The New Lenox malaria case / by J.F.A. Adams.

  • Adams, J. F. Alleyne (James Forster Alleyne), 1844-1914.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The New Lenox malaria case / by J.F.A. Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The testimony for the Commonwealth may be sum- marized as follows: — In 1870 the dam of the Smith Paper Company, near Lenox depot, was raised three feet, a dam four feet high having previously existed at the same plate. The effect of this was to greatly enlarge the reservoir by overflowing the meadows on either side of the river, the water being set back for a distance of four miles in a direct line. In the upper half of this dis- tance the water was not ordinarily raised above the banks of the river, but in the lower half the banks were submerged, and the water spread out irregularly to a width of about a quarter of a mile on the average. This surface was diversified with inlands and tongues of land, varying in shape and extent with the height of the water. When this was flowing over the dam a considerable pond appeared, with marshy holders, but when the water level was one or two feet below the crest of the dam large tracts of muddy bottom were exposed, all vegetation being killed, and nothing remaining but the decaying skeletons of trees and bushes. With the daily variations in the height of water portions of this muddy bottom were alternately covered with water and exposed to the sun and air. The extent of these fluctuations depended upon the volume of water in the river, being very large in times of drought and low water, as during the summer and fall of 1880, and less in more rainy seasons, as those of 1881 and 1882. Outside of the water line the land was saturated with water, and would produce onlv coarse marsh grass in place of the valuable hay and other crops which had formerly grown there. There were also numerous depressions in the surface of the meadow, the vestiges of former flood- or changes in the channel of the river. Some of these wereconnected with the river and called -coves, others were detached and called “pockets. Oie pockets, which formerly drained off readily after fresh- ets, and produced a good quality of grass, were con- verted, by the raising of the water level, into stagnant