s country all ranks of people neglect, or
despise the ordinary precautions with respect to health. Judges and
lawyers, merchants, physicians and ministers of the gospel, set the
seasons at defiance in the pursuit of their respective callings. They
prosecute their journeys regardless of weather; and learn at last to
feel little inconvenience from the exposure, which is silently
undermining their constitutions. Is it extraordinary that people thus
exposed should be attacked by violent maladies? Would it not be more
wonderful that such a careless prodigality of life could pass with
impunity? These remarks might be extended; the food of the first
settler, consisting chiefly of fresh meat without vegetables and often
without salt; the common use of ardent spirits, the want of medical aid,
by which diseases, at first simple, being neglected become dangerous;
and other evils peculiar to a new country, might be noticed as fruitful
sources of disease; but I have already dwelt sufficiently on this
subject. That this country is decidedly healthy, I feel no hesitation in
declaring; but neither argument nor naked assertions will convince the
world. Let us collect such facts as amount to evidence, and establish
the truth by undeniable demonstration."

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Uniform exposure to the weather is favorable to health. I can affirm
this from long experience and observation. Our hunters, and surveyors,
who uniformly spend their time for weeks in the woods and prairies, who
wade in the water, swim creeks, are drenched in the rains and dews, and
sleep in the open air or a camp at night, very rarely are attacked with
fevers. I have known repeated instances of young men, brought up
delicately in the eastern cities, accustomed, as clerks, to a sedentary
life, with feeble constitutions,--I have known such repeatedly to enter
upon the business of surveying the public lands, or in the hunting and
trapping business, be absent for months, and return with robust health.
It is a common thing for a frontier man, whose health is on the decline,
and especially when indications of pulmonary affection appear, to engage
in a hunting expedition to renovate his health. I state these facts, and
leave it to the medical faculty to explain the _why and wherefore_. One
circumstance may deserve attention. All these men, as do the Indians,
_sleep with their feet towards the fire at night_. And it is a common
notion with this class, that if the feet are kept