History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

The Hardy Pioneer 29an area as large as the Old Northwest, the pioneer period was a thing ofthe past in certain regions before it had even begun in others. Ohio, admittedto the Union in1803, had a population of 1,500,000 by 1840, whilein that same year Wisconsin, whose territorial organization was only fouryears old, counted 30,000 inhabitants, living for the most part in thesouthernmost quarter of the territory.In 1839 J.Gould, a Massachusetts farmer, described Chicago as beingsurrounded by "a low flat prairie which extends either way about 10 miles,"and asserted that "in wet seasons the roads in the vicinity are almostimpassable." 9The early settler, his doctor, and the traveler all knew that whereverstagnant water was to be found the ague would also be encountered. Lowground near rivers and creeks gave out "putrid exhalations." 10 Swamps,which only partially dried up in the summer, filled the air with "noxiouseffluvia." u According to James Flint, the "gaseous constituents" whichevolved from rapidly decomposing vegetable matter "give a perceptibletaint to the air, and are understood to form the miasmata that occasionagues, bilious fevers, and liver complaints." 12 Edmund T. Flagg wasequally positive. "A soil of such astonishing depth and fertility," he wrotein The Far West, 13 veiled from the purifying influences of the sun by therank luxuriance of its vegetation, in the stifling sultriness of midsummersends forth vast quantities of mephitic vapour fatal to life; while the decayof the enormous vegetables poisons theatmosphere with putrid exhalations."As late as the1880's there were old settlers who attributed their boutswith the shakes to these same intermediary agents. "Miasma," one confidentlyasserted, "had caused the trouble." Another wrote: "The earliestpioneer found Michigan healthy, but later so much ground was ploughedup and the malarial gases set free, that the country became very sickly." 14That the evil agent was a winged pest instead of a mephitic vapor, nonesuspected. Yet the mosquito was present in numbers unimaginable today.William Faux, writing of Birkbeck's English Settlement, said that in thesummer and fall of 1818 the mosquitoes were so bad that they almost droveout the settlers. 15 Mrs. Trollope, venturing into the woods adjacent to8"Wanderings in the West in 1839," in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society,December, 1940, 389-411.10David Thomas, Travels Through the Western Country (Auburn, N. Y., 1819),213-18.u Fordham, Personal Narrative, 231-32.^Letters From America, in Early Western Travels, IX, 189.13In Early Western Travels, XXVII, 9414 A. D. P. Van Buren in Michigan Pioneer Collections, V, 300-01; Ruth Hoppin inIbid., XXXVIII, 414.u Memorable Days in America, in Early Western Travels, XI, 247.