The epidemic of 1821-22, in Edinburgh, prevailed from March, when the weather was very changeable, accompanied with sudden variations of the temperature. Out of 789 patients delivered, 79 were affected and 22 died. It subsided during the dry warm months for from 16th July to 14th October, 1821 there were only six cases. After the last of these dates the cold rainy weather set in, and with it the disease returned. In the warm months of 1822 the disease again declined. (Dr. Campbell). In 1829 it occurred in Dublin to an alarming extent during January, February, and March. Such are a few facts connected with some of the more important epidemics. Dr. Churchill observes that puerperal fever prevails most during the winter or spring months, and in moist and cold weather, or with alternations of cold and warm moist weather. Dr. Eutler says that "a sickly season adds both to the danger and frequency of puerperal fever.' Abortions. That Hippocrates believed in the great influence that weather has over pregnant women no one can for a moment doubt who has read the many passages in which he alludes to this subject. "If the winter be southerly, showery, and mild, and the spring northerly, dry, and winterly, those women who expect to be confined during the spring are apt to have premature labours (or abort)."* The premature labours of this season are evidently the effect of the prevailing fevers. Modern authors have observed abortion to be epidemic at times; and Dr. Copland gives the names of those who have mentioned the fact: for instance, Fischer, Tessier, Desormeaux. Agriculturists have observed that cows are apt to slip their calves more frequently at some seasons than at others; and some authorities affirm that it is generally most frequent after the prevalence of wet weather, which is also conducive to the production of ergot in the different grasses on which they feed. In 1852 abortion among cows was very prevalent, although it was a dry season for calving. * Hipp. Op. ed. Kühn, vol. i. p. 44. F It is remarkable that the smell of a cow that has aborted has a strong tendency to produce a similar effect in another pregnant animal.* During a very wet season at Cannington some few years ago, when there was a great deal of ergoted wheat in consequence, it was observed that for several months hardly any of the women went their full time, and there were numerous miscarriages. There are many opportunities of studying this subject somewhat more fully than several others; inasmuch as if the breeder of cattle were to take regular meteorological observations, many and valuable facts might be obtained which in all probability would be of infinite service to our profession. The state of the Atmosphere conducive to Fevers, &c.—Were this subject to be fully treated it would take up much more space than is consistent with the object that I have in view,— viz. merely to give a sketch of antient and modern views on the subjects brought under consideration, as an introduction to a more detailed study of meteorological phenomena in their relation to disease. I shall therefore content myself with giving a few extracts from Hippocrates, an epitome of what modern writers have added, and conclude with statistics from the bills of mortality. Opinions and observations of the antients.-In accordance with what we observe on referring to the Table of this Constitution (page 47), Hippocrates remarks in the Aphorisms, "that fevers are acute in droughts; and if these prevail throughout the year, such will be its constitution, and such will be the diseases that we ought to expect."+ Again: "If the winter have been dry and northerly, and the spring rainy and southerly, of necessity there will be acute fevers." Whilst travelling, our author mentions that he arrived at Perinthus, a town of Thrace, near about the summer solstice. The winter had been * Cyclopædia of Agriculture, Div. vi. p. 547. Aph. iii. 12. dry, mild, and southerly; the spring very dry, until the setting of the Pleiades: if there was any rain, it was only in a few drops. The Etesian winds hardly blew at all. During the summer ardent fevers became epidemical (To≈ Céρeos kavσol ἐπεδήμήσαν πολλοί).* Aretæust mentions that persons are liable to ardent fevers during the spring (ἔαρος δεύτερον, φλεγμονῇ καὶ πυρετοῖσι καυσώδεσι). As the fevers under discussion are different both in severity and form to what generally come under our observation in the British Isles, I shall merely give a general view of the conditions conducive to the generation of these epidemics, for our knowledge is not sufficiently accurate to warrant us in making anything like a classification of causes, although such an attainment would be highly desirable; and with the impulse that the study of meteorology has lately received from the medical profession, it may, I think, both be hoped for and expected. Modern Observations, &c.