p. 7

-7-

1827.

Shippingsport, Aug. 5th, 1827.

Dear Brother Darius:

*** The name this place has of being sickly has not a good foundation, your conjecture does not apply, on account of the Ohio river being not so deadly a stream as you imagine.

The marsh [miasmata? word?] are given out before it gets here. Neither the extreme heat nor the extreme cold of this climate appears to produce many diseases by its direct operation.

The most obvious effects of the hot weather are oppression and lassitude in the muscles with a diminution of appetite all of which disappear on the concurrence of a cool day, and are [truly] readily distinguishable from similar affections produced by marsh misssmata. Few persons escape these complaints, but those who have emigrated from higher latitudes are of course the greatest sufferers. Variations of the temperature particularly from heat to cold are sometimes the exciting causes of intermitting and other favors produced by marsh exhalations. In this case, the presence of moisture renders the depression of temperature more injurious.

A few ponds back of Louisville are continually giving off marsh [effluvia?], and of course, the environs are more or less infected with the disease produced by them. These ponds will soon be drained, in fact, they are now being drained.

The great depressions of the Ohio in August and September expos to the sun a quantity of mud with trees and some animal matter in the state of decay; the exhalations from which are unquestionably prejudicial, a wharf which has been built at the river at low water and connected with the bank has augmented this cause by producing in high floods an eddy which annually deposits on the