing it in summer to the sun,
and in winter to the frost. In the one case its
moisture is dissipated, and in the other so frozen,
that it cannot undergo the putrefactive process. In
dressing their meat, they are careful to preserve
AMONG THE INDIANS. 9
its juices. They generally prefer it in the form of
soups. Hence we find, that among them the use
of the spoon, preceded that of the knife and fork.
They take the same pains to preserve the juice of
their meat when they roast it, by turning it often.
The efficacy of this animal juice, in dissolving meat
in the stomach, has not been equalled by any of
those sauces or liquors which modern luxury has
mixed with it for that purpose.
The Indians have no set time for eating, but
obey the gentle appetites of nature as often as they
are called by them. After whole days spent in
the chace or in war, they often commit those ex-
cesses in eating, to which long abstinence cannot
fail of prompting them. It is common to see them
spend three or four hours in satisfying their hun-
ger. This is occasioned not more by the quan-
tity they eat, than by the pains they take in masti-
cating it. They carefully avoid drinking water in
their marches, from an opinion that it lessens their
ability to bear fatigue.
III. We now come to speak of those customs
which are peculiar to the sexes. And, first, of
those which belong to the women. They are
doomed by their husbands to such domestic labour
as gives a firmness to their bodies, bordering upon
VOL. I. B
10 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
the masculine. Their menses seldom begin to flow
before they are eighteen or twenty years of age,
and generally cease before they are forty. They
have them in small quantities, but at regular in-
tervals. They seldom marry till they are about
twenty. The constitution has now acquired a
vigour, which enables it the better to support the
convulsions of child-bearing. This custom like-
wise guards against a premature old age. Doctor
Bancroft ascribes the haggard looks, the loose
hanging breasts, and the prominent bellies of the
Indian women at Guiana, entirely to their bear-
ing children too early*. Where marriages are
unfruitful (which is seldom the case) a separation
is obtained by means of an easy divorce ; so that
they are unacquainted with the disquietudes which
sometimes arise from barrenness. During preg-
nancy, the women are exempted from the more
laborious parts of their duty: hence miscarriages
rarely happen among them. Nature is their only
midwife. Their labours are short, and accompa-
nied with little pain. Each woman is delivered
in a private cabin, without so much as one of her
own sex to attend her. After washing herself
in cold water, she returns in a few days to her
usual employments; so that she knows nothing of
* Natural History of Guiana.
AMONG THE INDIANS. 11
those accidents which proceed from the careless-
ness or ill management of midwives; or those
weaknesses which arise from a month's confine-
ment in a warm room. It is remarkable that there
is hardly a period in the interval between the erup-
tion and the ceasing of the menses, in which they
are not pregnant, or giving suck. This is the most
natural state of the constitution during that in-
terval ; and hence we often find it connected with
the best state of health, in the women of civilized
nations.
The customs peculiar to the Indian men, con-
sist chiefly in those employments which are neces-
sary to preserve animal life, and to defend their
nation. These employments are hunting and war,
each of which is conducted in a manner that tends
to call forth every fibre into exercise, and to en-
sure them the possession of the utmost possible
health. In times of plenty and peace, we see them
sometimes rising from their beloved indolence, and
shaking off its influence by the salutary exercises
of dancing and swimming. The Indian men sel-
dom marry before they are thirty years of age:
they no doubt derive considerable vigour from
this custom ; for while they are secured by it from
the enervating effects of the premature dalliance of
love, they may insure more certain fruitfulness to
12 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
their wives, and entail more certain health upon
their children. Tacitus describes the same cus-
tom among the Germans, and attributes to it the
same good effects. " Sera juvenum venus, eoque
" inexhausta pubertas; nee virgines festinantur;
" eadem juventa, similis proceritas, pares vali*
" dique miscentur; ac robora parentum liberi
" referunt*."
Among the Indian men, it is deemed a mark of
heroism to bear the most exquisite pain without
complaining ; upon this account they early inure
themselves to burning part of their bodies with
fire, or cutting them with sharp instruments. No
young man can be admitted to the honours of man-
hood or war, who has not acquitted himself well in
these trials of patience and fortitude. It is easy to
conceive how much this contributes to give a tone
to the nervous system, which renders it less sub-
ject to the occasional causes of diseases.
IV. We come now to speak of those customs
which are common to both sexes : these are
* Caesar, in his history of the Gallic war, gives the same
account of the ancient Germans. His words are a Qui
" diutissimi impuberes permanserunt, maximam inter suos
" ferunt laudem : hoc ali staturam, ali vires, nervasque con-
" firmari putant." Lib. vi. xxi.
AMONG THE INDIANS. 13
painting, and the use of the cold bath. The
practice of anointing the body with oil is common
to the savages of all countries ; in warm climates
it is said to promote longevity, by checking ex-
cessive perspiration. The Indians generally use
bear's grease mixed with a clay, which bears the
greatest resemblance to the colour of their skins.
This pigment serves to lessen the sensibility of the
extremities of the nerves ; it moreover fortifies
them against the action of those exhalations, which
we shall mention hereafter, as a considerable source
of their diseases. The cold bath likewise forti-
fies the body, and renders it less subject to those
diseases which arise from the extremes and vicissi-
tudes of heat and cold. We shall speak hereafter
of the Indian manner of using it.
»
It is a practice among the Indians never to
drink before dinner, when they work or travel.
Experience teaches, that filling the stomach with
cold water in the forenoon, weakens the appetite,
and makes the system more sensible of heat and
fatigue.
The state of society among the Indians excludes
the influence of most of those passions which dis-
order the body. The turbulent effects of anger
are concealed in deep and lasting resentments.
14 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
Envy and ambition are excluded by their equality
of power and property. Nor is it necessary that
the perfections of the whole sex should be ascribed
to one, to induce them to marry. " The weak-
" ness of love (says Dr. Adam Smith) which is so
" much indulged in ages of humanity and polite-
" ness, is regarded among savages as the most
" unpardonable effeminacy. A young man w T ould
" think himself disgraced for ever, if he showed
" the least preference of one woman above another,
" or did not express the most complete indiffe-
" rence, both about the time when, and the person
" to whom, he was to be married*." Thus are
they exempted from those violent or lasting dis-
eases, which accompany the several stages of such
passions in both sexes among civilized nations.
It is remarkable that there are no deformed In-
dians. Some have suspected, from this circum-
stance, that they put their deformed children to
death ; but nature here acts the part of an unnatu-
ral mother. The severity of the Indian manners
destroy themf .
* Theory of Moral Sentiments.
t Since the intercourse of the white people with the In-
dians, we find some of them deformed in their limbs. This
deformity, upon inquiry, appears to be produced by those
AMONG THE INDIANS. 15
From a review of the customs of the Indians,
we need not be surprised at the stateliness, regula-
rity of features, and dignity of aspect by which
they are characterized. Where we observe these
among ourselves, there is always a presumption of
their being accompanied with health, and a strong
constitution. The circulation of the blood is more
languid in the Indians, than in persons who are in
the constant exercise of the habits of civilized life.
Out of eight Indian men whose pulses I once ex-
amined at the wrists, I did not meet with one in
whom the artery beat more than sixty strokes in a
minute.
The marks of old age appear more early among
Indian, than among civilized nations.
Having finished our inquiry into the physical
customs of the Indians, we shall now proceed to
inquire into their diseases,
A celebrated professor of anatomy has asserted,
that we could not tell, by reasoning a priori, that
the body was mortal, so intimately woven with its
texture are the principles of life. Lord Bacon
declares, that the onlv cause of death which is na-
' ml
accidents, quarrels, &c which have been introduced among
them by spiritous liquors.
16 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
tural to man, is that from old age ; and complains
of the imperfection of physic, in not being able to
guard the principle of life, until the whole of the
oil that feeds it is consumed. We cannot as yet
admit this proposition of our noble philosopher. In
the inventory of the grave in every country, we
find more of the spoils of youth and manhood than
of a#e. This must be attributed to moral as well
o
as physical causes.
We need only recollect the custom among the
Indians, of sleeping in the open air in a variable
climate ; the alternate action of heat and cold upon
their bodies, to which the warmth of their cabins
exposes them ; their long marches ; their exces-
sive exercise ; their intemperance in eating, to
which their long fasting and their public feasts
naturally prompt them ; and, lastly, the vicinity
of their habitations to the banks of rivers, in or-
der to discover the empire of diseases among them
in every stage of their lives. They have in vain
attempted to elude the general laws of mortality,
while their mode of life subjects them to these re-
mote, but certain causes of diseases.
From what we know of the action of these pow-
ers upon the human body, it will hardly be neces-
sary to appeal to facts to determine that fevers
AMONG THE INDIANS. 17
t
constitute the only diseases among the Indians.
These fevers are occasioned by the insensible quali-
ties of the air. Those which are produced by cold
and heat are of the inflammatory kind, such as pleu-
risies, peripneumonies, and rheumatisms. Those
which are produced by the insensible qualities of
the air, or by putrid exhalations, are intermitting,
remitting, inflammatory, and malignant, according
as the exhalations are combined with more or less
heat or cold. The dysentery (which is an In-
dian disease) comes under the class of fevers. It
appears to be the febris intro versa of Dr. Sydenham.
The Indians are subject to animal and vege-
table poisons. The effects of these upon the
body, are in some degree analogous to the exhala-
tions we have mentioned. When they do not
bring on sudden death, they produce, according to
their force, either a common inflammatory, or a
malignant fever.
The small pox and the venereal disease
were communicated to the Indians of North- Ame-
rica by the Europeans. Nor can I find that they
were ever subject to the scurvy. Whether this
was obviated by their method of preserving their
flesh, or by their mixing it at all times with vege-
tables, I shall not undertake to determine. Their
vol. i, c
18 NATlTRAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
peculiar customs and manners seem to have ex-
empted them from this, as well as from the com-
mon diseases of the skin.
I have heard of two or three cases of the gout
among the Indians, but it was only among those
who. had learned the use of rum from the white
people. A question naturally occurs here, and
that is, why does not the gout appear more fre-
quently among thai class of people, who consume
the greatest quantity of rum among ourselves?
To this I answer, that the effects of this liquor
upon those enfeebled people, are too sudden and
violent, to admit of their being thrown upon the
extremities ; as we know them to be among the
Indians. They appear only in visceral obstruc-
tions, and a complicated train of chronic diseases.
Thus putrid miasmata are sometimes too strong to
bring on a fever, but produce instant debility and
death. The gout is seldom heard of in Russia,
Denmark, or Poland. Is this occasioned by the
vigour of constitution peculiar to the inhabitants of
those northern countries ? or is it caused by their
excessive use of spirituous liquors, which produce
the same chronic complaints among them, which
we said were common among the lower class of
people in this country ? The similarity of their
diseases makes the last of these suppositions the
AMONG THE INDIANS. 19
most probable. The effects of wine, like tyranny
in a well formed government, are felt first in the
extremities ; while spirits, like a bold invader,
seize at once upon the vitals of the constitution.
