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The disease was undoubtedly of a miasmatic infectious nature, as was proved by its rapid spread and the occasional absence of a history of contagion. It was particularly favored in its development by high temperature and humidity. The moral effect of the sweating sickness, similar to that of the black plague, was again to increase religious fanaticism and recreate the zeal of persecution.

If the same individual were to live under unfavorable conditions, without any education, if he were to find himself in unhealthy telluric surroundings, in a mine, a rice field, or a miasmatic swamp, he would become insane.

But, with a proper knowledge of the system herein taught, he has at his command a power with which he can control such cases with almost infallible certainty, provided he can get access to them within reasonable time. The same may be said of fevers, particularly those occasioned by miasmatic or infectious virus.

He was born at Cotterstock, Northamptonshire. sometime in the year 1752, and was a soldier by right of inheritance. His father, Captain John Simcoe, after a life spent in his country's service, died in the St. Lawrence River, on board H. M. ship Pembroke, of miasmatic disease, contracted in exploring portions of the adjoining country for military purposes.

The man had insisted that it was of no moment, and John Woolfolk had been driven by a consuming desire to leave the miasmatic shore. He swung the pole forward and cried: "Four and a half." The water was shoaling rapidly. The breaking waves on the port and starboard swept by with lightning rapidity.

In the preceding pages we have seen that the electrical and chemical action of the forest, though obscure, exercises probably a beneficial, certainly not an injurious, influence on the composition and condition of the atmosphere; that it serves as a protection against the diffusion of miasmatic exhalations and malarious poisons; that it performs a most important function as a mechanical shelter from blasting winds to grounds and crops in the lee of it; that, as a conductor of heat, it tends to equalize the temperature of the earth and the air; that its dead products form a mantle over the surface, which protects the earth from excessive heat and cold; that the evaporation from the leaves of living trees, while it cools the air around them, diffuses through the atmosphere a medium which resists the escape of warmth from the earth by radiation, and hence that its general effect is to equilibrate caloric influences and moderate extremes of temperature.

Attempts have been made to rear it in other hosts but without avail, and we know from the general relations of the parasite that it must have this sexual as well as the asexual generations. Second, in some regions which would seem to be malarial, that is, where the miasmatic mists arise, no malaria occurs. Why? Usually it can be definitely shown that no Anopheles occur there.

The safeguards for human beings consist in avoidance at night and early morning of low-lying localities, or such elevated places even which are subject to be invaded by miasmatic emanations produced on and wafted from dangerous lower levels.

The moon, nearly full, and tinted a pale but rich crimson by the atmosphere of miasmatic fog which overhung the lagoon, was just rising into view above the tree-tops and flinging a long tremulous trail of blood-red colour athwart the almost stagnant water.

Groups of mottled church towers surmounted by glittering crosses; square, flat-roofed houses; rough fortifications; a long reach of hot sandy plain on either side relieved by a few palm-trees; and scattered groups of low-growing cactus, these make up the picture of the flat, miasmatic shore. There are no suburbs; the dreary, monotonous sand creeps close up to the city.