06 - Health of Orleans County - Sketches of Village of Albion

HEALTH OF ORLEANS COUNTY.

During the early settlement of this County there was considerable sickness. Ague and Fever, and ailments usually denominated bilious, arising from vegetable miasm, caused by letting in the sun upon accumulations of vegetable matter in marshy and wet ground - such were the only diseases prevalent; and in proportion as, those causes of disease have disappeared, the health of the County has improved, until it has become decidedly healthy, except in a few localities, upon ponds or streams of water running from undrained marshes.

Pure Typhus Fevers, originating as such, are and ever have been unknown in this County. Consumption, unless imported, is of rare occurrence. The type of disease has very much changed, having assumed more of an inflammatory character, seldom malignant. Cholera has never visited Albion, nor has any fatal epidemic. Inflammations are generally of the sub-acute kind, requiring but little general depletion.

We now enjoy a country and climate where human life is probably as little endangered by disease as in any other. The sources of malaria being mostly dried up, malignant forms of bilious disease do not occur; whilst our locality in the immediate vicinity of large, open Lakes, secures to us such a modification of temperature during the winter months, as to protect us from the severer forms of inflammatory disease to which inhabitants of colder regions , are subject.

SOURCE:  Sketches of village of Albion : containing incidents of its history and progress, from its first settlement, and a statistical account of its trade, schools, societies, manufactures, &c. (1853); Arad Thomas; Albion, N.Y.