facts which properly claim confidence do not exist, and it will doubtless be a long time before the states will authorize them. I stated above that such information was confined to the large cities, I might have added, to the large cities of the seaboard. In the West,-in Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, the interior everywhere, there are, so far as I have been able to ascertain, by actual visits and an extensive correspondence and inquiry, no records at all! As to the entire south, there are very few. In Maryland one, (in Baltimore,) throughout Virginia one only, (at Norfolk,) in the Carolinas one, (and an excellent one, at Charleston,) in Georgia one, (at Savannah,) in Alabama one, (at Mobile,) in Louisiana one, (at New Orleans,) in Mississippi one, (at Natchez,) in their interiors, none! None in the entire west, so far as I have been able to ascertain !

One of the first inquiries which should be made of a country, when one thinks of visiting, trading with or settling, is in relation to its health. Various parts of the United States are avoided on account of supposed insalubrity, as part of this state, when it is now well known to us that those very portions are amongst the healthiest in the Union. And again, all agricultural countries are sickly when first opened and settled, and become healthy soon after the country becomes cleared, cultivated and subdued to the purposes of man. Such is eminently the fact with regard to the long settled parts of the southern states, while countries and cities supposed to be healthy have been found by examination and statistical records to be far the reverse.

But this is not all. Various parts of our widely extended country have their special liabilities to particular forms of disease. Individuals and their families have also their predispositions to special afflictions. These peculiarities can be worn out and gotten rid of entirely by removing from one part, where they are very liable to occur and do produce great mortality, to other portions where they are almost unknown. For instance, there are some portions of our country where pulmonary affections are very rare, and particularly consumption, and other portions where they take off near twenty-five per cent. of the entire mortality. A knowledge of this fact is of the last importance to individuals and families who have inherited the phthysical diathesis, and so of many other forms of disease which I need not specify. Then, again, countries change in their liabilities to particular diseases, and these facts can only be made known through accurate records worthy of confidence, at successive periods.

The importance of a registry law to a political community may be compared to the value to an individual knowing the state of his health and of his affairs; a man who takes no note of these may be ruined before he knows it. So a body politic, that is ignorant of its condition, of a prosperous or adverse state of its affairs, of what may advance the one or remedy the state of the other, may be actually retrograding while it is supposed to be thriving, and may be suffering while in reach of all the gifts of fortune. This would be the more obvious if this was the general belief throughout the world, but the state of foreign and conterminous countries is constantly being made known, constituting statistical information; the wants and the sources of supply are constantly being published and the balance struck ;-in fact, the limit to the advantages of a people becoming acquainted

with their condition, is about as boundless as the wants of man, for thus only can it be bettered, (about as strong a feeling in America as in any other,) and some may extend it to all human knowledge, and a reference to the relative condition of nations will show that their prosperous or adverse condition,-indeed, their elevation in the scale of intelligence, is in a great measure dependent upon an enlightened knowledge of their own condition and wants, and of those of other parts of the world whence they may supply them.

This kind of knowledge of our actual condition, and the short step resulting to the development of our capacity, is more wanting in the south than in any part of our widely extended country. And how much has she lost and is losing politically, and in every element of prosperity, from a want of a suitable knowledge of her condition and capacity? With the best climate, the richest soil, the finest water power, and mineral wealth inexhaustible, she constantly sees her poorer and less advantageously situated sisters in the inhospitable climates of the north, far outstripping her in every element of wealth, prosperity and power. It is a sacred duty we owe to ourselves to aid in every way to develop our resources, to exhibit the true sanitary condition of our country, and the immense advantages the south offers to the emigrant to add his stores to ours, and with united industry to make her fair fields the very garden of the confederacy. One of the most important is to remove the bugbear in relation to the effect of the climate on health, the actual facts of the ratio of death to population. The average of death and the small portion of time embraced in the confinement of sickness in the interior of this state would stagger credulity, as might be made apparent, were this the place to publish some tabular statements, I have prepared (for another purpose) to exhibit the comparative health and longevity of our people, and the larger proportion of population we possess of the productive age than of any country known. Some years ago, when the Legislature of Louisiana were about authorizing a geological recognizance of the state, I sug gested that a medical commission should be added to procure the facts, (so far as they could be had,) of the relative sanitary condition of every portion of the state, but it was not adopted I then suggested that it should belong to the now merely nominal office of Surgeon General of the State, and that it should be made his duty to visit every part of the state biennially, as under the old constitution it was made the duty of the governor, (most unwisely repealed in the new,) and obtain all the information accessible in relation to the salubrity of the country, and report the same to the Legislature for publication; but all modes sink into insignificance when compared to a registration law, such as is adopted by that enlightened state, Massachusetts, who has set an example worthy of being followed by the other states of the Union, and to none is it more important than to this state, which has suffered more than any other from the reputation of perennial insalubrity, and is probably least deserving of it, (New Orleans excepted, where most of the causes are very obvious and removable.) Louisiana has acquired distinction in having been the first state to establish a Bureau of Statistics, which you have so much contributed to render useful. She would establish her claim to one of much more substantial utility, were she to enact a suitable registration law, through which

