Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

INSALUBRIOUS CALIFORNIA: PERCEPTION AND REALITY

1969; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 59; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1467-8306.1969.tb00657.x

1467-8306

Kenneth Thompson,

American History and Culture

ABSTRACT Such great emphasis was attached to the “salubriousness” of California during the nineteenth century that attention seems to have been diverted from the fact that not all of the state was viewed as outstandingly healthful. Indeed, during the first fifty years or so of American occupance a substantial section of California, mainly the Central Valley, was regarded as inherently insalubrious. Perception of this insalubrity mainly involved malaria together with certain other diseases with which malaria was diagnostically confused. During the nineteenth century malaria was one of the most common diseases of North America and reached a peak of endemicity in California about 1880. The governing doctrine among medical practitioners was that malaria was caused by “bad air” or miasma. According to this doctrine, miasma was believed to be produced by decaying organic matter and was most abundant in marshes or in areas of newly disturbed soil. In California, the region of highest malarial endemicity was the Central Valley. This area with its extensive marshes and overflow lands was considered to combine the most favorable conditions for the production of the diseasecausing miasma. Accordingly, the Central Valley was perceived as unhealthful in terms of the miasmatic doctrine. The genuine causality of the unhealthfulness was revealed at the end of the last century after the elucidation of the germ theory of disease. The dreaded atmospheric effluvia, or miasmata, of the Central Valley and other marshy lowlands were proved to be simply non-existent. A new perception of marshy places developed, and new possibilities of environmental enhancement were presented, linked with malaria control measures. Notes 1Possibly from a novel by the Spanish writer Montalvo, published about 1500; E. H. Gudde, California Place Names (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), p. 46. 2The practice of climatotherapy represents a modern development of this medical attitude. More generalized traces persist today in folk medicine, especially in Europe. For example, resorts are praised, or condemned, for having “bracing” or “relaxing” air, or even “strong” air; locations are judged to “agree,” or otherwise, with individuals. 3R. H. Dana, Jr., Two Years before the Mast (New York: International Book Company, 1840), p. 163. 4T. J. Farnham, Travels in the Californias and Scenes in the Pacific Ocean (New York: Saxton and Miles, 1844), p. 47. 5J. Bidwell, A Journey to California, A Day-by-Day Record of the Journey from May 18, 1841 to November 6, 1841, original edition published 1842 by an unidentified printer in Missouri (Berkeley: Bancroft Library, 1937), p. 41. 6Bidwell, op. cit., footnote 5, p. 48. 7L. W. Hastings, The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California, original edition published 1845, reproduced in facsimile (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932), p. 85. 8J. Praslow, The State of California: A Medico-Geographical Account, original edition published in German (Göttingen: 1857), translated by F. C. Cordes (San Francisco: J. J. Newbegin, 1939), p. 8. 9J. Blake, “On the Climate and Disease of California,”The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, New Series, Vol. 24 (1852), p. 63. 10F. Langworthy, Scenery of the Plains, Mountains and Mines, original edition published 1855 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932), p. 170. 11L. Blodget, Climatology of the United States and of the Temperate Latitudes of the North American Continent, etc. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Company, 1857), pp. 460–77. 12J. S. Hittell, The Resources of California (San Francisco: A. Roman and Company, 1863), p. 368. 13C. Nordhoff, California for Health, Pleasure, and Residence (New York: Harper, 1882), p. 166. 14Blake declared, in 1852, in apparent reference to the Sierra Nevada, that “during ten months of the year, the shelter of a tree is all that is required,”op. cit., footnote 9, p. 63. 15This facet of California history, particularly as related to the tuberculosis sufferers who migrated to the state, is very well covered in J. E. Baur, The Health Seekers of Southern California, 1870–1900 (San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1959). 