After much inquiry, I have not been able to find
a single instance of fatuity among the Indians,
and but few instances of melancholy and mad-
ness ; nor can I find any accounts of diseases
from worms among them. Worms are common
to most animals ; they produce diseases only in
weak, or increase them in strong constitutions*.
Hence they have no place in the nosological sys-
tems of physic. Nor is dentition accompanied
by disease among the Indians. The facility with
which the healthy children of healthy parents cut
their teeth among civilized nations, gives us reason
to conclude that the Indian children never suffer
from this quarter.
The Indians appear moreover to be strangers to
diseases and pains in the teeth.
* Indian children are not exempted from worms. It is
common with the Indians, when a fever in their children is
ascribed by the white people to worms (from their being
discharged occasionally in their stools), to say, " the fever
" makes the worms come, and not the worms the fever,"
20 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
The employments of the Indians subject them
to many accidents ; hence we sometimes read of
wounds, fractures, and luxations among
them.
Having thus pointed out the natural diseases of
the Indians, and shown what diseases are foreign
to them, we may venture to conclude, that fe-
vers, old age, casualties, and war are the
only natural outlets of human life. War is no-
thing but a disease ; it is founded in the imper-
fection of political bodies, just as fevers are found-
ed on the weakness of the animal body. Provi-
dence in these diseases seems to act like a mild le-
gislature, which mitigates the severity of death, by
inflicting it in a manner the least painful, upon the
whole, to the patient and the survivors.
Let us now inquire into the remedies of the
Indians. These, like their diseases, are simple,
and few in number. Among the first of them we
shall mention the powers of nature. Fevers,
we said formerly, constituted the chief of the dis-
eases among the Indians ; they are likewise, in the
hands of nature, the principal instruments to re-
move the evils which threaten her dissolution ; but
the event of these efforts of nature, no doubt,
soon convinced the Indians of the danger of trust-
AMONG THE INDIANS. 21
ing her in all cases ; and hence, in the earliest ac-
counts we have of their manners, we read of per-
sons who were intrusted with the office of phy*
sicians.
It will be difficult to find out the exact order in
which the Indian remedies were suggested by na-
ture or discovered by art ; nor will it be easy to
arrange them in proper order. I shall, however,
attempt it, by reducing them to natural and
ARTIFICIAL.
To the class of natural remedies belongs
the Indian practice of abstracting from their pa-
tients all kinds of stimulating aliment. The com-
pliance of the Indians with the dictates of nature,
in the early stage of a disease, no doubt, prevents,
in many cases, their being obliged to use any
other remedy. They follow nature still closer, in
allowing their patients to drink plentifully of cold
water ; this being the only liquor a patient calls for
in a fever.
Sweating is likewise a natural remedy. It was
probably suggested by observing fevers to be ter-
minated by it. I shall not inquire how far these
sweats are essential to the crisis of a fever. The
Indian mode of procuring this evacuation is as fol-
22 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
lows : the patient is confined in a close tent, or
wigwam, over a hole in the earth, in which a red
hot stone is placed ; a quantity of water is thrown
upon this stone, which instantly involves the pa-
tient in a cloud of vapour and sweat ; in this situ-
ation he rushes out, and plunges himself into a ri-
ver, from Whence he retires to his bed. If the
remedy has been used with success, he rises from
his bed in four and twenty hours, perfectly reco-
vered from his indisposition. This remedy is used
not only to cure fevers, but remove that uneasiness
which arises from fatigue of body.
A third natural remedy among the Indians, is
purging. The fruits of the earth, the flesh of
birds, and other animals feeding upon particular
vegetables, and, above all, the spontaneous efforts
of nature, early led the Indians to perceive the ne-
cessity and advantages of this evacuation.
Vomits constitute their fourth natural remedy.
They were probably, like the former, suggested
by nature, and accident. The ipecacuanha is one
of the many roots they employ for that purpose.
The artificial remedies made use of by
the Indians, are bleeding, caustics, and as-
tringent medicines. They confine bleeding
AMON,G THE INDIANS. 23
entirely to the part affected. To know that open-
ing a vein in the arm, or foot, would relieve a pain
in the head or side, supposes some knowledge of
the animal economy, and therefore marks an ad-
vanced period in the history of medicine.
Sharp stones and thorns are the instruments they
use to procure a discharge of blood.
We have an account of the Indians using some-
thing like a potential caustic, in obstinate
pains. It consists of a piece of rotten wood called
punk, which they place upon the part affected, and
afterwards set it on fire : the fire gradually con-
sumes the wood, and 1 its ashes burn a hole in the
flesh.
The undue efforts of nature, in those fevers
which are connected with a diarrhoea, or dysen-
tery, together with those hemorrhages to which
their mode of life exposed them, necessarily led
them to an early discovery of some astringent
vegetables. I am uncertain whether the In-
dians rely upon astringent, or any other vegeta-
bles, for the cure of the intermitting fever. This
disease among them probably requires no other
remedies than the cold bath, or cold air. Its
greater obstinacy, as well as frequency, among
24 natural history of medicine
ourselves, must be sought for in the greater fee-
bleness of our constitutions, and in that change
which our country has undergone, from meadows,
mill-dams, and the cutting down of woods ; where-
by morbid exhalations have been multiplied, and
their passage rendered more free, through every
part of country.
This is a short account of the remedies of the
Indians. If they are simple, they are like their
eloquence, full of strength ; if they are few in
number, they are accommodated, as their lan-
guages are to their ideas, to the whole of their
diseases.
We said, formerly, that the Indians were sub-
ject to accidents, such as wounds, fractures, and
the like. In these cases, nature performs the of-
fice of a surgeon. We may judge of her qualifi-
cations for this office, by observing the marks of
wounds and fractures, which are sometimes dis-
covered on wild animals. But further, what is the
practice of our modern surgeons in these cases ?
Is it not to lay aside plasters and ointments, and
trust the whole to nature? Those ulcers which re-
quire the assistance of mercury, bark, and a par-
ticular regimen are unknown to the Indians.
AMONG THE INDIANS. 25
The hemorrhages which sometimes follow
their wounds, are restrained by plunging them-
selves into cold water, and thereby producing a
constriction upon the bleeding vessels.
Their practice of attempting to recover drown-
ed people, is irrational and unsuccessful. It con-
sists in suspending the patient by the heels, in or-
der that the water may flow from his mouth.
This practice is founded on a belief that the pa-
tient dies from swallowing an excessive quantity
of water. But modern observations teach us that
drowned people die from another cause. This
discovery has suggested a method of cure, directly
opposite to that in use among the Indians ; and has
shown us that the practice of suspending by the
heels is hurtful.
I do not find that the Indians ever suffer in their
limbs from the action of c old upon them. Their
mokasons*, by allowing their feet to move freely,
and thereby promoting the circulation of the
blood, defend their lower extremities in the day-
time, and their practice of sleeping with their feet
near a fire, defends them from the morbid effects
of cold at night. In those cases where the motion
* Indian shoes.
VOL. I. D
26 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
of their feet in their mokasons is not sufficient to
keep them warm, they break the ice, and restore
their warmth by exposing them for a short time
to the action of cold water*.
We have heard much of their specific antidotes
to the venereal disease. In the accounts of
these anti-venereal medicines, some abatement
should be made for that love of the marvellous,
and of novelty, which are apt to creep into the
writings of travellers and physicians. How many
medicines which were once thought infallible in
this disease, are now rejected from the materia
medica ! I have found upon inquiry that the In-
dians always assist their medicines in this disease,
by a regimen which promotes perspiration. Should
we allow that mercury acts as a specific in destroy-
ing this disease, it does not follow that it is proof
against the efficacv of medicines which act more
mechanically upon the bodyf .
* It was remarked in Canada, in the winter of the year
1759, during- the war before last, that none of those soldiers
who wore mokasons were frost-bitten, while few of those
escaped that were much exposed to the cold who wore shoes.
f I cannot help suspecting the anti-venereal qualities of
the lobelia, ceanothus and ranunculus, spoken of by Mr.
Kalm, in the Memoirs of the Swedish Academy. Mr. Hand
informed me, that the Indians rely chiefly upon a plentiful
AMONG THE INDIANS. 27
There cannot be a stronger mark of the imper-
fect state of knowledge in medicine among the In-
dians, than their method of treating the small-
pox. We are told that they plunge themselves
in cold water in the beginning of the disease, and
that it often proves fatal to them.
Travellers speak in high terms of the Indian
antidotes to poisons. We must remember
that many things have been thought poisonous,
which later experience hath proved to possess no
unwholesome quality. Moreover, the uncertainty
and variety in the operation of poisons, renders it
extremely difficult to fix the certainty of the anti-
dotes to them. Hoav many specifics have derived
their credit for preventing the hydrophobia, from
persons being wounded by animals, who were not
in a situation to produce that disease ! If we may
judge of all the Indian antidotes to poisons, by
those which have fallen into our hands, we have
little reason to ascribe much to them in any cases
whatever.
#
I have heard of their performing several remark-
able cures upon stiff joints, by an infusion of
use of the decoctions of the pine-trees for the cure of the
venereal disease. He added, moreover, that he had often
known this disease prove fatal to them.
28 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
certain herbs in water. The mixture of several
herbs together in this infusion calls in question the
specific efficacy of each of them. I cannot help
attributing the whole success of this remedy to the
great heat of the water in which the herbs were
boiled, and to its being applied for a long time to
the part affected. We find the same medicine to
vary frequently in its success, according to its
strength, or to the continuance of its application.
De Haen attributes the good effects of electricity,
entirely to its being used for several months.
I have met with one case upon record of their
aiding nature in parturition. Captain Carver
gives us an account of an Indian woman in a diffi-
cult labour, being suddenly delivered in conse-
quence of a general convulsion induced upon her
system, by stopping, for a short time, her mouth
and nose, so as to obstruct her breathing.
We are sometimes amused with accounts of In-
dian remedies for the dropsy, epilepsy, colic,
gravel, and gout. . If, with all the advantages
which modern physicians derive from their know-
ledge in anatomy, chemistry, botany, and phi-
losophy ; if, with the benefit of discoveries
communicated from abroad, as well as handed
down from our ancestors, by more certain me-
AMONG THE INDIANS. 29
thods than tradition, we are still ignorant of cer-
tain remedies for these diseases ; what can we ex-
pect from the Indians, who are not only deprived
of these advantages, but want our chief motive,
the sense of the pain and danger of those diseases,
to prompt them to seek for such remedies to re-
lieve them? There cannot be a stronger proof
of their ignorance of proper remedies for new or
difficult diseases, than their having recourse to en-
chantment. But to be more particular; I have
taken pains to inquire into the success of some of
these Indian specifics, and have never heard of
one well attested case of their efficacy. I believe
they derive all their credit from our being igno-
rant of their composition. The influence of se-
crecy is well known in establishing the credit of
a medicine. The sal seignette was supposed to be
an infallible medicine for the intermitting fever,
while the manufactory of it was confined to an apo-
thecary at Rochelle ; but it lost its virtues as soon
as it was found to be composed of the acid of tar-
tar and the fossil alkali. Dr. Ward's famous pill
and drop ceased to do wonders in scrophulous
cases, as soon as he bequeathed to the world his
receipts for making them.
