Undoubtedly the country would be much better to live in if there were no swamps and no malaria; and so, also, New England would be better to live in if there were not six months winter and three more months of cold weather there. As to malaria, it is not necessary to souse Manhattan Island under water to get that in and around New York. The new lands in New York will give you chills and fever quite as well as Florida. You can find malarial fevers almost anywhere in the towns between New York and New Haven; and it is notorious that many estates in the vicinity of New York and Philadelphia sell cheap on that very account, because they are almost as malarious as some Italian villas.
Florida is not quite so bad as that yet, although it has its share of that malaria which attends the development of land in a new country. But the malarial fevers here are of a mild type, and easily managed; and they are generally confined to the fall months. The situation of Florida, surrounded by the sea, and the free sweep of winds across it, temper the air, and blow away malarious gases.
In regard to consumptives and all other invalids, the influence of a Floridian climate depends very much on the nature of the case and the constitution of the individual.
If persons suffer constitutionally from cold; if they are bright and well only in hot weather; if the winter chills and benumbs them, till, in the spring, they are in the condition of a frost-bitten hot-house plant,—alive, to be sure, but with every leaf gone,—then these persons may be quite sure that they will be the better for a winter in Florida, and better still if they can take up their abode there.
But if, on the contrary, persons are debilitated and wretched during hot weather, and if cool weather braces them, and gives them vigor and life, then such evidently have no call to Florida, and should be booked for Minnesota, or some other dry, cold climate. There are consumptives belonging to both these classes of constitution; and the coming of one of the wrong kind to Florida is of no use to himself, and is sure to bring discredit on the country. A little good common sense and reflection will settle that matter.
Again: there is a form of what passes for consumption, which is, after all, some modification of liver-complaint; and, so far as we have heard or observed, Florida is no place for these cases. The diseases here are of the bilious type; and those who have liver-complaint are apt to grow worse rather than better. But there are classes of persons on whom the climate of Florida acts like a charm.
There are certain nervously-organized dyspeptics who require a great deal of open, out-door life. They are in comfortable health during those months when they can spend half their time in the open air. They have no particular disease; but they have no great reserved strength, and cannot battle with severe weather. They cannot go out in snow or wind, or on chilly, stormy days, without risking more harm than they get good. Such, in our Northern climate, are kept close prisoners for six months. From December to May, they are shut in to furnace-heated houses or air-tight stoves. The winter is one long struggle to keep themselves up. For want of the out-door exercise which sustains them in summer, appetite and sleep both fail them. They have restless nights and bad digestion, and look anxiously to the end of winter as the only relief. For such how slowly it drags! They watch the almanac. The sun crosses the line; the days grow a minute longer: spring will come by and by. But by what cruel irony was the month of March ever called spring?—March, which piles snow-storms and wind-storms on backs almost broken by endurance. The long agony of March and April is the breaking-point with many a delicate person who has borne pretty well the regular winter.
Said one who did much work, "I bear it pretty well through December. I don't so much mind January. February tires me a little; but I face it bravely. But by March I begin to say, 'Well, if this don't stop pretty soon, I shall: I can't get much farther.'" But our heaviest snow-storms and most savage cold are often reserved for March; and to many an invalid it has given the final thrust: it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back. But after March, in New England, comes April, utterly untrustworthy, and with no assured out-door life for a delicate person. As to the month of May, the poet Cowper has a lively poem ridiculing the poets who have made the charms of May the subject of their songs. Mother Nature is represented as thus addressing them:—
"'Since you have thus combined,' she said,
'My favorite nymph to slight,