He thought that malaria
could be carried _up_ a slope, but has never been known to descend, and
that, consequently, an intervening hill affords sufficient protection
against marsh malaria. He had known cases where the edges of a river were
healthy and the uplands malarious.
In Santa Maura and Zante, where he had been stationed with the army, he
had observed that the edge of a marsh would be comparatively healthy,
while the higher places in the vicinity were exceedingly unhealthy. He
thought that there were a great many mixed diseases which began like ague
and terminated very differently; those diseases would, no doubt, assume a
very different form if they were not produced by the marsh air; many
diseases are very difficult to treat, from being of a mixed character
beginning like marsh fevers and terminating like inflammatory fevers, or
diseases of the chest.
Dr. George Farr testified that rheumatism and tic-doloreux were very
common among the ladies who live at the Woolwich Arsenal, near the Thames
marshes. Some of these cases were quite incurable, until the patients
removed to a purer atmosphere.
W. H. Gall, M. D., thought that the extent to which malaria affected the
health of London, must of course be very much a theoretical question; "but
it is very remarkable that diseases which are not distinctly miasmatic, do
become much more severe in a miasmatic district. Influenzas, which
prevailed in England in 1847, were very much more fatal in London and the
surrounding parts than they were in the country generally, and influenza
and ague poisons are very nearly allied in their effects.
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