I foresee an objection to what has been said con-
cerning the remedies of the Indians, drawn from
30 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
that knowledge which experience gives to a mind
intent upon one subject. We have heard much
of the perfection of their senses of seeing and hear-
ing. An Indian, we are told, will discover not
only a particular tribe of Indians by their foot-
steps, but the distance of time in which they were
made. In those branches of knowledge which
relate to hunting and war, the Indians have ac-
quired a degree of perfection that has not been
equalled by civilized nations. But we must re-
member, that medicine among them does not pos-
sess the like advantages with the arts of war and
hunting, of being the chief object of their atten-
tion. The physician and the warrior are united
in one character ; to render him as able in the for-
mer as he is in the latter profession, would require
an entire abstraction from every other employ-
ment, and a familiarity with external objects,
which are incompatible with the wandering life of
savages.
Thus have we finished our inquiry into the dis-
eases and remedies of the Indians in North- Ame-
rica. We come now to inquire into the diseases
and remedies of civilized nations.
Nations differ in their degrees of civilization.
We shall select one for the subject of our inquiries
AMONG THE INDIANS. 31
which is most familiar to us ; I mean the British
nation. Here we behold subordination and classes
of mankind established by government, commerce,
manufactures, and certain customs common to
most of the civilized nations of Europe. We
shall trace the origin of their diseases through their
customs, in the same manner as we did those of
the Indians.
I. It will be sufficient to name the degrees of
heat, the improper aliment, the tight dresses, and
the premature studies children are exposed to, in
order to show the ample scope for diseases, which
is added to the original defect of stamina they de-
rive from their ancestors.
II. Civilization rises in its demands upon the
health of women. Their fashions ; their dress and
diet ; their eager pursuits and ardent enjoyment of
pleasure; their indolence and undue evacuations
in pregnancy ; their cordials, hot regimen, and
neglect, or use of art, in child-birth, are all so many
inlets to disease.
Humanity would fain be silent, while philoso-
phy calls upon us to mention the effects of inte-
rested marriages, and of disappointments in love,
increased by that concealment which the tyranny
32 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
of custom has imposed upon the sex*. Each of
these exaggerates the natural, and increases the
number of artificial diseases among women.
III. The diseases introduced by civilization ex-
tend themselves through every class and profession
among men. How fatal are the effects of idleness
and intemperance among the rich, and of hard la-
bour and penury among the poor! What pallid
looks are contracted by the votaries of science
from hanging over the " sickly taper!" How
many diseases are entailed upon manufacturers, by
the materials in which they work, and the posture
of their bodies! What monkish diseases do we
observe from monkish continence and monkish
vices ! We pass over the increase of accidents
from building, sailing, riding, and the like. War,
as if too slow in destroying the human species,
* " Married women are more healthy and long-lived
" than single women. The registers, examined by Mr. Mu-
" ret, confirm this observation ; and show particularly, that
** of equal numbers of single and married women between
" fifteen and twenty-five years of age, more of the former
" died than of the latter, in the proportion of two to one :
" the consequence, therefore, of following nature must be
" favourable to health among the female sex." Supple-
ment to Price's Observations on Reversionary Payments,
p. 357.
AMONG THE INDIANS. 33
calls in a train of diseases peculiar to civilized na-
tions. What havoc have the corruption and
monopoly of provisions, a damp soil, and an un-
wholesome sky, made, in a few days, in an army !
The achievements of British valour, at the Ha-
vannah, in the last war, were obtained at the ex-
pence of 9,000 men, 7,000 of whom perished
with the West- India fever*. Even our modern
discoveries in geography, by extending the empire
of commerce, have likewise extended the empire
of diseases. What desolation have the East and
West- Indies made of British subjects ! It has been
found, upon a nice calculation, than only ten of a
hundred Europeans, live above seven years after
they arrive in the island of Jamaica.
* The modern writers upon the diseases of armies, won-
der that the Greek and Roman physicians have left us
nothing upon that subject. But may not most of the dis-
eases of armies be produced by the different manner in
which wars are carried on by the modern nations ? The
discoveries in geography, by extending the field of war,
expose soldiers to many diseases from long voyages, and
a sudden change of climate, which were unknown to the
armies of former ages. Moreover, the form of the wea-
pons, and the variety in the military exercises of the Gre-
cian and Roman armies, gave a vigour to the constitution,
which can never be acquired by the use of muskets and
artillery.
VOL. I. E
s
34 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
IV. It would take up too much of our time to
point out all the customs, both physical and moral,
which influence diseases among both sexes. The
former have engendered the seeds of diseases in
the human body itself: hence the origin of ca-
tarrhs, jail and miliary fevers, with a long train
of other diseases, which compose so great a
part of our books of medicine. The latter like-
wise have a large share in producing diseases. I
am not one of those modern philosophers, who
derive the vices of mankind from the influence of
civilization ; but I am safe in asserting, that their
number and malignity increase with the refine-
ments of polished life. To prove this, we need
only survey a scene too familiar to affect us : it is
a bedlam ; which injustice, inhumanity, avarice,
pride, vanity, and ambition, have filled with inha-
bitants.
Thus have I briefly pointed out the customs
which influence the diseases of civilized nations.
It remains now that we take notice of their dis-
eases. Without naming the many new fevers,
fluxes, hemorrhages, swellings from water, wind,
flesh, fat, pus, and blood ; foulnesses on the skin,
from cancers, leprosy, yawes, poxes, and itch;
and, lastly, the gout, the hysteria, and the hypo-
condriasis, in all their variety of known and un-
AMONG THE INDIANS. 35
known shapes ; I shall sum up all that is necessary
upon this subject, by adding, that the number of
diseases which belong to civilized nations, accord-
ing to Doctor Cullen's nosology, amounts to
1387 ; the single class of nervous diseases form
612 of this number.
Before we proceed to speak of the remedies of
civilized nations, we shall examine into the abi-
lities of nature in curing their diseases. We
found her active and successful in curing the dis-
eases of the Indians. Are her strength, wisdom,
or benignity, equal to the increase of those dangers
which threaten her dissolution among civilized na-
tions? In order to answer this question, it will
be necessary to explain the meaning of the term
nature.
By nature, in the present case, I understand
nothing but physical necessity. This at once ex-
cludes every thing like intelligence from her ope-
rations : these are all performed in obedience to
the same laws which govern vegetation in plants,
and the intestine motions of fossils. They are as
truly mechanical as the laws of gravitation, elec-
tricity, or magnetism. A ship when laid on her
broadside by a wave, or a sudden blast of wind,
rises by the simple laws of her mechanism ; but
36 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
suppose this ship to be attacked by fire, or a wa-
ter-spout, we are not to call in question the skill
of the ship-builder, if she be consumed by the one,
or sunk by the other. In like manner, the Author
of nature hath furnished the body with powers to
preserve itself from its natural enemies ; but when
it is attacked by those civil foes which are bred
by the peculiar customs of civilization, it resem-
bles a company of Indians, armed with bows and
arrows, against the complicated and deadly ma-
chinery of fire-arms. To place this subject in a pro-
per light, I shall deliver a history of the opera-
tions of nature in a few of the diseases of civilized
nations.
I. There are cases in which nature is still suc-
cessful in curing diseases.
In fevers she still deprives us of our appetite for
animal food, and imparts to us a desire for cool
air and cold water.
In hemorrhages she produces a faintness, which
occasions a coagulum in the open vessels ; so that
the further passage of blood through them is ob-
structed.
AMONG THE INDIANS. 37
In wounds of the flesh and bones she discharges
foreign matter by exciting an inflammation, and
supplies the waste of both with new flesh and
bone.
II. There are cases where the efforts of nature
are too feeble to do service, as in malignant and
chronic fevers.
III. There are cases where the efforts of nature
are over proportioned to the strength of the dis-
ease, as in the cholera morbus and dysentery.
IV. There are cases where nature is idle, as in
the atonic stages of the gout, the cancer, the epi-
lepsy, the mania, the venereal disease, the apo-
plexy, and the tetanus*.
V. There are cases in which nature does mis-
chief. She wastes herself with an unnecessary
fever, in a dropsy and consumption. She throws
a plethora upon the brain and lungs in the apo-
plexy and peripneumonia notha. She ends a
pleurisy and peripneumony in a vomica, or em-
pyema. She creates an unnatural appetite for
food in the hypochondriac disease. And, lastly,
* Hoffman de hypothesium medicarum damno, sect. xv.
38 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
she drives the melancholy patient to solitude,
where, by brooding over the subject of his insani-
ty, he increases his disease.
We are accustomed to hear of the salutary kind-
ness of nature in alarming us with pain, to prompt
us to seek for a remedy. But,
VI. There are cases in which she refuses to
send this harbinger of the evils which threaten
her, as in the aneurism, scirrhus, and stone in the
bladder.
VII. There are cases where the pain is not
proportioned to the danger, as in the tetanus, con-
sumption, and dropsy of the head. And,
VIII. There are cases where the pain is over-
proportioned to the danger, as in the paronychia
and tooth-ach.
This is a short account of the operations of na-
ture, in the diseases of civilized nations. A lu-
natic might as well plead against the sequestration
of his estate, because he once enjoyed the full ex-
ercise of his reason, or because he still had lucid
intervals, as nature be exempted from the charges
we have brought against hen
AMONG THE INDIANS. 39
But this subject will receive strength from con-
sidering the remedies of civilized nations. All
the products of the vegetable, fossil, and animal
kingdoms, tortured by heat and mixture into an
almost infinite variety of forms ; bleeding, cup-
ping, artificial drains by setons, issues, and blisters ;
exercise, active and passive; voyages and journies;
baths, warm and cold ; waters, saline, aerial, and
mineral; food by weight and measure; the royal
touch; enchantment; miracles; in a word, the
combined discoveries of natural history and philo-
sophy, united into a system of materia medica, all
show, that although physicians are in speculation
the servants, yet in practice they are the masters of
nature. The whole of their remedies seem con-
trived on purpose to arouse, assist, restrain, and
controuf her operations.
There are some truths like certain liquors,
which require strong heads to bear them. I feel
myself protected from the prejudices of vulgar
minds, when I reflect that I am delivering these
sentiments in a society of philosophers.
Let us now take a comparative view of the
diseases and remedies of the Indians with those of
civilized nations. We shall begin with their dis-
eases.
40 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
In our account of the diseases of the Indians, we
beheld death executing his commission, it is true;
but then his dart was hid in a mantle, under which
he concealed his shape. But among civilized na-
tions we behold him multiplying his weapons in
proportion to the number of organs and functions
in the body ; and pointing each of them in such a
manner, as to render his messengers more terrible
than himself.
