CLIMATE AND


HEALTH.


visitors to Florida. By misrepresentations (to use a mild
term) tourists and invalids have been led to believe that
the entire water-supply is productive of disease, and as a
consequence they refrain from drinking a sufficient quan-
tity of water, or dilute it with poor whisky or brandy, to
counteract its bad effects. Interested parties have expa-
tiated so much with regard to the air being charged with
malaria in winter, that invalids and patients become
alarmed, and as a sequence they daily swallow quinine, and
thereby produce nervous or functional derangements. They
keep the pure air out of their rooms, breathe an air con-
taminated with their own breaths and exhalations, and at
night assemble in halls and parlors and inhale vitiated air
poisoned by their own breaths, and the elements resulting
from the combustion of coal-gas and kerosene. They in-
hale, for hours at a time, air charged with carbonic acid,
and shun the pure night air as they would the emanations
of the deadly upas-tree. Visitors act imprudently, and as
a consequence suffer from nervous derangements, colds,
and diarrhoeas, which they attribute to malaria or the cli-
mate. The cause of slight indispositions affecting visitors,
is not malaria, but indulgence at table, change of drinking-
water, eating excessive quantities of fruit, or the inhalation
of air poisoned by human breaths, or the resultants of the
combustion of coal-gas and kerosene, and a deficiency of
the pure air that a beneficent Creator has placed every-
where within their reach. If visitors would let quinine and
arsenical pills alone, control their appetites, eat moderately,
inhale plenty of the salubrious air of the State, and not
swelter in heated halls, parlors, and unventilated bedrooms,
we should hear less of the bughear malaria. At various
times since 1844, I have navigated the larger streams of
this State, visited the Everglades and Lake Okechobee, and
almost every bay, inlet, and river, from Cape Sable to the
Suwanee River, and for over two months at a time slept in
an open boat, with nothing but a simple awning stretched
over the boat's boom, and in no instance did my compan-
ions or self suffer from malaria or a chill. Before I became
a resident of the State, my companions and self were unac-
climated, and in no instance were we so foolish as to swal-
low quinine, arsenic, or alcoholic liquors as antidotes to ma-
laria or chills. I speak from personal observation, experi-