16For example: “The most remarkable fact in regard to this region (Santa Barbara) is the seeming impossibility for epidemics to visit it. … There are no malarious fevers. Persons who come here, afflicted with fever and ague, rarely have more than two or three attacks. They soon become well, often even, without the use of antiperiodics. The climate seems sufficient to cure the malady. …. There is no disease endemic to Santa Barbara—nothing but what can usually be referred, either directly or indirectly, to some indiscretion in eating or drinking, or from unreasonable exposure;” M. H. Biggs, “Vital Statistics and Medical Topography of Santa Barbara,”First Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California, for the years 1870 and 1871 (Sacramento: Superintendent State Printing, 1871), p. 76. 17Baur, op. cit., footnote 15, p. 176. 18According to Baur, Altadena, the Ojai Valley communities, Palm Springs, Palms, Pasadena, Riverside, Sierra Madre, and to a large degree even Santa Monica, were founded by health seekers. Named by invalids were Carlsbad, Mentone, and Nordhoff; Baur, op. cit., footnote 15, pp. 177–78. 19The cool, coastal zone was often praised for its invigorating, brisk climate but judged unsuited to invalids. Thus, “The dense fogs that visit the coast render the climate unfavorable to persons afflicted with consumption …,” Hittell, op. cit., footnote 12, pp. 367–68. “Experience has shown that it is not prudent for invalids or healthseekers to settle directly near the sea-shore anywhere in California. The sea-air, there as here, is not auspicious to those with weak lungs or throats. But it is surprising how slight a removal from the sea makes all the change needed,” Nordhoff, op. cit., footnote 13, pp. 79–80. 20“This element (winds) of the (Central) valley climate …. serves also to explain the origin of some of the diseases most prevalent there, as well as to render it unsuitable to many invalids suffering from phthisis (tuberculosis of the lungs),” F. W. Hatch, “‘Relations of the Climate of California to Consumption,”Fourth Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California for the Years 1876 and 1877 (Sacramento: Superintendent State Printing, 1877), p. 57. 21Among the many synonyms for malaria are ague, chills and fever, and autumnal, jungle, intermittent, marsh, miner's, paludal, paroxysmal, periodic, Roman and swamp fever, and paludism. Vivax malaria has been called tertian, benign tertian, and simple intermittent fever, and the tertians; falciparum malaria, subtertian, malignant tertian, aestivo-autumnal, malignant bilious, and congestive remittent fever, tropical and pernicious malaria, congestive chills, and the quotidians; malariae malaria, quartan fever, quartan ague, and the quartans; and ovale malaria, ovale tertian. The above are derived mainly from: P. F. Russell, L. S. West, R. D. Manwell, and G. Macdonald, Practical Malariology (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); M. F. Boyd et al., A Symposium on Human Malaria (Washington, D. C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1941); Boyd commented on the confusion in diagnosis. 22Quoted in C-E. A. Winslow, The Conquest of Epidemic Disease (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943), p. 249. 23Galen, in his “Comments on Hippocrates,” stated the miasmatic theory: “Putridity of humors is the cause of acute fevers, favored by filthy living conditions (XVI, 417). Epidemic diseases (as distinguished from those which are endemic) are due particularly to the influence of the ambient air. When many sicken and die at once we must look to a single common cause, the air we breathe (XVII, A, I). … That a pestilential condition of the air produces fever is well known to any intelligent person …. (XII, 279). … In a pestilential condition of the atmosphere, the air taken in in breathing is the principal cause (of fevers) (VII, 289). … The initial cause of putridity (of the air) is either a multitude of dead bodies which have not been burned, as happens commonly in war; or an exhalation from swamps or stagnant waters in the summer time; and sometimes excessive heat of the surrounding air is the starting point. … (VII, 289–90);” quoted in Winslow, op. cit., footnote 22, pp. 72–73. The Transactions of the American Medical Association for the Year 1874 were largely filled with miasmatist views of the relationships between drainage and public health. 24Until the late nineteenth century, the term “malaria” was often used for the pathogenic agent, not the disease. The United States Sanitary Commission, Report of a Committee of the Associate Medical Members of the United States Sanitary Commission on the Subject of the Nature and Treatment of Miasmatic Fevers (Washington, D. C.: The United States Sanitary Commission, 1863), pp. 5–6. 25Assistant Surgeon J. F. Hammond, “Medical Topography and Diseases of Fort Reading,”Statistical Report on the Sickness and Mortality of the Army of the United States, compiled from the Records of the Surgeon General's Office, embracing a period of sixteen years, from January, 1839, to January, 1855, Senate Ex. Doc. No. 96, 34th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1856), p. 451. 