A New Guide for Emigrants to the West

by John Mason Peck

1st. Variations of the temperature. This cause, we have already shown, exists to as great extent in the same latitude east of the mountains.

2nd. The rapid decomposition of vegetable matter. In all our rich lands, there are vast quantities of vegetable matter mixed with the soil, or spread over the surface. Extreme hot weather, following especially a season of much rain, before the middle of July, will produce sickness. If the early part of summer be tolerably dry, although a hot season follows, sickness does not generally prevail. The year 1820 was an exception to this rule. It was throughout, a very dry, hot, sickly year through the West; indeed, throughout the world. A wet season, with a moderately cool atmosphere, has proved healthy.

3d. Marsh exhalations. These, combined with heat, will always generate fevers. Indeed, there is probably very little difference in the miasm thrown off from decomposed vegetable matter, and that produced from sluggish streams, standing waters and marshes. These, in the great Valley, abound with decayed vegetable matter. Hence, along the streams which have alluvial bottoms (as low lands upon streams are called in the West,) some of which are annually overflowed, and where the timber and luxuriant vegetable growth are but partially subdued, the inhabitants are liable to fevers, dysenteries and agues. Situations directly under the bluffs adjacent to the bottom lands, that lie upon our large rivers, especially when the vegetation is unsubdued, have proved unhealthy. So have situations at the heads or in the slope of the ravines that put down from the bluffs towards the rivers.

The principal diseases that prevail may be stated as follows. In the winter, and early in the spring, severe colds, inflammation of the lungs and pleurisies are most common. The genuine hereditary consumption of New-England is rare, and families and individuals predisposed to that disease might often be preserved by migration to this Valley. Acute inflammation of the brain, and inflammatory rheumatism are not unusual at that season.

During the summer and autumn, cholera infantum with children in large towns, diarrhœa, cholera morbus, dysentery, intermittent and remittent bilious fevers prevail. The intermittent assumes various forms, and has acquired several names amongst the country people, where it prevails more generally than in large towns. It is called the "chill and fever,"—"ague,"—"dumb ague," &c., according to its form of attack.

The remittent fever is the most formidable of our autumnal diseases, especially when of a highly bilious type. In most seasons, these diseases are easily managed, and yield to a dose or two of medicine. Sore eyes, especially in autumn, is a common complaint in the frontier settlements, and when neglected or improperly managed, have terminated in total blindness.

The "milk sickness," as it is called, occasionally prevails in some localities, some particulars of which will be found in another place. There is a disease that afflicts many frontier people, called by some "sick stomach," by others, "water brash," from its symptoms of sudden nausea, with vomiting, especially after meals.

In 1832, the cholera made its appearance in the West. In many places, its first approach was attended with great mortality, but its second visit to a place has been in a milder and more manageable form. It has visited various parts of the West on each returning season since, especially along the great rivers and about the steamboats. It appears to have changed somewhat the characteristics of our western diseases, and will probably become a modified and manageable disease. Since its visit, our fevers are more congestive, less bile is secreted, and the stomach more affected. The subject will doubtless be noticed by our physicians, and observations made, how far this new disease will become assimilated to the ordinary diseases of the country.

We are satisfied, after a long course of observations, much travelling, and conversing with many hundreds of families with the view of arriving at correct conclusions on these subjects, that there is no such operation as that of emigrants undergoing a seasoning, or becoming acclimated, in the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, or the Wisconsin Territory. Nor does it make the least difference from what part of the United States, or Europe, they come, nor whether they arrive here in the spring or autumn. There is an erroneous notion prevailing in some of the Atlantic states on this subject, that should be corrected. When sickness prevails, there is just as much, and it is equally severe, amongst the old settlers, those born in the country, or who migrate from the Carolinas or Georgia, as those who come from the northern states. Families are just as liable to sickness, and are as often attacked for the first time, after residing several years in the country, as at any other time. A large proportion of the families and individuals, who remove from New England to the various parts of the Valley, north of the 37th degree of latitude have no sickness the first year.

The impression has formerly existed abroad, that Illinois is less healthy than other western states. This is entirely erroneous. As in all countries, there are some localities, where the causes that produce sickness exist more than in others. This is not the fact with Illinois in general.