We said formerly that fevers constituted the
chief diseases of the Indians. According to Doc-
tor Sydenham's computation, above 66,000 out
of 100,000 died of fevers in London, about 100
years ago ; but fevers now constitute but a little
more than one-tenth part of the diseases of that
city. Out of 21,780 persons who died in London
between December, 1770, and December, 1771,
only 2273 died of simple fevers. I have more
than once heard Doctor Huck complain, that he
could find no marks of epidemic fevers in London,
as described by Dr. Sydenham. London has un-
dergone a revolution in its manners and customs
since Doctor Sydenham's time. New diseases, the
offspring of luxury, have supplanted fevers ; and
the few that are left are so complicated with other
diseases, that their connection can no longer be
discovered with an epidemic constitution of the
AMONG THE INDIANS. 41
year. The pleurisy and peripneumony, those in-
flammatory fevers of strong constitutions, are now
lost in catarrhs, or colds, which, instead of chal-
lenging the powers of nature or art to a fair com-
bat, insensibly undermine the constitution, and
bring on an incurable consumption. Out of 22,434
who died in London between December, 1769,
and the same month in 1770, 4594 perished with
that British disease. Our countryman, Doctor
Maclurg, has ventured to foretel that the gout will
be lost in a few years, in a train of hypocondriac,
hysteric, and bilious diseases. In like manner,
may we not look for a season when fevers, the na-
tural diseases of the human body, will be lost in
an inundation of artificial diseases, brought on by
the modish practices of civilization ?
It may not be improper to compare the prog-
nosis of the Indians, in diseases, with that of
civilized nations, before we take a comparative
view of their remedies.
The Indians are said to be successful in pre-
dicting the events of diseases. While diseases are
simple, the marks which distinguish them, or cha-
racterize their several stages, are generally uni-
form and obvious to the most indifferent observer.
These marks afford so much certainty, that the In-
VOL. I. f
42 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
dians sometimes kill their physicians for a false
prognosis, charging the death of the patient to
their carelessness, or ignorance. They estimate
the danger of their patients by the degrees of
appetite; while an Indian is able to eat, he is
looked upon as free from danger. But when we
consider the number and variety in the signs of
diseases, among civilized nations, together with
the shortness of life, the fallacy of memory, and
the uncertainty of observation, where shall we find
a physician willing to risk his reputation, much less
his life, upon the prediction of the event of our
acute diseases? We can derive no advantage from
the simple sign, by which the Indians estimate
the danger of their patients; for we daily see a
want of appetite for food in diseases which are at-
tended with no danger; and we sometimes observe
an unusual degree of this appetite to precede the
agonies of death. I honour the name of Hip-
pocrates: but forgive me, ye votaries of anti-
quity, if I attempt to pluck a few grey hairs from
his venerable head. I was once an idolater at his
altar, nor did I turn apostate from his worship, till
I was taught, that not a tenth part of his prog-
nostics corresponded with modern experience, or
observation. The pulse*, urine, and sweats, from
* Doctor Cullen used to inform his pupils, that after forty
years' experience, he could find no relation between his own
AMONG THE INDIANS. 43
which the principal signs of life and death have
been taken, are so variable, in most of the acute
diseases of civilized nations, that the wisest phy-
sicians have in some measure excluded the prog-
nosis from being a part of their profession.
I am here insensibly led to make an apology for
the instability of the theories and practice of
physic. The theory of physic is founded upon
the laws of the animal economy. These (unlike
the laws of the mind, or the common laws of
matter) do not appear at once, but are gradually
brought to light by the phenomena of diseases.
The success of nature in curing the simple diseases
of Saxony, laid the foundation for the anima me-
dic a of Doctor Stahl. The endemics of Hol-
land* led Doctor Boerhaave to seek for the
observations on the pulse, and those made by Doctor Solano.
The climate and customs of the people in Spain being so
different from the climate and customs of the present inha-
bitants of Britain, may account for the diversity of their ob-
servations. Doctor Heberden's remarks upon the pulse, in
the second volume of the Medical Transactions, are calcu-
lated to show how little the issue of diseases can be learned
from it.
* " The scurvy is very frequent in Holland ; and draws
its origin partly from their strong food, sea-fish, and smoked
44 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
causes of all diseases in the fluids. And the
universal prevalence of diseases of the nerves, in
Great-Britain, led Doctor Cullen to discover
their peculiar laws, and to found a system upon
them; a system, which will probably last till
some new diseases are let loose upon the human
species, which shall unfold other laws oi the ani-
mal economy.
It is in consequence of this fluctuation in the
principles and practice of physic, being so neces-
sarily connected with the changes in the customs
of civilized nations, that old and young physicians
so often disagree in their opinions and practices.
And it is by attending to the constant changes in
these customs of civilized nations, that those phy-
sicians have generally become the most eminent,
who have soonest emancipated themselves from
the tyranny of the schools of physic; and have
occasionally accommodated their principles and
flesh, and partly from their dense and moist air, together
with their bad water." Hoffman on Endemical Distempers.
" We are now in North-Holland ; and I have never seen,
among so few people, so many infected with the leprosy as
here. They say the reason is, because they eat so much
fish.'.' Howell's Familiar Letters.
AMONG THE INDIANS. 45
practice to the changes in diseases*. This variety
in diseases, which is produced by the changes in
the customs of civilized nations, will enable us to
account for many of the contradictions which are
to be found in authors of equal candour and abili-
ties, who have written upon the materia medica.
In forming a comparative view of the remedies
of the Indians, with those of civilized nations, we
shall remark, that the want of success in a medi-
cine is occasioned by one of the following causes :
First, our ignorance of the disease. Secondly,
an ignorance of a suitable remedy. Thirdly, a
want of efficacy in the remedy.
* We may learn from these observations, the great im-
propriety of those Egyptian laws which oblige physicians
to adopt, in all cases, the prescriptions which had been col-
lected, and approved of, by the physicians of former ages.
Every change in the customs of civilized nations, produces
a change in their diseases, which calls for a change in their
remedies. What havoc would plentiful bleeding, purging,
and small beer, formerly used with so much success by Dr.
Sydenham in the cure of fevers, now make upon the en-
feebled citizens of London ! The fevers of the same, and
of more southern latitudes, still admit of such antiphlogistic
remedies. In the room of these, bark, wine, and other cor-
dial medicines, are prescribed in London in almost every
kind of fe ver.
46 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
Considering the violence of the diseases of the
Indians, it is probable their want of success is al-
ways occasioned by a want of efficacy in their me-
dicines. But the case is very different among the
civilized nations. Dissections daily convince us
of our ignorance of the seats of diseases, and cause
us to blush at our prescriptions. How often are
we disappointed in our expectation from the most
certain and powerful of our remedies, by the ne-
gligence or obstinacy of our patients ! What mis-
chief have we done under the belief of false facts
(if I may be allowed the expression) and false theo-
ries ! We have assisted in multiplying diseases.
We have done more — we have increased their
mortality.
I shall not pause to beg pardon of the faculty,
for acknowledging, in this public manner, the weak-
nesses of our profession. I am pursuing Truth,
and while I can keep my eye fixed upon my guide,
I am indifferent whether I am led, provided she is
my leader.
But further, the Indian submits to his disease,
without one fearful emotion from his doubtfulness
of its event ; and at last meets his fate without an
an anxious wish for futurity ; except it is of being
admitted to an " equal sky," where
AMONG THE INDIANS. 47
" His faithful dog shall bear him company.' '
But, among civilized nations, the influence of a
false religion in good, and of a true religion in bad
men, has converted even the fear of death into a
disease. It is this original distemper of the ima-
gination which renders the plague most fatal, upon
his first appearance in a country.
Under all these disadvantages in the state of me-
dicine, among civilized nations, do more in pro-
portion die of the diseases peculiar to them, than
of fevers, casualties, and old age, among the In-
dians ? If we take our account from the city of
London, we shall find this to be the case. Near
a twentieth part of its inhabitants perish one year
with another. Nor does the natural increase of
inhabitants supply this yearly waste. If we judge
from the bills of mortality, the city of London
contains fewer inhabitants, by several thousands,
than it did forty years ago. It appears from this
fact, and many others of a like nature, which
might be adduced, that although the difficulty of
supporting children, together with some peculiar
customs of the Indians, which we mentioned,
limit their number, yet they multiply faster, and
die in a smaller proportion than civilized nations,
under the circumstances we have described. The
48 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
Indians, we are told, were numerous in this coun-
try, before the Europeans settled among them.
Travellers agree likewise in describing numbers of
both sexes who exhibited all the marks of extreme
old age. It is remarkable that age seldom impairs
the faculties of their minds.
The mortality peculiar to those Indian tribes
who have mingled with the white people, must be
ascribed to the extensive mischief of spiritous
liquors. When these have not acted, they have
suffered from having accommodated themselves too
suddenly to the European diet, dress, and manners.
It does not become us to pry too much into fu-
turity ; but if we may judge from the fate of the
original natives of Hispaniola, Jamaica, and the
provinces on the continent, we may venture to
foretel, that, in proportion as the white people
multiply, the Indians will diminish ; so that in a
few centuries they will probably be entirely extir-
pated*.
* Even the influence of christian principles has not been
able to put a stop to the mortality introduced among the
Indians, by their intercourse with the Europeans. Dr.
Cotton Mather, in a letter to sir William Ashurst, printed
in Boston, in the year 1705, says, " that about five years be-
fore there were about thirty Indian congregations in the
southern parts of the province of Massachusetts-Bay." The
AMONG THE INDIANS. 49
It may be said, that health among the Indians,
like msensibility to cold and hunger, is propor-
tioned to their need of it ; and that the less degrees,
or entire want of health, are no interruption to the
ordinary business of civilized life.
To obviate this supposition, we shall first attend
to the effects of a single disease in those people
who are the principal wheels in the machine of
civil society. Justice has stopt its current, victo-
ries have been lost, wars have been prolonged, and
embassies delayed, by the principal actors in these
departments of government being suddenly laid up
by a fit of the gout. How many offences are daily
committed against the rules of good breeding, by
the tedious histories of our diseases, which com-
pose so great a part of modern conversation ! What
sums of money have been lavished in foreign coun-
same author, in his history of New-England, says, " That
in the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, there
were 3000 adult Indians, 1600 of whom professed the chris-
tian religion." At present there is but one Indian congre-
gation in the whole Massachusetts province.
It may serve to extend our knowledge of diseases, to re-
mark, that epidemics were often observed to prevail among
the Indians in Nantucket, without affecting the white people.
VOL. I. G
50 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
tries in pursuit of health* ! Families have been
ruined by the unavoidable expences of medicines
and watering-places. In a word, the swarms of
beggars which infest so many of the European
countries, urge their petitions for charity chiefly
by arguments derived from real or counterfeit
diseases, which render them incapable of support-
ing themselvesf .