26T. M. Logan, “Malarial Fevers and Consumption in California,”Third Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California for the years 1874 and 1875 (Sacramento: Superintendent State Printing, 1875), p. 115. 27Written by Major Wm. McPherson and quoted by Major B. C. Truman, Semi-Tropical California (San Francisco: H. H. Bancroft and Company, 1874), p. 38. 28For further discussion of flooding and other features of the pristine Sacramento Valley, see K. Thompson, “Historic Flooding in the Sacramento Valley, California,”Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 29 (1960), pp. 349 60; and also K. Thompson, “Riparian Forests of the Sacramento Valley,”Annals, Association of American Geographers, Vol. 51 (1961), pp. 294 315. 29W. Currie, A View of the Diseases Most Prevalent in the United States of America, at Different Seasons of the Year (Philadelphia: J. and A. Y. Humphreys, 1811), p. 12. 30Quoted in I. D. Rawlings, The Rise and Fall of Disease in Illinois (Springfield, Ill: Schepp and Barnes, 1927), 2 vols., Vol. 1, p. 35. 31T. Flint, Recollections of the last ten years, etc. (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard and Company, 1826), pp. 238–39. 32D. Drake, A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological, and Practical, on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America, etc. (Vol. I, Cincinnati: W. B. Smith and Company, 1850, Vol. II, Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo and Company, 1854), Vol. II, p. 186. 33J. L. Tyson, Diary of a Physician in California, original edition published 1850 (Oakland: Biobooks, 1955), p. 66. 34E. H. Ackerknecht, Malaria in the Upper Mississippi Valley 1760–1900, Supplements to the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, No. 4 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1945), p. 16. 35G. Macdonald, “Theory of the Eradication of Malaria,”Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Vol. 15, Nos. 3–4–5 (1956), p. 369. Factors discussed by Ackerknecht, op. cit., footnote 34, related to malaria and its disappearance from the Upper Mississippi Valley are subsumed under the following—population movements; steamships, railroads, and river regulation; clearing, cultivation, and drainage; prosperity; housing; screening; food; education; cattle breeding; mosquitoes; and quinine. 36S. F. Cook, The Epidemic of 1830–33 in California and Oregon, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 43, 1946–1956 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), pp. 303–26. 37Cook, op. cit., footnote 36. Kroeber hinted vaguely that the Wintun of the Sacramento Valley were troubled with malaria even earlier, reporting that the Wintun performed a seasonal migration from the Valley to the uplands because “In summer the swampy plains were hot, malarial, and infested with swarming insects …;” A. L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California, original edition published in 1925 (Berkeley: California Book Company, 1953), p. 354. 38E. W. Twitchell, “The California Pandemic of 1833,”California and Western Medicine, Vol. 23 (1925), p. 593; H. Harris, California's Medical Story (San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1932), p. 43. 39J. Work, Fur Brigade to the Bonaventura, John Work's California Expedition 1832–33 for the Hudson's Bay Company, A. B. Maloney (Ed.) (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1945), p. 19; W. F. Tolmie, Private Journal Manuscript, cited by H. H. Stage and C. M. Gjullin, “Anophelines and Malaria in the Pacific Northwest,”Northwest Science, Vol. 9 (1946); “Trapper,”“Reminiscences of Early Life in California,” (A clipping in Hayes' Mission Book, Manuscript, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Vol. 1, inserted between Documents 217 and 218), n.d.; H. J. Kelley, A Narrative of Events and Difficulties in the Colonization of Oregon and the Settlement of California etc., original edition published 1852, in H. J. Kelley, On Oregon, F. W. Powell (Ed.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932), p. 141; N. J. Wyeth, The Correspondence and Journals of Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, F. G. Young (Ed.), Sources of the History of Oregon, Vol. 1, parts 3–6 (Eugene: Oregon University Press, 1899), p. 17; Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, U. S. N., Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, Vol. 5 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845), p. 183; S. Parker, Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains (Ithaca, New York: Parker, Mack, Andrus and Woodruff, 1846), pp. 191–92. 40Hammond, op. cit., footnote 25. 41Blake, op. cit., footnote 9, p. 64. 