Address of S.P. Hildreth, M.D., president of the third Medical Convention of Ohio : delivered at Cleveland, May 14th, 1839.

  • Hildreth, Samuel P. (Samuel Prescott), 1783-1863.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of S.P. Hildreth, M.D., president of the third Medical Convention of Ohio : delivered at Cleveland, May 14th, 1839. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    15- peared until partial openings had been made in the primeval forests, and the wet low grounds exposed to the action of a summer sun. Halt-way business in cultivating and civilizing a country, is like half-way work in every other affair, olten pro- ductive of evil. Accordingly we find that a partially cultivated region is more sickly than one which is either totally covered with forests, or in a state of complete redemption. While it is shaded with trees the swamps and wet low grounds, which more or less abound in all new countries, especially on the wa* ter courses, remain during the summer filled with water, and quite harmless ; but as soon as the trees are cut away and their trunks and branches lelt to moulder and decay in the heats of summer, the '-Hydra of the ancients is let loose, and all the arrows of Apollo can hardly slay the monster. The partially evaporated waters and reeking shores of the swamps, exhale a sickly malaria which the morning togs and the noon-day breezes waft to the cabin ofthe new settler, and his humble but cheerful hearth is soon clouded with sickness, sorrow, and pain. The hunters and wild borderers who preceded the actual settler, generally suffered much less from sickness. Their cabins were placed immediately on the banks of some river or creek. The clearing around their huts was generally very small—seldom more than an acre—a large portion of which would be shaded by the tall trees. Like the savages around ihern, the largest share of their time was spent in the forest, and the support of their families depended altogether on fishing and the fruits of the chase Their diseases were few and simple. Since the first settlement of the country many of the disorders have chang- ed their type and character. From the year 1788, the period of the first improvements in Ohio, to the year 1807, the date of the first great epidemic, a large proportion ofthe diseases originated in exposures to wet, cold, hunger, and fatigue, and were gene- of an inflammatory type, such as RheiimaUs.ms, Pleurisys, Pneumonias, Scarlatina, and Small-pox. Ophthalmias were also common. For the first nine years, the inhabitants made but little progress in clearing their lands of the hugeforest trees which covered the rich alluvions on the Ohio and Muskingum rivers. The greater portion of their time and strength was oc- cupied in building stockaded garrisons and blockhouses, and watching the movements ofthe Indians. Sometimes their lives were in danger from famine, and at others from the rifle and tomahawk of the savage. In the spring and summer ofthe year 1700, the inhabitants of Washington County suffered severely from want of wholesome food. Very little land had as yet been cleared, and a severe and untimely frost in September of the preceding year, hav- ing destroyed or greatly damaged the crops of corn on the Monongahela, where they chiefly looked for their bread stuff, c