each, other, that have been permanent as far hack as our means of
investigation reach, and which will endure as long as the Faunas
and Floras of which they form a part.
Our declared object is to ascertain what influence the climates of
our day exert over existing forms, and especially over those of the
human family. It should be borne in mind that each species has its
own physiological and pathological laws, which give it its specific
character ; and each species must, therefore, be made a special study.
Too much reliance has been placed upon analogies; since no one
animal should he taken as an analogue for another. Hot only are
they variously aifected by climate, food, &e., but also by morbific
influences. These remarks apply with their greatest force to man,
who is widely separated from the lower animals in many things, and
more particularly his diseases. The “ Société Zoologique d’Acclimation,”
of Paris, is composed of some of the most scientific men of
France, with I. Geoffroy St. Hilaire at its head ; and to them each
new species is a new study : they look to time and observation alone
for their knowledge. "When a new quadruped, bird, or plant, is
brought to France, no one pretends to foretell the exact influence
of the new climate upon it; and it haâ been ascertained that two
species, brought from the same habitat, may be very differently
affected. One may become habituated to a wide geographical range,
while another only to a very limited one.
So it is with the species of man — each must be made a separate
study, in connection with both Physical and Medical Climate. It does
not at all advance our knowledge of man to tell us that pigs, poultry*
horses, cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, &c., may be carried all over the
world, may become habituated to all climates, and everywhere
change their forms or colors. A race of men does not anywhere,
in a few generations, like pigs, become white, brown, black, gray,
or spotted; nor do the pigs, when they accompany man to the
Tropics, become affected with dyspepsia, intermittent and yellow
fever. It has been the fashion, for want of argument, to obscure
the natural history of man, not by a few, but by volumes of these
analogies. Let us ask, on the other hand, when and where have
the people of the north become habituated to the climate of the
Tropics, or those of the Tropics been able to live in the north ? We
have no records to show that a race of one extreme has ever been
acclimated to the opposite ; and as long as a raee preserves its.
peculiar physiological structure and laws, it must to some extent be
peculiarly affected by morbific influences.8
8 It is far from being proved that our dogs, borses, cattle, and other domestic animals,
are of common origin. The reader is referred to . Types of Mankind” and the Appendix
In considering the climates of the Tropics and the adjacent warm
climates, it is necessary to divide Medical Climate into non-malarial
and malarial. By a non-malarial climate, we wish to designate
one which is characterized by temperature, moisture or dryness,
greater or less changeableness, &c.; .in short, all the characteristics
of what is understood by the word “ climate,” independently of local
morbific influences. By malarial climates, we mean those in which
malarial emanations are superadded to the ahove conditiohs. The
two climates are familiar to every one, and often exist within a mile
of each other. In our Southern States, we have our high healthy
“pine or sand-hills/’ bordering the rich alluvial lands of our rivers.
On the low lands, in many places, the most deadly malarial fevers
prevail in summer and autumn, while in the sandy lands there is an
entire exemption from all diseases of this class; and our cotton
planters every summer seek these retreats for health. Hot only in
these more temperate regions of the United States is this proximity
of the two climates observed, but also in Bengal and other parts of
India, in the, islands of the Indian Ocean, at Cape Colony, the West
India islands, &c. Mobile and its vicinity afford as good an illustration
of these climates as can be desired. This town is situated
at the mouth of the Mobile river, in latitude 30° 40" north, on the
margin of a plain, that extends five miles to the foot of the sandhills,
and which is interspersed with ravines and marshes. The
sand-hills rise to the height of from one to three hundred feet, and
extend many miles. How the thermometer, barometer, and hygrometer,
indicate no appreciable difference in the climates of the hills
and the plain, except that the latter is rather more damp; and yet
the two localities differ immensely in point of salubrity: Let us
suppose that a thousand inhabitants of Great Britain or Germany
should be landed at Mobile about the month of May, and one-third
placed on the hills, one-third in the town, and the remainder in the
fenny lands around the latter, and ask what would be the result at
the end of six months. The first third would complain much of
heat, would perspire enormously, become enervated; but no one
would perhaps be seriously sick, and probably none would die from
the effects of the climate. The second third, or those in the city,
if it happened to be a year of epidemic yellow fever, would, to say
the least, be decimated, or even one-half might die, while the resident
acclimated population were enjoying perfect health. The remaining
portion, or those in the fenny district, would escape yellow
fever, but would, most of them, be attacked with intermittent and
Woral ? nd Intdlectua-l Diversity of Raced’—in H otz’s translation of D e G o b in e a u ,
( hiladelphia, 1855)—for a full examination of this point.