-As I have remarked before, the weather does not always act immediately upon the system, and produce disease. Heat and moisture may certainly make a decided impression upon the body, and a continuance of this impression may induce a train of phenomena that in the end would be sufficiently marked to justify the term disease; and this state of the atmosphere may affect a great number of people in the same manner, and thus produce an epidemic. The wind, the rain, and the sun, however, act more frequently in an indirect manner. How often do rivers swell with the mountain torrents, flood a neighbouring tract of land during the winter. The stream subsides; not so, however, the adventitious lakes that it has caused: time alone is required for such a mass of water to be drained off or evaporated. During this slow process the land plants die, and form a decomposed mass at the bottom, which, when the heat of the summer sun pours upon * Ed. Kühn, vol. iii. p. 444. Ed. Kühn, p. 37. it, is resolved into its primary elements, that, under the same influence, combine again to form a deadly poison, which so far has eluded both the chemical test and the microscope. These noxious exhalations then are wafted by the wind over miles of country, polluting as they travel the air we breathe, and thus insinuate themselves into our veins, where too frequently they meet with an ally ready to act in concert with them. In a review of the history of the causes of disease and death, it is remarkable how prominent a part the vegetable creation has ever played, from the first tree, whose fruit was the medium of temptation to Eve, and which perchance would have been immortal, like the first created pair, had they not fallen through its means. In the dead putrescent masses of jungle, there is a connection that must strike any mind who reflects upon this subject. Death was the curse, and nothing that ever had life has been able to withstand this awful fiat. Had man remained immortal, all would probably have shared his immortality, for all was made for him. That death took place both among animals and vegetables long before the creation of man is a fact that the researches of geologists have for some time proved; but at the same time it is not incompatible with the idea of God's endowing the creatures whom he made after "his own image" with endless physical life, when we consider the amazing preparation that our earth must have undergone for the reception of the favoured beings. But to return,-for our theme is the vegetable origin of disease. When man fell he was told that the ground should be cursed for his sake, and that it should bring forth thorns and thistles: moreover, Cain, his first-born, was obliged to be a tiller of the ground. All these passages tend to show that man was to be cursed by the very means that had tempted him to disobedience; and in the sequel of man's history do we not find the herb of the field, which he was doomed to eat, still the source of sorrow, disease, and death? Whether we consider it in the form of the fermented juice of the grape, which throughout all ages has prompted him to commit excess, and made him descend still lower in the scale of wretchedness, augmenting some of his diseases and begetting others, whilst it curtailed his happiness and contracted his days, or in the less inviting one of a filthy heap of dead and dying herbs, made pestilential by the very sun that would, under happier circumstances, have lent beauty to their immortality, or visit the trackless jungle, or the deltas and tanks of the rivers of the East, sending forth their invisible poison to the habitations of man, we still are struck with the awfulness of the truth that the fruit of the forbidden tree "Brought death into the world, and all our woes." Of course it would be impossible to decide whether death took place first in the animal or vegetable world: all that we know is, that the lower animals were soon after victimised by man both for the sake of clothing and sacrifices, if not for eating. Now it is consistent with the facts in our possession, that animals, especially the herbivora, might have received the first germs of disease from their food, liable, as we know it to be, to be influenced by those atmospheric changes which now-a-days we recognise as the principal causes of disease in plants. Man himself, being partly herbivorous, would be subject to the same disease-germ. However this may be, we find that for centuries he and his companions lived on in simple habits, enjoying great length of years, until at last, corrupted by excess, disease began to germinate within him. The ground had been cursed for his sake, and the rank weed sent forth from its slimy bed, throughout the air he breathed, its thousand elements of death, slaying alike the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and man their lord and master. It is well known that the decomposition of certain vegetables is attended with a peculiar disagreeable odour: take, for instance, those plants belonging to the cabbage tribe. Whilst the fallen leaves of a forest are rotting, there is frequently observed a sickly odour, which emanates more powerfully from the fermenting masses under some trees than it does |