History of medical practice in Illinois - Bushnell Historical Society

30 History of Medical Practice in IllinoisCincinnati in 1828, was driven out by the clouds of mosquitoes thatflourished there, although the region had been settled for forty years. 16 In1840 James S. Buckingham, an English traveler, found the mosquitoes sobad at an inn twelve miles south of Chicago that he made them the subjectof one of the most vivid passages in the book he wrote about his Americanexperiences. "The place . . . seemed to be the headquarters of the mosquitotribe," he wrote; "they kept our hands and handkerchiefs in constant motion;and yet they evaded both, so as to cover the faces of most of the partieswith large pustules from their bites. They were the largest and mostvenomous I had ever seen; and the sultriness of the night, the closeness ofthe place, and the filth of the room in which we were staying, seemed togive them new vigour. I went into the open air, hoping for some relief, butmet as large a legion of them without as within, and found there was noescape from their tormenting attacks. One of our Western passengers declaredthat in a part of the prairie from which he had come, they were sothick that if you held out your naked arm straight for a few minutes, so asto allow them to settle on it, they would be followed by such a cloud ofothers hovering around them, that if you suddenly drew in your arm, youwould perceive a clear hole left in the cloud, by the space which the armhad occupied!" 17 (Even the Englishman recognized this as a tall tale.)The observations of travelers convince one that the pioneer had noaversion to dirt, either in his surroundings or on his person. Nothing madea deeper impression on William Faux when he visited Indiana and Illinoisin 1819 than the widespread disregard of personal cleanliness. "Soap,"he wrote, "is no where to be seen in any of the taverns, east or west. Hencedirty hands, heads, and faces every where." Nor was this condition confinedto the frequenters of public houses: the settlers themselves had as littleas possible to do with soap and water. "The face is seldom shaved, orwashed, or the linen changed except on washing days," Faux commented.Moreover, men who had spent their entire lives in communities wherecleanliness was demanded quickly slipped into slovenly habits. Faux citedas an example of the "barbarizing" process a Lincolnshire man who hadlived in the English Settlement only a year or two. He was living, with hisbrother, "in a most miserable log cabin, not mudded, having only oneroom, no furniture of any kind, save a miserable, filthy, ragged bed. . . .Both were more filthy, stinking, ragged, and repelling, than any Englishstroller or beggar ever seen; garments rotting off, linen unwashed, faceunshaven and unwashed, for, I should think, a month." 18 Harriet Martineau,visiting the United States nearly twenty years later and moving inu Frances M. Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London, 1832), I, 133.17Eastern and Western States, III, 251-52.w Memorable Days, in Early Western Travels, XI, 268.