Report on the medical topography and epidemics of the state of New York : Submitted to the American Medical Association at its annual meeting at New Haven in June, 1860 / By Joseph M. Smith.

  • Smith, Joseph Mather, 1789-1866.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the medical topography and epidemics of the state of New York : Submitted to the American Medical Association at its annual meeting at New Haven in June, 1860 / By Joseph M. Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    affect the general population of our country. The requirements, specified in the letter referred to, are to describe the geographical position of the locality, and the physical aspect of the surrounding country; the geological formations; its flora; its fauna; the charac- teristics of climate, the nature and causes of the diseases prevail- ing at the post and its vicinity, and how far the diseases can be traced to general or local causes, how far to habits and modes of life, to water, diet, &c. &c. It is, moreover, desired that as many facts as possible be collected concerning the vital statistics of the inhabitants in the vicinity, particularly of the Indian tribes, &c, embracing every matter of information calculated to prove useful or interesting to the department and the medical world.1 In this range of subjects are comprised the topics treated of by Hippocrates in his work on Airs, Waters, and Localities, a work which has maintained through successive centuries a higher reputation for originality and comprehensiveness of observation than any other of his medical writings. The ultimate design of the study of medical topography is to discover the general physical agencies which modify the human constitution, and which are especially operative in the production of disease and the preservation of health. In the language of M. Boudin, Man is not born, does not live, does not suffer, does not die in the same manner on all points of the earth. Birth, life, dis- eases, and death, all change with the climate and soil, all are modi- fied by race and nationality. These varied manifestations of life and death, of health and disease, constitute the special object of medical geography.2 Now, the end we shall aim to accomplish in this report, is to sketch the outlines of the medical topography of the State of New York, and to elucidate the special pathogenetic influences and their effects which are common or occasionally prevalent within her territory. In doing this, the State will be studied in relation to its geography and hydrography, its geology and mineralogy, its flora and fauna, its meteorology and ethnography, and finally its epide- miology. Some of these subjects will be merely glanced at, while 1 Statistical Report of the Sickness and Mortality of the Army of the United States, &c.,p. 3, 1856. 2 Quoted in the British and For. Medico-Chirnrgical Review, July, 1858, from a Treatise on the Medical Geography and Statistics of Endemic Diseases ; comprising Medical Meteorology and Geology, &c. By J. C. M. Boudin, Chief Medical Officer of the Medical Hospital du Roule, &c.