But may not civilization, while it abates the
violence of natural diseases, increase the lenity of
those that are artificial, in the same manner that it
lessens the strength of natural vices by multiplying
them ? To answer this question, it will only be ne-
cessary to ask another : Who should exchange the
heat, thirst, and uneasiness of a fever, for one fit of
the colic or stone ?
The history of the number, combination, and
fashions of the remedies we have given, may serve
* It is said, there are seldom less than 20,000 British sub-
jects in France and Italy ; one half of whom reside or travel
in those countries upon the account of their health.
t Templeman computes, that Scotland contains 1,500,000
inhabitants ; 100,000 of whom, according to Mr. Fletcher,
are supported at the public expence. The proportion of
poor people is much greater in England, Ireland, France,
and Italy.
AMONG THE INDIANS. 51
to humble the pride of philosophy ; and to con-
vince us, that with all the advantages of the whole
circle of sciences, we are still ignorant of antidotes
to many of the diseases of civilized nations. We
sometimes sooth our ignorance, by reproaching our
idleness in not investigating the remedies peculiar
to this country. We are taught to believe that
every herb that grows in our woods is possessed of
some medicinal virtue, and that Heaven would be
wanting in benignity, if our country did not pro-
duce remedies for all the different diseases of its
inhabitants. It would be arrogating too much to
suppose that man was the only creature in our
world for whom vegetables grow. The beasts,
birds, and insects, derive their sustenance either
directly or indirectly from them ; while many of
them were probably intended, from their variety in
figure, foliage, and colour, only to serve as orna-
ments for our globe. It would seem strange that
the Author of nature should furnish every spot of
ground with medicines adapted to the diseases of
its inhabitants, and at the same time deny it the
more necessary articles of food and clothing. I
know not whether Heaven has provided every
country with antidotes even to the natural diseases
of its inhabitants. The intermitting fever is com-
mon in almost every corner of the globe ; but a
sovereign remedy for it has been discovered only
52 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
in South- America. The combination of bitter and
astringent substances, which serve as a succeda-
neum to the Peruvian bark, is as much a prepara-
tion of art, as calomel or tartar emetic. Societies
stand in need of each other as much as individuals ;
and the goodness of the Deity remains unimpeach-
ed when we suppose, that he intended medicines
to serve (with other articles) to promote that know-
ledge, humanity, and politeness among the inhabi-
tants of the earth, which have been so justly attri-
buted to commerce.
We have no discoveries in the materia medica
to hope for from the Indians in North- America. It
would be a reproach to our schools of physic, if
modern physicians were not more successful than
the Indians, even in the treatment of their own
diseases.
Do the blessings of civilization compensate for
the sacrifice we make of natural health, as well as
of natural liberty ? This question must be answer-
ed under some limitations. When natural liberty
is given up for laws which enslave instead of pro-
tecting us, we are immense losers by the exchange.
Thus, if we arm the whole elements against our
health, and render every pore in the body an ave-
AMONG THE INDIANS. 53
nue for a disease, we pay too high a price for the
blessings of civilization.
In governments which have departed entirely
from their simplicity, partial evils are to be cured
by nothing but an entire renovation of their consti-
tution. Let the world bear with the professions
of law, physic, and divinity ; and let the lawyer,
physician, and divine yet learn to bear with each
other. They are all necessary, in the present state
of society. In like manner, let the woman of
fashion forget the delicacy of her sex, and submit
to be delivered bv a man-midwife*. Let her snatch
her offspring from her breast, and send it to repair
the weakness of its stamina, with the milk of a
ruddy cottagerf. Let art supply the place of nature
* In the enervated age of Athens, a law was passed which
confined the practice of midwifery only to the men. It was,
however, repealed, upon a woman's dying in childbirth, ra-
ther than be delivered by a man-midwife. It appears from
the bills of mortality in London and Dublin, that about one
in seventy of those women die in childbirth, who are in the
hands of midwives; but from the accounts of the lying-in
hospitals in those cities, which are under the care of man-
midwives, only one in a hundred and forty perishes in child
birth.
t There has been much common-place declamation
against the custom among the great, of not suckling their
54 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
in the preparation and digestion of all our aliment.
Let our fine ladies keep up their colour with car-
mine, and their spirits with ratifia ; and let our
fine gentlemen defend themselves from the excesses
of heat and cold, with lavender and hartshorn.
These customs have become necessary in the cor-
rupt stages of society. We must imitate, in these
cases, the practice of those physicians who consult
the appetite only, in diseases which do not admit of
a remedy.
The state of a country in point of population,
temperance, and industry, is so connected with its
diseases, that a tolerable idea may be formed of it,
children. Nurses were common in Rome, in the declension
of the empire : hence we find Cornelia commended as a
rare example of maternal virtue, as much for suckling her
sons, as for teaching them eloquence. That nurses were
common in Egypt, is probable from the contract which Pha-
raoh's daughter made with the unknown mother of Moses,
to allow her wages for suckling her own child. The same
degrees of civilization require the same customs. A woman
whose times for eating and sleeping are constantly inter-
rupted by the calls of enervating pleasures, must always af-
ford milk of an unwholesome nature. It may truly be said
of a child doomed to live on this aliment, that, as soon as it
receives its
" breath,
It sucks in " the lurking principles of death."
AMONG THE INDIANS. 55
by looking over its bills of mortality. Hospitals,
with all their boasted advantages, exhibit at the
same time monuments of the charity and depravity
of a people*. The opulence of physicians, and
* " Aurengezebe, emperor of Persia, being asked, Why-
he did not build hospitals? said, 1 will make my empire so
rich, that there shall be no need of hospitals. He ought to have
said, I will begin by rendering my subjects rich, and then I
will build hospitals.
" At Rome, the hospitals place every one at his ease, ex-
cept those who labour, those who are industrious, those who
have lands, and those who are engaged in trade.
" I have observed, that wealthy nations have need of hos-
pitals, because fortune subjects them to a thousand acci-
dents ; but it is plain, that transient assistances are better
than perpetual foundations. The evil is momentary ; it is
necessary, therefore, that the succour should be of the same
nature, and that it be applied to particular accidents." Spi-
rit of Laws, b. xxiii. ch. 29.
It was reserved for the present generation to substitute in
the room of public hospitals private dispensaries for the
relief of the sick. Philosophy and Christianity alike concur
in deriving praise and benefit from these excellent institu-
tions. They exhibit something like an application of the
mechanical powers to the purposes of benevolence ; for in
what other charitable institutions do we perceive so great a
quantity of distress relieved by so small an expence ?
56 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
the divisions of their offices, into those of surgery,
pharmacy, and midwifery, are likewise pioois of
the declining state of a country. In the infancy
of the Roman empire, the priest performed the
office of a physician ; so simple were the prin-
ciples and practice of physic. It was only in the
declension of the empire that physicians vied
with the emperors of Rome in magnificence and
splendour*.
* The first regular practitioners of physic in Rome, were
women and slaves. The profession was confined to them,
above six hundred years. The Romans, during this period,
lived chiefly upon vegetables, particularly upon pulse ; and
hence they were called, by their neighbours, pultifagi.
They were likewise early inured to the healthy employ-
ments of war and husbandry. Their diseases, of course,
were too few and simple to render the cure of them an ob-
ject of liberal profession. When their diseases became
more numerous and complicated, their investigation and
cure required the aids of philosophy. The profession from
this time became liberal ; and maintained a rank with the
other professions which are founded upon the imperfection
and depravity of human institutions. Physicians are as
necessary in the advanced stages of society as surgeons, al-
though their office is less ancient and certain. There are
many artificial diseases, in which they give certain relief;
and even where their art fails, their prescriptions are still
necessary, in order to smooth the avenues of death.
AMONG THE INDIANS-. 57
I am sorry to add, in this place, that the number
of patients in the hospital, and incurables in the
almshouse of this city, show that we are treading
in the enervated steps of our fellow subjects in
Britain. Our bills of mortality likewise show the
encroachments of British diseases upon us. The
nervous fever has become so familiar to us, that
we look upon it as a natural disease. Dr. Syden-
ham, so faithful in his histoiy of fevers, takes
no notice of it. Dr. Cadwallader informed me,
that it made its first appearance in this city about
five and twenty years ago. It will be impossible to
name the consumption without recalling to our
minds the memory of some friend or relation, who
has perished within these few years by that dis-
ease. Its rapid progress among us has been un-
justly attributed to the growing resemblance of
our climate to that of Great-Britain. The hys-
teric and hypochondriac diseases, once
peculiar to the chambers of the great, are now to
be found in our kitchens and workshops. All
these diseases have been produced by our having
deserted the simple diet and manners of our an-
cestors.
The blessings of literature, commerce, and re-
ligion were not originally purchased at the expence
of health. The complete enjoyment of health is
VOL. I. H
58 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
as compatible with civilization, as the enjoyment
of civil liberty. We read of countries, rich in
every thing that can form national happiness and
national grandeur, the diseases of which are nearly
as few and simple as those of the Indians. We
hear of no diseases among the Jews, while they
were under their democratical form of govern-
ment, except such as were inflicted by a superna-
tural power*. We should be tempted to doubt
* The principal employments of the Jews, like those of
the Romans in their simple ages, consisted in war and hus-
bandry. Their diet was plain, consisting chiefly of vegeta-
bles. Their only remedies were plasters and ointments ;
which were calculated for those diseases which are produced
by accidents. In proportion as they receded from their
simple customs, we find artificial diseases prevail among
them. The leprosy made its appearance in their journey
through the wilderness. King Asa's pains in his feet, were
probably brought on by a fit of the gout. Saul and Nebu-
chadnezzar were afflicted with a melancholy. In the time
of our Saviour, we find an account of all those diseases in
Judea, which mark the declension of a people ; such as, the
palsy, epilepsy, mania, blindness, hemorrhagia uterina, &c.
It is unnecessary to suppose, that they were let loose at this
juncture, on purpose to give our Saviour an opportunity of
making them the chief subject of his miracles. They had
been produced from natural causes, by the gradual depravity
of their manners. It is remarkable, that our Saviour chose
those artificial diseases for the subject of his miracles, in
preference to natural diseases. The efforts of nature, and
AMONG THE INDIANS. 59
the accounts given of the populousness of that
people, did we not see the practice of their simple
customs producing nearly the same populousness
in Egypt, Rome, and other countries of anti-
quity. The empire of China, it is said, contains
more inhabitants than the whole of Europe. The
political institutions of that country have exempted
its inhabitants from a large share of the diseases of
other civilized nations. The inhabitants of Swis-
serland, Denmark, Norway*, and Sweden, enjoy
the chief advantages of civilization without having
surrendered for them the blessings of natural health.
But it is unnecessary to appeal to ancient or re-
mote nations to prove, that health is not incompa-
tible with civilization. The inhabitants of many
parts of New-England, particularly of the province
of Connecticut, are but little affected by artificial dis-
eases. Some of you may remember the time, and
the operation of medicines, are too slow and uncertain in
these cases to detract in the least from the validity of the
miracle. He cured Peter's mother-in-law, it is true, of a
fever ; but to show that the cure was miraculous, the sacred
historian adds (contrary to what is common after a fever),
" that she arose immediately*, and ministered unto them."
