REPORT OF THE ERIE COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY.

In the absence of any previous report from the Erie County Medical Society to the parent body, I propose to place on record the general aspects of the locality of our County Society, in accordance with the printed instructions of the State Society in the Transactions of 1867.

Erie County, situated in the extreme northwestern corner of the State, with a frontage of forty miles on the south shore of Lake Erie, is divided in its entire length by a ridge or line of high land, running parallel to, and at a general distance of about ten miles, from the lake. This ridge crosses the line of 42° north latitude, is from one thousand to two thousand feet higher than the water in Lake Erie, and produces a double water-shed, the northern inclination draining into the lake, and the southern into the tributaries of the Alleghany River. The northern incline or water-shed is, necessarily, rapid in its descent to the lake; the draining creeks and streams cutting deep gulleys in the surface, and laying bare a stratification of clay, shale, or soapstone, alternated with a harder rock resembling graywacke. The dip of this rocky stratification is southward, and through natural fissures and artificial wells or holes, made by boring down six or seven hundred feet, large quantities of olefiant gas escape from the rock, in an uninterrupted jet. Petroleum, by tubing and pumping these artificial holes, is obtained in small quantities, not sufficient in amount to pay for the necessary expense incurred. The southern incline or shed is much less rapid, the streams more sluggish in their flow, and swamp-lands more common; but all parts of the county are fairly drained by nature, and, when divested of woods and opened up by cultivation, will offer for the use of man a surface the least objection to which will be its dampness. Like all similar localities, it is noticeable that as the ground is denuded of its forests, the streams on the rapidly descending northern water-shed rise higher in their floods and more speedily lose their volume of water than formerly.

Conneaut Lake is a natural reservoir of water, four miles long and a mile wide, with an average depth of twenty feet, fifty feet. from the shores. It is situated on the southern incline of this ridge, is filled principally by the French Creek feeder of the Erie Exten

sion Canal, and is the main supply of water for this canal for its whole length to Lake Erie. Conneaut Lake, on its western border, is skirted with swamps that add their miasmatic waters to its volume. As the season advances, the partial failure of the supply, the evaporation, and the demands of the canal sink the level of this petty lake too low to overcome the height of the ridge, and a lifting-wheel or pump is required to raise water to supply the lockage of the canal. Thus supplied, the canal, with a sufficiency of lockage to keep its waters in agitation, descends in a northeasterly direction, through the city of Erie, to its harbor, the Bay of Presque Isle.

Prior to the year 1860, the southern water-shed of the ridge above alluded to was sparsely populated, except at three pointsthe village of Waterford in the centre, Wattsburg in the eastern end, and Edinburgh in the western end; and, except on the sluggish waters of French Creek, some distance below Waterford, and at the other villages where the water has been utilized by drains, this southern incline has been remarkable for the health and longevity of its population. The diseases that have existed at the three more populous points mentioned have been of miasmatic origin, with a tendency to typhoid, but were not sufficient in number or severity to seriously injure the reputation of those locations as places of residence. Since 1860 a denser population has filled up the southeastern portion of this incline; but it is understood that a separate medical society has been organized in Corry, the principal town of that section, and it is expected a separate report from that society will be laid before you.1

The northern inclination of the ridge, for two-thirds of its breadth from the top of the ridge towards Lake Erie, is a clay soil based on a gravel usually called hard-pan. Where not cleared, the surface is covered with a heavy growth of sugar maple, beech, cherry, tuliphearing poplar, cucumber, and the evergreen hemlock. It is adapted, when cleared, to grass, and consequently more used for the rearing of cattle than the raising of grain. The population of this upper incline is remarkable for health and longevity, and well fitted to meet the deficiencies of a rather thin and meagre soil, in a climate where winter holds sway for eight months of the year. The re

maining one-third of this water-shed forms the plateau along the south shore of Lake Erie. Its soil is sandy and deep, is based on heavy clay, is easily worked, is adapted to the growth of the more valuable grains, and is more especially fitted for the raising of

Reports will be received, and delegates be admitted from one Society only in the same county.-Com Fub.

grapes, plums, apples, peaches, and melons. It is on this plateau that the city of Erie and the villages of North-East, Girard, and Fairview are built. The land is generally cleared and cultivated, and the population well formed, large, sturdy, intelligent, and of independent spirit. During the late struggle with the rebels of the South, the regiments sent from this northern face of the Erie highlands were marked for their mauly forms, their effective courage, and their physical endurance. When it is recollected that this northern inclined plane is steadily drained of its surplus water by rapid streams; that for eight months in the year vegetable decomposition is checked by cold; that it lies on the southern side of a deep lake fifty miles in width, the waters of which are ever freshened by regular supply from the immense reservoirs of Lakes Superior, Huron, and Michigan; that the air, disturbed by the uneven temperature of the land and water, is setting backward and forward in ceaseless currents, in a constant endeavor to restore equilibrium ; it will surprise no one of a cultivated and observant mind that, notwithstanding the miasm brought down by the Erie Extension Canal, the city of Erie and the plain eastward and westward of the city are almost free from diseases, except those engendered by changes of atmosphere, a low temperature, moist winds, and the various ills incidental to luxury, idleness, and civilization. That this region is not entirely exempt from epidemics, is true. That fearful scourge, the malignant bilious remittent fever, which spread north of the Potomac in 1820, swept along the Susquehanna and its branches in the three succeeding years, and left its marks in jaundiced faces and fattened graveyards, reached the plateau of Lake Erie in 1825, and showed its power to set at naught fresh lake breezes and well-drained grounds. From the subsidence of that epidemic, the town of Erie was for eight years a proverb for health, except that it was lightly touched by the cholera asphyxia in 1832 and 1834, which only removed from the community a few of those cankers of society, the loafing drunkards.

Since the making of the Erie Extension Canal, in or about 1840, a gradual increase of bilious remittent fever has been noticed in its neighborhood, and from that time, also, dates, as in other parts of this State, a less sthenic character of disease. That this increase of bilious fever is not more marked in a city situated on a landlocked bay, into which is constantly pouring the waters of a canal loaded with the miasma of the swamps of Conneaut Lake, as well as that generated by itself in its progress to Lake Erie, can only be attributed to the power of the fresh air of the lakes, and the absence of other miasmata in a region so well drained, and in so high