Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884

V >> Various >> Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

In the performance of the work which has enabled me to arrive at this
conclusion, I have had the generous assistance of more than twenty
physicians, who have been many years in practice in the vicinity of
these mountains. Their knowledge of the diseases which had occurred
there extended over a, period of more than forty years. Some of these
physicians have reported the knowledge of the occurrence of deaths from
consumption on the Tablelands, but when carefully inquired into they
have invariably found that the person dying was not a native of the
mountains, but, a sojourner in search of health. In answer to the
question: "How many cases of pulmonary consumption have you known to
occur on Walden's Ridge, among the people native to the mountains?"
eleven physicians say, "Not one." All of these have been engaged in
practice there more than three years, four of them more than ten years,
one of them more than twenty, and one of them more than forty years. All
the physicians of whom inquiries have been made are now residents, or
have been, of the valleys contiguous to Walden's Ridge, and know the
mountain people well. Four other physicians in answer to the same
question say, that they have known from one to four cases, numbering
eleven in all, but had not ascertained whether five of them were born
and raised on the mountains or not. The names and place of death of all
these cases were given, and I have traced their history and found that
but three of them were "natives," or had lived there more than five
years, and that one of these was 57 years of age when she died, and had
suffered from cancer for three years before her death. The two others
died within six months after returning home from long service in the
army, where both contracted their disease.

All these investigations have been made with more particular reference
to that part of the Cumberlands known as Walden's Ridge than to the
mountains as a whole. This ridge is of equal elevation and of very
similar character to the main Cumberland range in the southern part of
Tennessee, northwest Georgia, and northwest Alabama, and what is true of
this particular part of the great Cumberland table is, in the main, true
of the remainder.

Sequatchee Valley lies between Walden's Ridge and what is commonly known
in that neighborhood as the Cumberland Mountains, and separates it from
the main range for a distance of about one hundred miles, from the
Tennessee River below Chattanooga to Grassy Cove, well up toward the
center line of the State. Grassy Cove is a small basin valley, which
was described to me there as a "sag in the mountains," just above the
Sequatchee Valley proper. It is here that the Sequatchee River rises,
and flowing under the belt of hills which unites the ridge and the main
range, for two miles or more, rises again at the head of Sequatchee
Valley. Above Grassy Cove the mountains unite and hold their union
firmly on their way north as far as our State reaches.

Topographically considered as a whole, the Cumberland range has its
southern terminus in Alabama, and its northern in Pennsylvania. It
is almost wholly composed of coal-bearing rocks, resting on Devonian
strata, which are visible in many places in the valleys.

But a small portion of the Cumberland lies above a plane of 2,000 feet.
Walden's Ridge and Lookout Mountain vary in height from 2,000 to 2,500
feet.

North of Grassy Cove, after the ridges are united, the variation from
2,000 feet is but little throughout the remainder of the State, and
the general character of the table changes but little. The great and
important difference is in the climate, the winters being much more
severe in these mountains in the northern part of the State than in the
southern, and the summers much more liable to sudden changes of weather.
Scott, Fentress, and Morgan counties comprise this portion of the table,
and these have not been included in my examination, excepting as to
general features.

In all our southern country, and I may say in our whole country, there
is no other large extent of elevated territory which offers mankind
a pleasant living place, a comfortable climate--none too cold or too
hot--and productive lands. We have east of the upper waters of the great
Tennessee River, in our State, and in North Carolina and Georgia, the
great Blue Ridge range of mountains, known as the Unaka, or Smoky,
Chilhowee, Great and Little Frog, Nantahala, etc., all belonging to the
same family of hills. This chain has the same general course as the
Cumberlands. It is a much bolder range of mountains, but it is vastly
less inhabitable, productive, or convenient of access. The winters there
are severely cold, and the nights in summer are too cold and damp for
health and comfort, as I know by personal experience of two summers on
Nantahala River. But the trout fishing is beyond comparison, and that
is one inducement of great value for a stout consumptive _who is a good
fellow_. These mountains are much more broken up into branches, peaks,
and spurs than the Cumberlands. They afford no table terrritory of
any extent. There are some excellent places there for hot summer
visits--Ashville, Warm Springs, Franklin, and others.