* In the city of Bergen, which consists of 30,000 inhabi-
tants, there is but one physician ; who is supported at the
expense of the public. Pontoppidan's Nat. Hist, of Norway,
60 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
our fathers have told those of us who do not, when
the diseases of Pennsylvania were as few and
as simple as those of the Indians. The food of
the inhabitants was then simple ; their only drink
was water ; their appetites were restrained by la-
bour ; religion excluded the influence of sickening
passions ; private hospitality supplied the want of
a public hospital ; nature was their only nurse, and
temperance their principal physician. But I must
not dwell upon this retrospect of primaeval manners ;
and I am too strongly impressed with a hope of a
revival of such happy days, to pronounce them the
golden age of our province.
Our esteem for the customs of our savage
neighbours will be lessened, when we add, that
civilization does not preclude the honours of old
age. The proportion of old people is much
greater among civilized, than among savage na-
tions. It would be easy to decide this assertion
in our favour, by appealing to facts in the natural
histories of Britain, Norway, Sweden, North- Ame-
rica*, and several of the West- India islands.
* It has been urged against the state of longevity in
America, that the Europeans, who settle among us, gene-
rally arrive to a greater age than the Americans. This
is not occasioned so much by a peculiar firmness in their
stamina, as by an increase of vigour which the constitu-
AMONG THE INDIANS. 61
The laws of decency and nature are not ne-
cessarily abolished by the customs of civilized na-
tions. In many of these, we read of women among
whom nature alone still performs the office of a
midwife*, and who feel the obligations of suck-
ling their children to be equally binding with the
common obligations of morality.
tion acquires by a change of climate. A Frenchman (ce-
teris paribus) outlives an Englishman in England. A
Hollander prolongs his life by removing to the Cape of
Good Hope. A Portuguese gains fifteen or twenty years
by removing to Brazil. And there are good reasons to
believe, that a North-American would derive the same ad-
vantages, in point of health and longevity, by removing to
Europe, which a European derives from coming to this
country.
From a calculation made by an ingenious foreigner, it
appears, that a greater proportion of old people are to be
found in Connecticut, than in any colony in North-Ameri-
ca. This colony contains 180,000 inhabitants. They have
no public hospitals or poor-houses ; nor is a beggar to be
seen among them. There cannot be more striking proofs
than these facts of the simplicity of their manners.
* Parturition, in the simple ages of all countries, is per-
formed by nature. The Israelitish women were delivered
even without the help of the Egyptian midwives. We read
of but two women who died in child-birth in the whole
history of the Jews. Dr. Bancroft says, that child-bearing
62 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
Civilization does not render us less fit for the
necessary hardships of war. We read of armies
of civilized nations, who have endured degrees of
cold, hunger, and fatigue, which have not been
exceeded by the savages of any country*.
Civilization does not always multiply the ave-
nues of death. It appears from the bills of mor-
tality, of many countries, that fewer in proportion
die among civilized, than among savage nations.
is attended with so little pain in Guiana, that the women
seem to be exempted from the curse inflicted upon Eve.
These easy births are not confined to warm climates. They
are equally safe and easy in Norway and Iceland, according^
to Pontoppidan and Anderson's histories of those countries,
* Civilized nations have, in the end, always conquered
savages as much by their ability to bear hardships, as by
their superior military skill. Soldiers are not to be chosen
indiscriminately. The greatest generals have looked upon
sound constitutions to be as essential to soldiers, as bravery
or military discipline. Count Saxe refused soldiers born and
bred in large cities ; and sought for such only as were bred
in mountainous countries. The King of Prussia calls young
soldiers only to the dangers and honours of the field, in his
elegant poem, Sur l'Art de la Guerre, chant 1. Old sol-
diers generally lose the advantages of their veteranism, by
their habits of idleness and debauchery. An able general,
and experienced officers, will always supply the defects of
age in young soldiers.
AMONG THE INDIANS. 63
Even the charms of beauty are heightened by
civilization. We read of stateliness, proportion,
fine teeth* and complexions, in both sexes,
forming the principal outlines of national charac-
ters.
The danger of many diseases is not propor-
tioned to their violence, but to their duration.
America has advanced but a few paces in luxury
and effeminacy. There is yet strength enough
in her vitals to give life to those parts which are
decayed. She may tread back her steps. For
this purpose,
I. Let our children be educated in a manner
more agreeable to nature.
* Bad teeth are observed chiefly in middle latitudes,
which are subject to alternate heats and colds. The inha-
bitants of Norway and Russia are as remarkable for their
fine teeth as the inhabitants of Africa. We observe fine
teeth to be universal likewise among the inhabitants of
France, who live in a variable climate. These have been
ascribed to their protecting their heads from the action of
the night air by means of woollen night-caps, and to the
extraordinary attention to the teeth of their children. These
precautions secure good teeth ; and are absolutely necessary
in all variable climates, where people do not adopt all the
customs of the savage life.
.'
64 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
II. Let the common people (who constitute the
wealth and strength of our country) be preserved
from the effects of ardent spirits. Had I a double
portion of all that eloquence which has been em-
ployed in describing the political evils that lately
threatened our country, it would be too little to set
forth the numerous and complicated physical and
moral evils which these liquors have introduced
among us. To encounter this hydra requires an
arm accustomed, like that of Hercules, to vanquish
monsters. Sir William Temple tells us, that for-
merly in Spain no man could be admitted as an
evidence in a court, who had once been convicted
of drunkenness. I do not call for so severe a law
in this country. Let us first try the force of se-
vere manners. Lycurgus governed more by these,
than by his laws. " Boni mores non bonae leges,"
according to Tacitus, were the bulwarks of virtue
among the ancient Germans.
III. I despair of being able to call the votaries
of Bacchus from their bottle, and shall therefore
leave them to be roused by the more eloquent
twinges of the gout.
IV. Let us be cautious what kind of manufac-
tures we admit amongr us. The rickets made their
first appearance in the manufacturing towns in
AMONG THE INDIANS. 65
England. Dr. Fothergill informed me, that he
had often observed, when a pupil, that the greatest
part of the chronic patients in the London Hospi-
tal were Spittal-field weavers. I would not be
understood, from these facts, to discourage those
manufactures which employ women and children :
these suffer few inconveniences from a sedentary-
life : nor do I mean to offer the least restraint to
those manufactories among men, which admit of
free air, and the exercise of all their limbs. Per-
haps a pure air, and the abstraction of spiritous li-
quors, might render sedentary employments less
unhealthy in America, even among men, than in
the populous towns of Great-Britain.
The population of a country is not to be accom-
plished by rewards and punishments. And it is
happy for America, that the universal prevalence
of the protestant religion, the checks lately given
to negro slavery, the general unwillingness among
us to acknowledge the usurpations of primogeni-
ture, the universal practice of inoculation for the
small-pox, and the absence of the plague, render
the interposition of government for that purpose
unnecessary.
These advantages can only be secured to our
country by agriculture. This is the true basis
VOL. I. I
66 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE
of national health, riches, and populousness. Na-
tions, like individuals, never rise higher than when
they are ignorant whether they are tending. It
is impossible to tell from history what will be
the effects of agriculture, industry, temperance,
and commerce, urged on by the competition of
colonies, united in the same general pursuits, in a
country, which for extent, variety of soil, climate,
and number of navigable rivers, has never been
equalled in any quarter of the globe. America is
the theatre where human nature will probably
receive her last and principal literary, moral, and
political honours.
But I recal myself from the ages of futurity*
The province of Pennsylvania has already shown
to her sister colonies, the influence of agriculture
and commerce upon the number and happiness of
a people. It is scarcely a hundred years since
our illustrious legislator, with a handful of men,
landed upon these shores. Although the perfection
of our government, the healthiness of our climate,
and the fertility of our soil, seemed to ensure a
rapid settlement of die province ; yet it would
have required a prescience bordering upon divine,
to have foretold, that in such a short space of
time, the province would contain above 300,000
inhabitants; and that nearly 30,000 of this number
AMONG THE INDIANS. 67
should compose a city, which should be the third,
if not the second in commerce in the British em-
pire. The pursuits of literature require leisure
and a total recess from clearing forests, planting,
building, and all the common toils of settling a
new country : but before these arduous works
were accomplished, the sciences, ever fond of
the company of liberty and industry, chose this
spot for the seat of their empire in this new world.
Our college, so catholic in its foundation, and
extensive in its objects, already sees her sons exe-
cuting offices in the highest departments of soci-
ety. I have now the honour of speaking in the
presence of a most respectable number of philoso-
phers, physicians, astronomers, botanists, patriots,
and legislators ; many of whom have already seized
the prizes of honour, which their ancestors had
allotted to a much later posterity. Our first offer-
ing had scarcely found its way into the temple of
fame, when the oldest societies in Europe turned
their eyes upon us, expecting with impatience to
see the mighty fabric of science, which, like a well-
built arch, can only rest upon the whole of its
materials, completely finished from the treasures
of this unexplored quarter of the globe.
It reflects equal honour upon our society and
the honourable assembly of our province, to ac-
68 NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE, &C.
knowledge, that we have always found the latter
willing to encourage by their patronage, and re-
ward by their liberality, all our schemes for pro-
moting useful knowledge. What may we not ex-
pect from this harmony between the sciences and
government! Methinks I see canals cut, rivers
once impassable rendered navigable, bridges erect-
ed, and roads improved, to facilitate the expor-
tation of grain. I see the banks of our rivers
vying in fruitfulness with the banks of the river
of Egypt. I behold our farmers nobles; our
merchants princes. But I forbear — imagination
cannot swell with the subject.
I beg leave to conclude, by deriving an argu*
ment from our connection with the legislature, to
remind my auditors of the duty they owe to the
society. Patriotism and literature are here con-
nected together ; and a man cannot neglect the one,
without being destitute of the other. Nature and
our ancestors have completed their works among
us ; and have left us nothing to do, but to enlarge
and perpetuate our own happiness.
AN ACCOUNT
OF THE
CLIMATE OF PENNSYLVANIA,
AND ITS
INFLUENCE UPON THE HUMAN BODY,
AN ACCOUNT
OF THE
CLIMATE OF PENNSYLVANIA, &c.
IN order to render the observations upon
the epidemic diseases which compose the follow-
ing volumes more useful, it will be necessary to pre-
fix to them a short account of the climate of Penn-
sylvania, and of its influence upon the human body.
This account may perhaps serve further, to lead to
future discoveries, and more extensive observa-
tions, upon this subject.
The state of Pennsylvania lies between 39° 43'
25", and 42° north latitude, including, of course,
2° 16' 35", equal to 157 miles from its southern to
its northern boundary. The western extremity of
the state is in the longitude of 5° 23' 40", and the
eastern, is that of 27' from the meridian of Phila-
delphia, comprehending in a due west course 311
72 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
miles, exclusive of the territory lately purchased
by Pennsylvania from the United States, of which
as yet no accurate surveys have been obtained.