her general salubrity and the incalculable sources of wealth and prosperity which she offers to the enterprising and industrious, could be published to the world.

XXII. SANITARY HISTORY AND CONDITION OF
FRANKLIN, IN MASSACHUSETTS.

THE COUNTY OF

[The following article is compiled from a valuable communication made in 1842, to the Massachusetts Medical Society, by Stephen W. Williams, M. D., of Deerfield.]

In 1735, the scarlet fever, which so extensively ravaged the coasts and interior towns in New England, and was so fatal as to be called "the plague among children," prevailed in Franklin County to a considerable extent. It was again rife here in 1742. The winter of 1740-41 was the coldest ever known in America. A great many cattle perished from scarcity of fodder. Sickly seasons have often occurred after severe alternations of weather. I have no very accurate data upon which I can absolutely depend in relation to the dates of epidemic diseases here for a considerable period of time. As nearly as I can obtain information, the measles and canker-rash prevailed here in 1750. The dysentery prevailed here in 1751. The canker-rash was also prevalent here in 1756. The lung fever, as it was called, prevailed here in 1775.

In 1777, the small-pox prevailed in the town of Deerfield, and a pest-house, or hospital, was established in a remote part of the town. It was supposed that it originated or was taken from some of the troops of the American revolutionary army, as they were often passing through this town, and as that complaint was almost constantly prevalent among them. The dysentery also prevailed extensively here at the same time, and also at Greenfield, Shelburne and Conway. At the latter place there were 73 deaths from it that season. Conway, at that time, could not have contained more than 1000 inhabitants. Willard, in his History of Greenfield, says, "In 1777 a great sickness prevailed here (Greenfield) and at Shelburne; fifty died in Greenfield, and eighty at Shelburne." The population of Greenfield at that time was, probably, about 900, and of Shelburne, about 700; so that it, indeed, might be called "a pestilence which walked at noonday." The canker-rash prevailed extensively in Deerfield, and in some other towns in this county, from 1792 to 1795. Intermittent fevers also prevailed in Deerfield about the year 1794, in consequence of the erection of a dam across Deerfield River at Stebbin's meadow. This complaint had prevailed extensively in this town for several previous years, but in consequence of the drying up of the marshes by cultivating the soil, no cases have originated here since the commencement of the nineteenth century. In 1789, 1790, 1791 and 1792, the scarlet fever and canker-rash prevailed at Rowe. The canker-rash prevailed in Hawley in 1794 and in 1830. It also prevailed in the adjoining town of Plainfield in 1794, and in Buckland, to a considerable extent, in 1838. The dysentery prevailed extensively in War wick in 1822 and 1824. Eleven died of this complaint in the former year and sixteen in the latter.

In 1802, the malignant epidemic dysentery prevailed at Greenfield and in Shelburne. The population of Greenfield at that time was not far from 1300. The whole number of deaths there that year was sixty-eight, fifty-seven died of the dysentery, and most of these were young people. The population of Shelburne at that time was not far from 1100. Thirty-four died that year in that town. The dysentery also prevailed extensively at Springfield. The mortality was so great that season from the dysentery, in Greenfield, that the stores were generally shut, and business of almost all kinds was suspended. There were scarcely well people enough to take care of the sick. Travellers avoided the place as much as possible; and many who passed through the town tied mufflers over their faces to prevent inhaling infectious matter. Several families removed from the town, and particularly their children. Willard says, "One hundred and one persons went away to other places in consequence of the sickness; and at one period there was not an inhabited house in the place where there was not one or more sick or dead. Five coffins were made on one Sabbath day alone! Some families lost five, some three, and some lost all their children. The first death occurred July 18th. Doctors Wells and Stone attributed the sickness to a scarcity of fruit, so necessary in hot weather to correct the bile, and to a putrid atmosphere occasioned by a great flood in June, that left stagnant water on the low lands, which by the intense heat of the weather, and being blown hither by the southerly winds, affected the air so sensibly that its insalubrity might plainly be perceived by any one walking abroad in the evening. On the 16th of August the wind blew up from the northwest, the rain fell copiously, the heat was mitigated, and most of the sick were recovering.