The Cumberland Mountains, as a whole, are flat, in broad level spaces,
broken only by the "divides," or "gulfs," as they are called by the
inhabitants, where the streams flow out into the valleys.

Walden's Ridge, of which we come now to speak particularly, is the best
located of any part of the Cumberlands as a place for living. From the
separation of this ridge from the main range of Grassy Cove to its
southern terminus at the Tennessee River, it maintains a remarkably
uniform character in every particular. From it access to commerce is
easy, having the Tennessee River and the new (now building) Cincinnati
Southern Railroad skirting its entire length on the east. It rises very
abruptly from both the Tennessee and Sequatchee Valleys, being from
1,200 to 1,500 feet higher than the valleys on each side. Looking from
below, on the Tennessee Valley side, the whole extent of the ridge
appears securely walled in at the top by a continuous perpendicular wall
of sandstone, from 100 to 200 feet high; and from the Sequatchee side
the appearance is very similar, excepting that the wall is not so
continuous, and of less height.

The top of the ridge is one level stretch of plain, broken only by the
"gulfs" before mentioned and an occasional prominent sandstone wall or
bowlder. The width on top is, I should judge, 6 or 7 miles. The soil is
of uniform character, light, sandy, and less productive for the ordinary
crops of the Tennessee farmer than the soil of the lowlands. The grape,
apple, and potato grow to perfection, better than in the valleys, and
are all never failing crops; so with rye and buckwheat. Corn grows
well, very well in selected spots, and where the land is made rich
by cultivation. The grasses are rich and luxuriant, even in the wild
forests, and when cultivated, the appearance is that of the rich farms
of the Ohio or Connecticut Rivers, only here they are green and growing
the greater part of the year; so much so that sheep, and in the mild
winters the young cattle, live by the wild grasses of the forests the
whole year. The great stock raisers of the Sequatchee and Tennessee
Valleys make this the summer pasture for their cattle, and drive them to
their own farms and barns or to market in winter. The whole Cumberland
table, with the exception of that small part which is under cultivation,
is one great free, open pasture for all the cattle of the valleys.
Thousands of cattle graze there whose owners never pay a dollar for
pasturage or own an acre of the range, though, as a rule, most of the
well-to-do stock farmers in the valleys own more or less mountain lands.
These lands have, until quite recently, been begging purchasers at from
121/2 to 25 cents per acre in large tracts of 10,000 acres and upward, and
perhaps the same could be said of the present time, leaving out choice
tracts and easily accessible places, which are held at from 50 cents to
$2 per acre, wooded virgin lands.

The forest growth of Walden's Ridge is almost entirely oak and chestnut.
Hickory, perhaps, comes next in frequency, and pine after. There is but
little undergrowth, and where the forests have never been molested there
are but few small trees. This is due to the annual fires which occur
every autumn, or some time in winter, almost without exception, and
overrun the whole ridge. It does not rage like a prairie fire. Its
progress is usually slow, the material consumed being only the dry
forest leaves and grasses. The one thing essential to its progress is
these dry leaves, hence it cannot march into the clearings. Nearly all
the small shrubs are killed by these fires, otherwise they are harmless,
and are greatly valued by the stock men for the help they render in the
growth of the wild grasses. The free circulation of air through these
great unbroken forests is certainly much facilitated by these fires,
since they destroy every year what would soon become impediments. The
destruction of this undergrowth leaves the woods open, and the lands are
mainly so level that a carriage may be driven for miles, regardless of
roads, through the forests in every direction.

The shrubs about the fields and places where the forests have
been interrupted by civilization and other causes are blackberry,
huckleberry, raspberry, sumac, and their usual neighbors, with the
azalia, laurel, and rhododendron on the slopes and in the shade of the
cliffs.

The kinds of wild grasses, I regret to say, I have not noted, and the
same of the rich and varied display of wild flowers.

The whole ridge is well supplied with clean, soft running water, even
in the driest of the season. There are no marshes, swamps, or bogs, no
still water--not even a "puddle" for long--for the soil is of such a
character, that surface water quickly filters away into the sands and
mingles with the streams in the gulfs. Springs of mineral water are
abundant everywhere. Probably there is not a square mile of Walden's
Ridge which does not furnish chalybeate water abundantly. Sulphur
springs with Epsom salts in combination are nearly as common.