The state is bounded on the south by part of the
state of Delaware, by the whole state of Maryland,
and by Virginia to her western extremity. The
last named state, the territory lately ceded to Con-
necticut, and Lake Erie, (part of which is included
in Pennsylvania) form the western and north-west-
ern boundaries of the state. Part of New- York,
and the territory lately ceded to Pennsylvania, with
a part of Lake Erie, compose the northern, and
another part of New- York, with a large extent of
New- Jersey (separated from Pennsylvania by the
river Delaware), compose the eastern boundaries
of the state. The lands which form these boun-
daries (except a part of the states of Delaware,
Maryland, and New Jersey) are in a state of na-
ture. A large tract of the western and north-east-
ern parts of Pennsylvania are nearly in the same
uncultivated situation.
The state of Pennsylvania is intersected and di-
versified with numerous rivers and mountains. To
describe, or even to name them all, would far
exceed the limits I have proposed to this account
of our climate. It will be sufficient only to remark,
that one of these rivers, viz. the Susquehannaru
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 73
begins at the northern boundary of the state, twelve
miles from the river Delaware, and winding seve-
ral hundred miles, through a variegated country,
enters the state of Maryland on the southern line,
fifty- eight miles westward of Philadelphia ; that
each of these rivers is supplied by numerous streams
of various sizes ; that tides flow in parts of two of
them, viz. in the Delaware and Schuylkill ; that
the rest rise and fall alternately in wet and dry
weather ; and that they descend with great rapi-
dity, over prominent beds of rocks in many places,
until they empty themselves into the bays of Dela-
ware and Chesapeak on the east, and into the Ohio
on the western part of the state.
The mountains form a considerable part of the
state of Pennsylvania. Many of them appear to be
reserved as perpetual marks of the original empire
of nature in this country. The Allegany, which
crosses the state about two hundred miles from
Philadelphia, in a north, inclining to an eastern
course, is the most considerable and extensive of
these mountains. It is called by the Indians the
back-bone of the continent. Its heighth, in different
places, is supposed to be about 1,300 feet from the
adjacent plains.
VOL. i. K
74 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
The soil of Pennsylvania is diversified by its vi-
cinity to mountains and rivers. The vallies and
bottoms consist of a black mould, which extends
from a foot to four feet in depth. But in general
a deep clay forms the surface of the earth. Im-
mense beds of limestone lie beneath this clay in
many parts of the state. This account of the soil
of Pennsylvania is confined wholly to the lands on
the east side of the Allegany mountain. The soil
on the west side of this mountain, shall be described
in another place.
The city of Philadelphia lies in the latitude of
39° 57', in longitude 75° 8' from Greenwich, and
fifty-five miles west from the Atlantic ocean.
It is situated about four miles due north from
the conflux of the rivers Delaware and Schuylkill.
The buildings, which consist chiefly of brick, ex-
tend nearly three miles north and south along the
Delaware, and above half a mile due west towards
the Schuylkill, to which river the limits of the
city extend, the whole of which includes a distance
of two miles from the Delaware. The land near
the rivers, between the city and the conflux of the
rivers, is in general low, moist, and subject to be
overflowed. The greatest part of it is meadow
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 75
ground. The land to the northward and west-
ward, in the vicinity of the city, is high, and in
general well cultivated. Before the year 1778,
the ground between the present improvements of
the city, and the river Schuylkill, was covered
with woods. These, together with large tracts of
wood to the northward of the city, were cut down
during the winter the British army had posses-
sion of Philadelphia. I shall hereafter mention the
influence which the cutting down of these woods,
and the subsequent cultivation of the grounds in
the neighbourhood of the city, have had upon the
health of its inhabitants.
The mean height of the ground on which the
city stands, is about forty feet above the river De-
laware. One of the longest and most populous
streets in the city rises only a few feet above the
river. The air at the north is much purer than
at the south end of the city ; hence the lamps
exhibit a fainter flame in its southern than its
northern parts.
The tide of the Delaware seldom rises more
than six feet. It flows four miles in an hour. The
width of the river near the city is about a mile,
76 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
The city, with the adjoining districts of South-
wark and the Northern Liberties, contains between
70 and 80,000 inhabitants.
From the accounts which have been handed
down to us by our ancestors, there is reason to
believe that the climate of Pennsylvania has under-
gone a material change. Thunder and lightning
are less frequent, and the cold of our winters and
heat of our summers are less uniform, than they
were forty or fifty years ago. Nor is this all.
The springs are much colder, and the autumns
more temperate than formerly, insomuch that cat-
tle are not housed so soon by one month as they
were in former years. Within the last eight years,
there have been some exceptions to part of these
observations. The winter of the year 1779-80,
was uniformly and uncommonly cold. The river
Delaware was frozen near three months during
this winter, and public roads for waggons and
sleighs connected the city of Philadelphia in many
places with the Jersey shore. The thickness of
the ice in the river near the city, was from sixteen
to nineteen inches, and the depth of the frost in
the ground was from four to five feet, according
to the exposure of the ground, and the quality of
the soil. This extraordinary depth of the frost in
the earth, compared with its depth in more nor-
OF PENNSYLVANIA.
thern and colder countries, is occasioned by the
long delay of snow, which leaves the earth without
a covering during the last autumnal and the first
winter months. Many plants were destroyed by
the intenseness of the cold during this winter. The
ears of horned cattle and the feet of hogs exposed
to the air, were frost-bitten ; squirrels perished in
their holes, and partridges were often found dead
in the neighbourhood of farm houses. The mer-
curv in Januarv stood for several hours at 5° be-
low 0, in Fahrenheit's thermometer; and during the
whole of this month (except on one day), it never
rose in the city of Philadelphia so high as to the
freezing point. ,
The cold in the winter of the year 1783-4 was
as intense, but not so steady, as it was in the winter
that has been described. It differed from it mate-
rially in one particular, viz. there was a thaw in
the month of January, which opened all our rivers
for a few days.
The summer which succeeded the winter of
1779-80, was uniformly warm. The mercury in
the thermometer, during this summer, stood on one
day (the 15th of August) at 95°, and fluctuated
between 93°, and 80° for many weeks. The
thermometer, in every reference that has been, or
78 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
shall be made to it, stood in the shade in the open
air.
I know it has been said by many old people,
that the winters in Pennsylvania are less cold, and
the summers less warm, than they were forty or
fifty years ago. The want of therm ometrical ob-
servations before, and during those years, renders it
difficult to decide this question. Perhaps the diffe-
rence of clothing and sensation between youth and
old age, in winter and summer, may have laid
the foundation of this opinion. I suspect the
mean temperature of the air in Pennsylvania has
not altered, but that the principal change in our
climate consists in the heat and cold being less
confined than formerly to their natural seasons. I
adopt the opinion of Doctor Williamson* respect-
ing the diminution of the cold in the southern, be-
ing occasioned by the cultivation of the northern
parts of Europe ; but no such cultivation has taken
place in the countries which lie to the north-west
of Pennsylvania, nor do the partial and imperfect
improvements which have been made in the north-
west parts of the state, appear to be sufficient to
lessen the cold, even in the city of Philadelphia.
I have been able to collect no facts, which dispose
* American Philosophical Transactions, vol. I.
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 79
me to believe that the winters were colder before
the year 1740, than they have been since. In the
memorable winter of 1739-40, the Delaware was
crossed on the ice, in sleighs, on the 5th of March,
old style, and did not open till the 13th of the
same month. The ground was covered during
this winter with a deep snow, and the rays of the
sun were constantly obscured by a mist, which
hung in the upper regions of the air. In the win*
ter of 1779-80, the river was navigable on the 4th
of March ; the depth of the snow was moderate,
and the gloominess of the cold was sometime sus-
pended for a few days by a cheerful sun. From
these facts, it is probable the winter of 1739-40
was colder than the winter of 1779-80.
The winter of 1804-5 exhibited so many pecu-
liarities that it deserves a place in the history of
the climate of Pennsylvania. The navigation of
the Delaware was obstructed on the 18th of De-
cember. The weather partook of every disagreea-
ble and distressing property of every cold climate on
the globe. These were intense cold, deep snows,
hail, sleet, high winds, and heavy rains. They
generally occurred in succession, but sometimes
most of them took place in the course of four and
twenty hours. A serene and star-light evening,
often preceded a tempestuous day. The mercury
80 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
stood for many days, in Philadelphia, at 4° and 6°
above in Fahrenheit's thermometer. The me-
dium depth of the snow was two feet, but from its
fall being accompanied with high winds, its height
in many places was three and four feet, particularly
in roads, which it rendered so impassable, as to
interrupt business and social intercourse, in many
parts of the state. From the great depth of the
snow, the ground was so much protected from the
cold, that the frost extended but six inches below
i^s surface. The newspapers daily furnished dis-
tressing accounts of persons perishing with the cold
by land and water, and of shipwrecks on every
part of the coast of the United States. Poultry
were found dead, or with frozen feet, in their coops,
in many places.
This intense cold w r as not confined to Pennsyl-
vania. In Norfolk, in Virginia, the mercury stood
at 18° above on the 22d of January. At Lex-
ington, in Kentucky, it stood at on the 21st of
the same month. In Lower Canada the snow was
seven feet in depth, which is three feet deeper than
in common years. And such was the quantity of
ice collected in the northern seas, that a ship was
destroyed, and several vessels injured, by large
masses of it, floating between the 41st and 42d de-
grees of north latitude.
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 81
Great fears were entertained of an inundation in
Pennsylvania, from a sudden thaw of the immense
quantities of snow and ice that had accumulated
during the winter, in every part of the state ; but
happily they both dissolved away so gradually, as
scarcely to injure a bridge or a road. On the
28th of February the Delaware was navigable, and
on the 2d of March no ice was to be seen in it.
Having premised these general remarks, I pro-
ceed to observe, that there are seldom more than
twenty or thirty days in summer or winter, in
Pennsylvania, in which the mercury rises above 80°
in the former, or falls below 30° in the latter sea-
son. Some old people have remarked, that the
number of extremely cold and warm days in suc-
cessive summers and winters, bears an exact pro-
portion to each other. This was strictly true in
the years 1787 and 1788.
The warmest part of the day in summer is at
two, in ordinary, and at three o'clock in the after-
noon, in extremely warm weather. From these
hours, the heat gradually diminishes till the ensuing
morning. The coolest part of the four and twenty
hours, is at the break of day. There are seldom
more than three or four nights in a summer in
which the heat of the air is nearly the same as in
VOL. I. l
82 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
the preceding day. After the warmest days, the
evenings are generally agreeable, and often delight-
ful. The higher the mercury rises in the day-
time, the lower it falls the succeeding night. The
mercury at 80° generally falls to 68°, while it
descends, when at 60°, but to 56°. This dispro-
portion between the temperature of the day and
night, in summer is always greatest in the month
of August. The dews at this time are heavy in
proportion to the coolness of the evening. They
are sometimes so considerable as to wet the clothes ;
and there are instances in which marsh-meadows,
and even creeks, which have been dry during the
summer, have been supplied with their usual wa-
ters from no other source, than the dews which
have fallen in this month, or in the first weeks of
September.
