But as I dare not pursue this extensive subject, I can only suggest to our countrymen the utility of making themselves acquainted with this matter, and with this dangerous geography, before encountering the hazards which await them; while to physicians I need still less name the necessity of that knowledge, since it is so often their duty to choose and recommend for their patients, and since no man can feel much at his ease who finds that he has sent into a land of malaria the patient who has already been suffering from its diseases, or that where he speculates on the cure of a consumption, that cure is attained through the death of the patient, at Avignon, or at Poitiers, or Nantes, or in some or other of the numerous places subject to this most fearful poison. It remains only to give a brief enumeration of the diseases [p058] which are the produce of malaria, and of the general condition of the inhabitants in the countries subject to it. With respect to this latter, the most remarkable general fact is the contracted duration of life. In England, the average may, if not very accurately, and indeed considerably under the mark, be taken at 50; and when in Holland it is but 25, it follows that the half of human life is at once cut off by this destructive agent. In the parts of France to which I have alluded, it becomes as low as 22 and 20, and Condorcet, indeed, has calculated it as low as 18. With this, very few attain the age of 50; and in appearance and strength, this term is equivalent to 80 in ordinary climates; while 40 forms the general limit of extreme and rare old age. The period of age, indeed, commences after 20; and it is remarked, in particular, that the females become old in appearance immediately after 17, and have, even at 20, the aspect of old women. In many places, even the children are diseased from their birth; while the life which is dragged on by the whole population, is a life of perpetual disease, and most frequently of inveterate and incurable intermittents, or of a constant febrile state, with debility, affections of the stomach, dropsy, and far more than I need here enumerate. While the countenances of the people in those countries are sallow or yellow, and often livid, they are frequently so emaciated as to appear like walking spectres, though the abdomen is generally enlarged, in consequence either of visceral affections or dropsy. With these, rickets, varices, hernia, and, in females, chlorosis, together with scorbutic diseases, ulcers, and so forth, are common; and it is even to be suspected that the cretinage may depend on this cause, since goitre is also one of the results of malaria, and since, in the Maremma of Tuscany, idiotism is a noted consequence of this pestilential influence.