In the spring of 1803 the measles prevailed at Deerfield as an epidemic. It was followed in the summer by one of the most severe and mortal dysenteries which ever prevailed in this part of the world, in proportion to the number of inhabitants. It prevailed also in Conway and Northfield almost to as great an extent as at Deerfield, and likewise at Northampton, in the county of Hampshire, about sixteen miles south. I am not able to obtain the number of deaths in the two latter places from it, but in Conway the whole number of deaths in 1803 was eighty-four, sixty of which were from the dysentery. Conway then contained not far from two thousand inhabitants. Why it should have prevailed in Greenfield, Shelburne and Springfield, and not in Deerfield, Conway, Northfield and Northampton, the same years, is to me inexplicable, The weather in 1803 was hot and sultry, attended with a great many very severe thunder showers. It commenced at Deerfield in the month of June, much earlier in the season than that complaint usually begins, and did not terminate till after the severe frosts in November. What was very singular was, that almost every patient who was attacked with the dysentery, after having had the measles, died of that complaint. The disease in Deerfield was confined principally to the main street, then containing, probably, about three hun dred and fifty inhabitants. There were but few cases in the remote parts of the town. The number of inhabitants that year in the whole of the town was, probably, not far from 1400. There were sixty-five deaths in this town that year; and fifty-four, at least, of these were

from the dysentery. As in Greenfield the year before, whole families sent their children abroad, and but few of them, who were thus sent away, were attacked with the complaint.

When we reflect that the disorder did not spread much out of the main street, and that it was confined almost to a population of not over five hundred, we come to the conclusion, that it was almost as fatal as the yellow fever in Philadelphia, in the year 1793, in proportion to the number of inhabitants. Its ravages were more fatal among infants than adults. It was not uncommon to see two and sometimes three funerals a day in one street, for several weeks in succession. It was of a very malignant and typhoid character, and seemed to yield to no remedies.

In the latter part of the summer and beginning of the autumn of 1807, the spotted fever, as it was then called, prevailed at Deerfield and at Greenfield. It commenced in a poor family at the west part of the town of Deerfield, in an isolated situation. There were various opinions as to the origin of it. Many supposed that one of the inmates of that family brought the disease from Hartford, where he had recently been, and where it was said the complaint prevailed. He had the disease rather lightly and recovered. Others believed that it originated in the family, which was dirty and poor. The house was old and the floor loose. It was said that they were in the habit of raising a board in the floor, and throwing the offals and bones of their meals under it, and leaving them there to putrify. I shall not undertake to decide the question; but certain it is, that several of the family had the complaint, and died in quick succession. Soon after, the disorder made its appearance in a neighboring family about a hundred rods off. Both these families, and all in which the fever prevailed, lived upon the side of a gently elevated mountain several hundred feet above the bed of Deerfield River, and in almost isolated situations.

To show the rapidity of the action of the complaint, I will mention the fact that my father was attending upon an obstetric case in that neighborhood, when one of the attendants, an aged lady, was taken unwell and went home. She grew worse and sent for him, but he could not be spared. He went to her as soon as he could be released, which was in the course of an hour or two. When he arrived the old lady was in the agonies of death, and she very soon expired. Very soon after, a little grand-daughter of the old lady was attacked in my father's arms, with the same complaint, and in a few minutes it died. While the attendants were laying out the old lady and child, the mother of the child, and daughter of the old lady, was attacked with the same complaint, and in less than twelve hours from the first attack of this fever in this family, the grandmother, the mother, and the grand-daughter, lay corpses in the same room! The complaint spread in a few families, when it was arrested, and never more made its appearance there. A few cases of it, however, occurred at the northwest part of the town, in Greenfield, and in various other parts of the county the next year, and was quite mortal. It soon subsided, and

1 "The origin of the spotted fever which prevailed here in 1806, was traced to animal and vegetable putrefaction, and a want of proper attention to cleanliness in the families in which it prevailed. Its destructive ravages was confined principally to these families."See Holmes's Dissertation, p. 90.