There is another circumstance connected with
the one just mentioned, which contributes very
much to mitigate the heat of summer, and that is*
it seldom continues more than two or three days
without being succeeded with showers of rain, ac*
companied sometimes by thunder and lightning,
and afterwards by a north-west wind, which pro-
duces a coolness in the air that is highly invigo-
rating and agreeable.
OF PENNSYLVANIA.
The warmest weather is generally in the month
of July. But intensely warm days are often felt in
May, June, August, and September. In the an-
nexed table of the weather for the year 1787, there
is an exception to the first of these remarks. It
shows that the mean heat of August was greater
by a few degrees than that of July.
The transitions from heat to cold are often very
sudden, and sometimes to very distant degrees.
After a day in which the mercury has stood at
86° and even 90°, it sometimes falls, in the course
of a single night, to the 65th, and even to the
60th degree, insomuch that fires have been found
necessary the ensuing morning, especially if the
change in the temperature of the air has been
accompanied by rain and a south-east wind. In
a summer month, in the year 1775, the mercury
was observed to fall 20° in an hour and a half.
There are few summers in which fires are not
agreeable during some parts of them. My inge-
nious friend, Mr. David Rittenhouse, whose talent
for accurate observation extends alike to all sub-
jects, informed me, that he had never passed a
summer, during his residence in the country, with-
out discovering frost in every month of the year,
except July.
84 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
The weather is equally variable in Pennsylvania
during the greatest part of the winter. The mer-
cury fell from 37° to 4i° below in four and
twenty hours, between the fourth and fifth of Feb-
ruary, 1788. In this season nature seems to play
at cross purposes. Heavy falls of snow are often
succeeded in a few days by a general thaw, which
frequently in a short time leaves no vestige of the
snow. The rivers Delaware, Schuylkill, and Sus-
quehannah have sometimes been frozen (so as to
bear horses and carriages of all kinds) and thawed
so as to be passable in boats, two or three times in
the course of the same winter. The ice is formed
for the most part in a gradual manner, and seldom
till the water has been previously chilled by a fall
of snow. Sometimes its production is more sud-
den. On the night of the 31st of December,
1764, the Delaware was completely frozen over
between ten o'clock at night and eight the next
morning, so as to bear the weight of a man. An
unusual vapour like a fog was seen to rise from
the water, in its passage from a fluid to a solid
state.
This account of the variableness of the weather
in winter, does not apply to every part of Penn-
sylvania. There is a line about the 41° of the
state, beyond which the winters are steady and
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 85
regular, insomuch that the earth there is seldom
without a covering of snow during the three win-
ter months. In this line the climate of Pennsylva-
nia forms a union with the climate of the eastern
and northern states.
The time in which frost and ice begin to show
themselves in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia,
is generally about the latter end of October or the
beginning of November. But the intense cold
seldom sets in till about the the 20th or 25th of De-
cember ; hence the common saying, " as the day
" lengthens, the cold strengthens." The coldest
weather is commonly in January. The navigation
of the river Delaware, after being frozen, is seldom
practicable for large vessels, before the first week
in March.
As in summer there are often days in which fires
are agreeable, so there are sometimes days in win-
ter in which they are disagreeable. Vegetation
has been observed in all the winter months. Gar-
lic was tasted in butter in January, 1781. The
leaves of the willow, the blossoms of the peach
tree, and the flowers of the dandelion and the cro-
cus, were all seen in February, 1779 ; and I well
recollect, when a school-boy, to have seen
an apple orchard in full bloom, and small ap-
86 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
« pies on many of the trees, in the month of De-
cember.
A cold day in winter is often succeeded by a
moderate evening. The coldest part of the four
and twenty hours, is generally at the break of day.
In the most intense cold which has been re-
corded in Philadelphia, within the last twenty years,
the mercury stood at 5° below 0. But it appears
from the accounts published by Messieurs Mason
and Dixon, in the 58th volume of the Transactions
of the Royal Society of London, that the mercury
stood at 22° below 0, on the 2d of January, 1767,
at Brandywine, about thirty miles to the westward
of Philadelphia. They inform us, that on the 1st
of the same month, the mercury stood at 20°, and
on the dav before at 7° below 0. I have to lament
that I am not able to procure any record of the
temperature of the air in the same year in Phila-
delphia. From the variety in the height and qua-
lity of the soil, and from the difference in the
currents of winds and the quantity of rain and
snow which fall in different parts of the state, it is
very probable this excessive cold may not have
extended thirty miles from the place where it was
first perceived.
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 87
The greatest degree of heat upon record in Phi-
ladelphia, is 95°.
The standard temperature of the air in the city
of Philadelphia is 52^°, which is the temperature
of our deepest wells, as also the mean heat of our
common spring water.
The spring in Pennsylvania is generally less
pleasant than in many other countries. In March
the weather is stormy, variable, and cold. In
April, and sometimes in the beginning of May, it
is moist, and accompanied by a degree of cold
which has been called rawness, and which, from
its disagreeable effects upon the temper, has been
called the sirocco of this country. From the vari-
able nature of the weather in the spring, vegetation
advances very differently in different years. The
colder the spring, the more favourable it proves to
the fruits of the earth. The hopes of the farmer
from his fruit-trees in a warm spring are often
blasted by a frost in April and May. A fall of
snow is remembered with regret by many of them,
on the night between the 3d and 4th of May, in
the year 1774 ; also on the morning of the 8th of
May, 1803. Such was its quantity on the latter
day, that it broke down the limbs of many poplar
trees. This effect was ascribed to its not being
88 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
accompanied with any wind. The colder the win-
ter, the greater delay we generally observe in the
return of the ensuing spring.
Sometimes the weather during the spring months
is cloudy and damp, attended occasionally with a
gentle fall of rain resembling the spray from a cata-
ract of water. A day of this kind of weather is
called, from its resemblance to a damp day in
Great-Britain, " an English day." This damp
weather seldom continues more than three or four
days. The month of May, 1786, will long be
remembered, for having furnished a very uncom-
mon instance of the absence of the sun for fourteen
days, and of constant damp or rainy weather.
The month of June is the only month in the
year which resembles a spring month in the south-
ern countries of Europe. The weather is then
generally temperate, the sky is serene, and the ver-
dure of the country is universal and delightful.
The autumn is the most agreeable season in the
year in Pennsylvania. The cool evenings and
mornings, which generally begin about the first
week in September, are succeeded by a moderate
temperature of the air during the day. This
kind of weather continues with an increase of cold
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 89
scarcely perceptible, till the middle of October,
when the autumn is closed by rain, which some-
times falls in such quantities as to produce de-
structive freshes in the rivers and creeks, and
sometimes descends in gentle showers, which con-
tinue, with occasional interruptions by a few fair
days, for two or three weeks. These rains are
the harbingers of the winter ; and the Indians have
long ago taught the inhabitants of Pennsylvania,
that the degrees of cold during the winter, are in
proportion to the quantity of rain which falls during
the autumn*.
From this account of the temperature of the air
in Pennsylvania, it is evident that there are seldom
* I cannot help agreeing with Mr. Kirvvan, in one of his
remarks upon the science of meteorology, in the preface to
his estimate of the temperature of different latitudes. " This
" science (says he), if brought to perfection, would enable
" us at least to foresee those changes in the weather which
" we could not prevent. Great as is the distance between
" such knowledge and our own present attainments, we have
" no reason to think it above the level of the powers of the
" human mind. The motions of the planets must have ap-
" peared as perplexed and intricate to those who first con-
" templated them ; yet, by persevering industry, they are
" now known to the utmost precision. The present is (as
" the great Leibnitz expresses it) in every case pregnant
VOL. I. M
90 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
more than four months in which the weather is
agreeable without a fire.
In winter the winds generally come from the
north-west in fair, and from the north-east in nvet
weather. The north-west winds are uncommonly
dry as well as cold. It is in consequence of the
violent action of these winds that trees have uni-
formly a thicker and more compact bark on their
northern than on their southern exposures. Even
brick houses are affected by the force and dryness
of these north-west winds : hence it is much more
difficult to demolish the northern than the southern
walls of an old brick house. This fact was com-
municated to me by an eminent bricklayer in the
city of Philadelphia.
The winds in fair weather in the spring, and
in warm weather in the summer, blow from the
south-v/est and from west- north-west. The raw
air before-mentioned comes from the north-east.
The south-west winds likewise usually bring with
a with the future, and the connection must be found by long
" and attentive observation."
The influence which the perfection of this science must
have upon health, agriculture, navigation, and commerce, is
too obvious to be mentioned.
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 91
them those showers of rain in the spring and sum-
mer which refresh the earth. They moreover
moderate the heat of the weather, provided they
are succeeded by a north-west wind. Now and
then showers of rain come from the west-north-
west.
There is a common fact connected with the ac-
count of the usual winds in Pennsylvania, which
it may not be improper to mention in this place.
While the clouds are seen flying from the south-
west, the scud, as it is called, or a light vapour, is
seen at the same time flying below the clouds from
the north-east.
The moisture of the air is much greater than
formerly, occasioned probably by the exhalations
which in former years fell in the form of snow,
now descending in the form of rain. The depth
of the snow is sometimes between two and three
feet, but in general seldom exceeds between six
and nine inches.
Hail frequently descends with snow in winter.
Once in four or five years large and heavy showers
of hail fall in the spring and summer. They
generally run in narrow veins (as they are called)
92 ACCOUNT OF THE CLIMATE
of thirty or forty miles in length, and two or three
miles in breadth. The heaviest shower of hail that
is remembered in Philadelphia, did not extend in
breadth more than half a mile north and south.
Some of the stones weighed half an ounce. The
windows of many houses were broken by them.
This shower fell in May, 1783.
From sudden changes in the air, rain and snow
often fall together, forming what is commonly call-
ed sleet.
In the uncultivated parts of the state, the snow
sometimes lies on the ground till the first week in
April. The backwardness of the spring has been
ascribed to the passage of the air over the undis-
solved beds of snow and ice which usually remain,
after the winter months are past, on the north-west
grounds and waters of the state, and of the adja-
cent country.
The dissolution of the ice and snow in the spring
is sometimes so sudden as to swell the creeks and
rivers in every part of the state to such a degree,
as not only to lay waste the hopes of the husband-
man from the produce of his lands, but in some
instances to sweep his barns, stables, and even his
OF PENNSYLVANIA. 93
dwelling house into their currents*. The wind,
during a general thaw, comes from the south-west
or south-east.
* The following account of the thaw of the river Susque-
hannah, in the spring of 1784, was published by the author
in the Columbian Magazine, for November, 1786. It may
serve to illustrate a fact related formerly in the history of
the winters in Pennsylv
