The Influence of Tropical Climates on European Constitutions

PREFACE

TO THE THIRD LONDON EDITION.

THE First Edition of the following Work was published in 1813, chiefly at the Author's own risk and expense, for he could find no Bookseller to undertake it. The Second, consisting, as the First, of 1000 copies, was published in 1818, and has been more than six months out of print. In the present Edition the Author has endeavoured to render the work more extensively useful than ever, by placing before the reader a series of Analytical Reviews of the best modern Works, embracing the Diseases of Tropical and other sultry Climates. Whoever has seen the diversified maladies produced by climate, season, constitution, and co-existing circumstances, will easily appreciate the utility of thus concentrating the experience, observations, and sentiments of many individuals, as multiplied resources in exigencies for ever varying.

The Author has the satisfaction of knowing that the former Editions of this Work have proved serviceable, not only to his junior Professional Brethren, serving in sultry climates; but also to a very considerable proportion of Naval, Military, and Civil Officers sojourning between the Tropics. In the Eastern Hemisphere a Work of this description was imperiously called for, where many of the Company's Officers, as Dr. Balfour has justly remarked" being constantly employed during the first years of "their service, in the most unhealthy corners of country, remote "from medical assistance, their success, reputation, health, and "lives, and the lives of all around them, depend often on the "medical skill which they may have acquired."*

To the last and present editions of this Work, a new feature has been added-the consideration of Climates bordering on the Tropics, the diseases of which, at particular periods, resemble those of equatorial regions. The Author is convinced that this is an essential requisite in every Work on diseases of the Torrid Zone. These diseases acknowledge no cancer or capricorn boundaries. The same class sallies occasionally from La Plata to the Scheldt -sweeping the Banks of the Ganges, the Euphrates, the Nile, the Tiber, the Guadalquiver, the Chesapeake, the Mississippi, the Oronoco, and every sinuosity of the great Western Archipelago. He then who studies the influence of Tropical Climates on

Preface to Treatise on Sol-Lunar Influence. p. xiii.

European Constitutions, by parallels of latitude, will do so inefficiently. It is like studying the physiology of the stomach or liver, without regarding the functions of the surrounding viscera. An appeal may be made to the parallel between the Valley of Egypt and the Coast of Coromandel, for the truth of this remark. It will there be seen that the climate and diseases of the one elucidate those of the other, and that this comparison has solved a problem in Etiology which has hitherto proved a stumbling block to Physicians-namely, the question of an indigenous poison existing in India, and occasioning the prevalence of Hepatitis there.

During the last few years, the Author has had extensive communication, personal and epistolary, with a very great number of his professional Brethren, on their return from various Climates of the Globe, and he can conscientiously aver that their reports have not given the slightest encouragement to change any of the sentiments or opinions broached in the former Editions of the Work. This is a source of great gratification to him-and on this fact he may reasonably ground a hope of the permanent utility of the publication to those for whom it is designed.

To the present Edition there is an addition of at least 250 pages of important matter, as will be readily seen on a comparison with the Second Edition. A few articles have been omitted, and others curtailed, in order that the new matter might not swell the Work beyond a single volume. And here the Author is in justice beyond to acknowledge the able and valuable assistance which he has received from Dr. Dickson and Mr. Sheppard, in the arrangment and composition of an important division of the Work.

The Author does not consider it necessary to make any further prefatory remarks, as the Work must rest on its own merits, whatever they may be, in its way through the World. He is very conscious, at the same time, that numerous imperfections and deficiencies may be readily detected in it by those who find it easier to judge than act-and whose trade is to point out the failings of others, without correcting their own. To the Criticisms of this class Author is perfectly callous-while to the judgment and opinions of the good and the wise, he acknowledges himself to be tremblingly sensible. On the liberality and indulgence of these he confides-convinced that the well-intentioned effort to be useful to his junior Brethren will be rewarded with the approbation of all those in whose esteem it is desirable to stand.