The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-10-23 00:00:00

CLIMATE OF BRITISH GUIANA.

Guiana is the most favourably situated of any part
of America, or the world, perhaps, with respect to the
winds and sea-breezes. It lies in the main track of the
equinoctional currents ; whilst hurricanes, so terrific
and destructive amongst the West India islands are
unknown here, and the equinoctial gales are extremely
steady and uniform throughout Guiana. At Angos-
tura, three hundred miles inland, they commence not
an hour later than on the sea-coast.

An opinion is very prevalent, that the heat of climate
renders Europeans unable to labour, or encounter much
fatigue in these countries. This is a great mistake;
for, on the contrary, it is a fact that those who take
the most exercise enjoy the best health, provided they
live temperately. It is the excessive use of strong li-
quors that proves deleterious to Europeans in hot cli-
mates, and which, together with the heat, renders them
incompetent to sustain much fatigue, until they become
accustomed to it. It is alleged, most erroneously, that.
strong liquors are necessary SO counteract the debility
arising from the heat. Except in great moderation,
they have the contrary effect, and have ever been the
chief cause of the mortality which formerly prevailed,
and must ever prove dangerous to the habitual de-
bauchee. The writer, although not the most tempe-
rate, can aver, that, during a period of twenty-five
years in the warmer parts of South America, he ever
enjoyed the best health when he used most exercise.
In every part of the world, exercise and temperance
are the greatest safeguards of health ; but indolence is
even more pernicious in hot climates than elsewhere.
The sackoorn and casseri form the most wholesome,
nutritive, and delicious drinks (made chiefly from
mixtures of cassada, maize, and sweet potatoes slightly
fermented). This kind of beverage might he substi-
tuted for malt and spirituous liquors with incalculable
advantage. Those who use this sort of drink, owing
to its substantial and restorative properties, as`ive our-
selves experienced, lose the desire for strong liquors.
This fact, which we had previously heard reported,
was confirmed amongst the Macoosies, who make
constant use of such beverage : they as constantly
showed a disgust for spirituous liquors, whilst the
Arowaks, \Yarrows, and those of the coast, had an
insatiable desire for them.

It is well known that many families in this country
are affected with scrofula, and a strong predisposition
to pulmonary consumption. To such families or indi-
viduals the climate of Guiana would be the most eligi-
ble of any in the world, as affording an exemption from
such complaints. Tubercular consumption is unknown
on the coast, and extremely rare in the mountain
regions, though not unfrequent in the llanos. The writer
can say, that he has never met with an instance of
genuine tubercular phthisis on the coast of Guiana,
nor a single case of calculus, or stone in the bladder
generated there. Now this is not the case amongst
the West India islands ; and for this plain reason, that,
however favourable may be the sea-breeze in the day,
there is every night a cool land-wind blowing from
the central parts towards the sea. The yellow fever
has long since disappeared, and the coast becomes an-
nually more healthy and agreeable as the woods are
cleared off.

Physicians often recommend to their consumptive
patients a voyage to Montpellier, Naples, Rome, Ma-
deira, &c.: had they a knowledge of the advantages
offered by a Guiana climate, they would assuredly
never think of sending patients to those places, all of
which are far from being exempt from these disorders.
This I consider a matter of immense importance to
those so afflicted—to families predisposed to consump-
tion, or affected with scrofula, the secret agent and
origin of the most insidious and fatal diseases of this
country.

The climate, I may say, is not only prophylactic, but
curative of this disorder (pulmonary consumption), of
which 1 have known various instances; and one of the
most remarkable and desperate cases occurred so long
ago as 1806, in the harbour of Demerara, in the per-
son of a Swede, who arrived in a vessel from Ports-
mouth.

The testimony of the wood-cutters constantly assures

us, that wooded-parts and inland forests are never found
to be unhealthy to either Europeans or others. These
are facts which I can vouch for; and to show they are

not contrary to reason, let it be considered that it is
not the absolute degree of temperature which deter-
mines the salubrity of any climate, but, as every one
knows, it is the great and sudden changes from heat to
cold, and from cold to heat, which chiefly render any
country unhealthy. Now, there is probably no country

)n the globe where the temperature is More uniform
.han in Guiana.

Instability of climate contributes more, perhaps, than
any other cause to the production of epidemic diseases.

The fatal Asiatic cholera, for instance, which has per-
vaded almost every part of the habitable globe, except-
ing Guiana, arose in that part of Asia which is subject
to great changes of temperature,—at one time to the
hot winds from sandy deserts, or the tropical seas,—at
another to the chilling blasts from the Gauts, or from
the Himalaya mountains, the highest in the world, and
covered with eternal snows. In further illustration of
the subject, let us contrast the steady climate of Guiana
with that of Canada, where enormous changes are often
experienced, and consider that the population of Que-
bec was last year decimated by spasmodic cholera ;—it
is stated in the Times of March 6tb, that one-tenth of
the inhabitants had fallen victims to this fatal scourge.

The yellow fever, as before observed, has many years

since totally disappeared on the coast of Guiana: In
ISO 4 it prevailed with great mortality, chiefly amongst
the sailors, who, in a state of intoxication, not unfre-
quently slept on the ground or on deck: they were
mostly on the following day attacked with depression,
dry skin, and the symptoms termed yellow fever, and
in those days we actually knew of no means of avert-
ing the consequences.

It may not be irrelevant to add here a few directions

to emigrants or others destined to tropical climates.
From what I have observed in the lands, especially in
Martinique and Grenada, I have reason to consider
their climate as far less healthy than that of Guiana.

A.dynamical and malignant fevers are still very fatal

amongst the islands. These fevers, however, may be
easily arrested at the onset ; a fact which, strange to
say, is little known, and only practised imperfectly by
some few Creoles and native inhabitants : it consists in
procuring a perspiration, with as little delay as pos-
sible after the fever is found to be approaching, by the
use of vapour baths and fomentations, warm sudorific
drinks and enemas ; not waiting for depletion or pur-
gatives, but employing them secondarily as required.—
Dr. Hancock's British Guiana.

In the interior parts of Guiana, the purity of the air
is such, that in the dry season the stars appear like
brilliants in the deep azure sky at night, and we not
unfrequently perceive planets in the day-time. I have
often observed the planets Jupiter and Venus, when
the sun was 20 or 30 degrees above the horizon ; in
which case Venus appears through a telescope precisely
like the moon in her first quarter. At the same time
the splendour of the moon and the zodiacal light con-
tribute to make the nights most pleasing, and to throw
a charm on every object.