3. As the voyage from the Eastern continent must have taken up a considerable time, and as the mode of living on sea must have been very different from that to which he was formerly accustomed, we must consider the constitution as already in some degree altered from what it was when the person first went on board.
4. This alteration will be greater or less according to circumstances. If the vessel has been much crowded with passengers; if the weather has been stormy, so that he has been exposed to damp; if they have had little water, or of bad quality; if their provisions have been bad, or if there has not been a sufficient supply of fresh air in the place where he slept; the body must be considered as already predisposed to disease, which the new climate will scarcely fail of bringing to maturity.
5. Every one must consider that mode of living to which he has been accustomed the greatest part of his life as natural to him. Any considerable deviation from it, especially if sudden, would be of bad consequence, even in his own country; much more must it be so in another. As much as possible therefore he ought to conform his mode of life in the new country to what it was in the old, adhering only to the rules of temperance.
6. It has already been observed, that we must take into account the time that the person has been at sea, and the difference between his mode of life during his voyage, and that to which he was formerly accustomed. This difference consists in one particular in having lived for some weeks entirely upon salt provisions. To these he has been in some measure accustomed; and therefore it must be reckoned injudicious to give up the use of salted meat at once for such as is fresh. In fact, this mode of abandoning salt meat for fresh has been reckoned by the best physicians one of the causes by which the disease is brought on. Drs. Taylor and Hansforth express themselves in the following manner on this subject: “It has been noticed by several medical writers, that fresh meats, and particularly beef, in southern climates, apparently generate fluxes and other malignant diseases.” Dr. Ramsay, also, says of those who were mostly affected with the yellow fever in Norfolk, that, “being foreigners, they dealt lavishly in beef, fish, and all kinds of fresh food. Observe, this beef was driven perhaps from one to two hundred miles before killed, then exposed in a hot market to vend; that, by one o’clock, their dining hour, I always did, and do, believe it must have been tainted. Observe, the fish were all dead by break of day, and brought by land from twenty to twelve miles—hard drinkers of spirits mostly. . . . One or two natural born citizens were the whole, out of upwards of two hundred and twenty, who, in the space of six weeks, fell victims to this disease. The natives live chiefly on salted meats and fowls, or other kinds of poultry, which are killed but a little time before dressing.” It is unfortunate that among the emigrants from cold countries there is a general prejudice against salt, as highly inflammatory; and many diseases are imputed to the use of it where it is undoubtedly entirely innocent. In very cold climates indeed it has with great reason been supposed to produce the scurvy; and the Tchutski, who conducted capt. Billings through their frozen regions, informed him that salt was poison in their climate; throwing away, with marks of abhorrence, a quantity he had brought with him from his frigate. We cannot indeed argue from salt being pernicious in a cold climate that it is medicinal in a warm one, but we shall soon see that it has been recommended in the plague, and may not improbably be useful in the yellow fever. At any rate the practice of the natives ought in this respect to be a rule for emigrants, rather than any theories they may have laid down previous to their leaving their own country.
7. In like manner those who newly arrive in a warm climate ought to avoid as much as possible the using of violent exercise in a heat greater than that to which they have been accustomed, and by all means to avoid intemperance in spiritous liquors. We are not however to imagine from this that such as have been accustomed to drink spiritous liquors are all at once to give over the use of them, and live a life of abstinence. On this subject Mr. Hardie, in his account of the malignant fever of 1795, has the following judicious observation: “It has often been said, that temperance was the best preservative against infection. The observation, in general, is certainly just; but it may, and during the late calamity has, been carried too far. For my part, from what has come under my own knowledge, I have no hesitation in asserting, that to persons who had been accustomed to live freely, nothing could be more dangerous than to become remarkably abstemious upon the appearance of this disorder. Persons of the above description should, in my opinion, have continued to live in their usual manner; by which means they would have been more likely to repel infection, or if infected, they would have more strength to resist the attack. But, whilst I consider abstinence in such a situation as highly improper, a state of intemperance is certainly more so; for, were it necessary, I could mention the names of several individuals, who whilst in a state of intoxication were attacked with the fever, and in two days after were tenants of the grave. The fate of such people might be pronounced almost with certainty: they were seized with symptoms of a peculiarly malignant nature, and their death seemed unavoidable.”
On the subject of vegetables much declamation has been used. If we give heed to some, it might almost be supposed that all diseases incident to human nature are owing to the use of animal food. The following paragraphs from Webster’s Collection may serve as a specimen: “We shall not repeat the observations which we have heretofore made, upon the averseness the Americans feel for soup and restorative broths, on their eating their meat running with blood, with scarcely any bread, and plenty of heavy potatoes, the only vegetables which are seen on their tables; whilst the French always give the preference to vegetables, and especially to those which are light and wholesome. But we cannot help observing, that, in the months of May, June and July, the streets and markets were seen in the morning furnished with an immense quantity of fruits, the most part of which are either green or unripe. In the evening all those fruits have disappeared and have been eaten; hence bloody fluxes, dysenteries and bad chyles, which unwholsome food must undoubtedly produce.
“The city of Naples contains about four hundred thousand inhabitants; of whom thirty or forty thousand are said to belong to the class of beggars. In that climate the rains prevail, with little intermission, for three months, from February to May. From May to September, a drought, equally severe, and scarcely allayed in many years by a single plentiful rain, renders the heat almost intolerable. The wages of a labourer not exceeding eight pence this currency a day, and meat being rarely had in their markets for less than four pence the pound, and vinous liquors in the same proportion, the mass of population is excluded from any share of these luxuries; of consequence they support themselves on vegetables, roots, sallads, fruits, &c. and dilute their food, and animate their spirits, with water and lemonade. Yet this city has, for a great number of years, known no general disease. And for ten years no febrile disease, of any sort, was common among them. They also pay great attention to personal cleanliness. Facts of this sort are very important, and form the best comment on the discordant opinions of our physicians.”
As a contrast to these the reader may take the following quotation from the Medical Extracts:
“One gentleman excepted, says Dr. Shebbeare, and I never saw a gentleman or lady who wholly abstained from animal food look like other people; nothing is so easy to distinguish as a vegetable man by his physiognomy, the fittest appellation by which they can be distinguished; he neither moves, talks nor looks like other people; his face conveys a declaration of his whole body being out of order, by the lifeless insipidity which is in it, as his conversation does of his mind being disturbed, his whole time being taken up in recounting to the world his manner of living, his feelings, his weak stomach, his disturbed sleep, &c. . . . If he pretends to have spirits, it is no more than a certain equability of a lifeless, inanimate state, like that of the dormouse among animals, or the yew tree in winter among vegetables,” &c. (Medical Extracts, vol. x. p. 234.)
On the subject of vegetable and animal food we find the following observations in Willich’s Lectures on diet, &c. “In the primitive ages, people subsisted chiefly on plants and fruits. Even to this day many nations, the Bramins, for instance, abstain from the use of animal food. The ancient Germans also, who were so renowned for their bodily strength, lived upon acorns, wood-apples, sour milk, and other productions of their then uncultivated soil. In the present mode of life, here (in England) as well as on the continent, a great proportion of the poorer class of country people almost entirely subsist on vegetables. Although these people duly digest their vegetable aliment, and become vigorous, yet it is certain that animal food would answer these purposes much better. Hence, in countries where the labouring class of people live principally upon animal food, they far excel in strength and durability.”