42Such early malaria statistics are usually incomplete for reasons other than mere oversight. As Ackerknecht pointed out, the malaria of small children, constituting the bulk of cases in highly endemic areas, went undiagnosed by doctors because of the widespread medical belief that the disease only affected adults; Ackerknecht, op. cit., footnote 34, p. 7. 43G. P. Jones, “A Short History of Malaria in California” (Proceedings and Papers of the Second Annual Conference of Mosquito Abatement Officials in California, 1935), pp. 47–50 (copy seen by me, mimeographed n.p., n.d., p. 9). 44Jones, op. cit., footnote 43, p. 10. 45Hastings, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 85. 46Hastings, op. cit., footnote 7, p. 85. 47Oregon Spectator (Oregon City: June 25, 1846). 48Oregon Spectator, op. cit., footnote 47. 49V. J. Fourgeaud, The California Star (San Francisco: April 1, 1848). 50Hammond, op. cit., footnote 25, p. 449. 51Lieutenant G. H. Derby, “The Topographical Reports of Lieutenant George H. Derby,”California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 11 (1932), p. 110. 52Derby, op. cit., footnote 51, p. 120. 53Praslow, op. cit., footnote 8, p. 86. 54Praslow, op. cit., footnote 8, pp. 14–16. 55Tyson, op. cit., footnote 33, p. 4. 56B. Taylor, Eldorado, original edition published in 1850 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1949), p. 154, and pp. 164–65; W. Kelley, A Stroll through the Diggings of California, original edition published in 1852 (Oakland: Biobooks, 1950), p. 34; L. Kip, California Sketches with Recollections of the Gold Mines, original edition published in 1850 (Los Angeles: N. A. Kovach, 1946), p. 56; W. Colton, Three Years in California (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1850), pp. 341–42; A. Delano, Alonzo Delano's California Correspondence 1849–1852 (Sacramento: Sacramento Book Collectors Club, 1952), p. 54. 57Hammond, op. cit., footnote 25, p. 448. 58Hammond, op. cit., footnote 25, p. 449; the other sources are: Reports of Explorations and Surveys, to Ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Made under the direction of the Secretary of War, in 1854–5, according to acts of Congress of March 3, 1853, May 31, 1854, and August 5, 1854, United States Senate, 33d Congress, 2d Session, Ex. Doc. 78, Vol. 6 (Washington, D. C.: Beverley Tucker, 1857), p. 26; F. Tuthill, The History of California (San Francisco: H. H. Bancroft and Company, 1866), p. 628; D. L. Phillips, Letters from California: Its Mountains, Valleys, Plains, Lakes, Rivers, Climate and Productions (Springfield: Illinois State Journal Company, 1877), p. 137. 59Nordhoff, op. cit., footnote 13, p. 166. 60California (San Francisco: Immigration Association of California, 1882), p. 9. 61J. Bidwell, In California Before the Gold Rush (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1948), pp. 7–8. 62H. S. Orme, “Irrigation and Forestry Considered in Connection with Malarial Diseases,”Tenth Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California. For the Fiscal Years from June 30, 1886 to June 30, 1888 (Sacramento: Superintendent State Printing, 1888), p. 225. 63W. Ayer, “Topography and Meteorology,”Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of California (1880–1881), p. 41. 64Logan, op. cit., footnote 26, p. 134. 65W. P. Gibbons, “On Forest Culture as a Prophylactic to Miasmatic Diseases,” Paper read before the Alameda Medical Association, May 3, 1875, reprinted in Third Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California, for the Years 1874–1875 (Sacramento: Superintendent State Printing, 1875), p. 151. 66Orme, op. cit., footnote 62, p. 226. 67M. M. Chipman, “The Importance of Forest Preservation and Timber Cultivation,”Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of California (1890), p. 270. 68Thus, “… and when the agricultural resources of the country shall become developed, and the swamp lands reclaimed and brought under cultivation, I believe that every external influence, detrimental to the preservation of health, will be reduced to a minimum;” Blake, op. cit., footnote 9, p. 64. 69D. Powell, “Malaria its Causes and Effects,”Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of California (1895), p. 34. 70K. Thompson, “Irrigation as a Menace to Health in California: A Nineteenth Century View,”The Geographical Review (in press). 71F. Bullard, “Climatology and Disease of Southern California,”Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of California (1890), p. 319. 72H. F. Gray and R. E. Fontaine, “A History of Malaria in California,”Proceedings and Papers of the Twenty-third Annual Conference of the California Mosquito Control Association and the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the American Mosquito Control Association (1955), p. 34. 73Quoted by R. C. Buley, “Pioneer Health Prior to 1840,”Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 20 (1933–34), p. 499.