History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

CHAPTER IIMEDICAL GEOGRAPHY OF ILLINOISBy DAVID J.DAVIS, M.D.PHYSIOGRAPHY AND DISEASEILLINOIS has been called the hub of America, situated as it is in theheart of the great Mississippi Valley. It is shaped somewhat like a wedgewith bulging side and a flat top. Water, chiefly as rivers, largely encirclesit. Its area is 56,665 square miles. It lies between north latitude 47 ° and42°.3o' and in longitude between 87°.35' and gi^i'. It has an annualrainfall of 35 inches, approximately. The summers are hot and the wintersare cold. Weather conditions are largely determined by the fairly regularcyclonic and anticyclonic atmospheric movements that characterize theMiddle West generally. These movements are such as to predispose to frequentdeadly tornadoes in the spring of the year.Illinois is a rich, prosperous region where corn, soybeans, grains, fruittrees, livestock, clovers, grasses, vegetables, trees and shrubs luxuriate, andwhere mosquitoes, flies, ticks and many other insects thrive. Beneath itsfertile soil occur here and there prodigious amounts of coal, oil, lime rock,and many valuable minerals too numerous to mention here.In 1850, there resided in the state a population of 851,470. By 1900, thishad increased to 4,82 1,550, of which number about 5 per cent were Negroes.The number of American Indians was insignificant.Chicago, the second largest city in the United States, is located near thenortheast corner of the state on Lake Michigan. Several other citiesmoderate size are more or less uniformly distributed.In recent years, the rural and urban health problems have not presentedserious difficulties. This was not always true. A half century ago, in orderto control such problems, it was necessary to resort to the most monumentalsanitary engineering enterprise ever undertaken. This was no less a projectthan to construct a huge canal, diverting the waters from Lake Michiganof the St. Lawrence River system across the watershed and into the MississippiRiver system at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. It was asuccess and saved the lives of millions of people.The people of Illinois, on the whole, were anything but healthful duringthe half century 1850 to 1900. Children's diseases, contagions, malariaof