The entire extent of Walden's Ridge is underlaid with veins of coal, and
iron ore is plentiful, especially in the foot hills. The coal and iron
are successfully mined in many places on the eastern slope; on the
western they are nearly untouched for the want of transportation. I find
that the impression prevails that the minerals of the Cumberlands are
largely controlled by land agents and speculators. This is only true as
applied to a very small part of the whole, not more than 1 per cent. The
mineral ownership remains with the lands almost entirely.

The prevailing winds on Walden's Ridge are from the southwest; northers
and northeasters are of rare occurrence. One old lady who had resided
there for forty years, in answer to my query upon this subject, said:
"Nine days out of ten, the year round, I can smell Alabama in the air."
This was the usual testimony of the residents. Winds of great velocity
never occur there. In summer there is always an evening breeze,
commencing at 4 to 6 o'clock, and continuing until after sunrise
the next morning. In times of rain, clouds hang low over the ridge
occasionally, but they never have fogs there.

The range of the thermometer is less on the Tablelands than in the
adjacent valleys. I have had access to the carefully taken observations
of the Lookout Mountain Educational Institute, such published accounts
as have been made by Professor Safford, State Geologist, Mr. Killebrew,
the thorough and painstaking private record of Captain John P. Long,
of Chattanooga, and many more of less length of time. From all these I
deduce the fact that the summer days are seven or eight degrees cooler
on the mountains than in the Tennessee Valley at Chattanooga, and five
or six degrees cooler than in the Sequatchee Valley, as far up as Dunlay
and Pikeville. The nights on the table are cooler than in the lower
lands by several more degrees than the days; how much I have thus far
not been able to state. The late fall months, the winter, and early
spring are not so much colder than the valleys as the summer months, the
difference between the average temperature of the mountains and valleys
being at that time four or five degrees less than in the summer. There
is no record of so hot a day ever having occurred on the Cumberladd
Mountains as to cause mercury to run so high as 95 deg. F., or so cold a day
as to cause it to run so low as 10 deg. below zero.

In the average winter the ground rarely freezes to a greater depth than
2 or 3 inches, and it remains frozen but a few days at a time. Ice has
been known to form 8 inches thick, but in ordinary winters, 3 or 4
is the maximum. Snow falls every winter, more or less, and sometimes
remains for a week. Old people have a remembrance of a foot of snow
which lasted for a week.

Walden's Ridge has a total population of a little more than 4,000,
scattered over 600 square miles of surface. The number of dwellings is
about 800. Ninety per cent. of these are log houses; 70 per cent. of
them are without glass windows; light being furnished through the
doorways, always open in the daytime, the shuttered window openings, and
the open spaces between the logs of the walls. Less than 2 per cent. of
these houses have plastered walls or ceilings, and less than 5 per cent.
have ceiled walls or ceilings. About 20 per cent. of them are fairly
well chinked with clay between the logs, the remainder being but
indifferently built in that particular. Fully 90 per cent. of these
abodes admit of free access of air at all times of day and night,
through the floors beneath as well as the walls and roof above. It is
the custom of the people to guard against the coldest of days and nights
by hanging bed clothes against the walls, and many good housewives have
a supply of tidy drapery which they keep alone for this purpose.

Wood, always at hand, is the only fuel in use. The whole heating
apparatus consists in one large open fireplace, built of stone,
communicating with a large chimney outside the house at one end, and
frequently scarcely as high as the one story building which supports it.
This chimney is constructed in such a manner as to be a great ventilator
of the whole room, quite sufficient, it would be thought, if there were
no other means of ventilation. It is usually made of stone at the
base, and that part above the fire is of sticks laid upon one another,
cobhouse fashion, and plastered over inside and between with similar
clay as that with which the house walls are chinked.

Very few of these houses are more than one story high. They are all
covered with long split oak shingles--the people there call them
"boards"--rifted from the trunks of selected trees. There is no
sheathing on the roof beneath these shingles. They are nailed down upon
the flat hewn poles running across the rafters, at convenient distances.
Looking up through the many openings in the roof in one of these house,
one would think that this would be but poor protection against rain, but
they rarely leak.

Not one family in fifty is provided with a cooking stove. They bake
their bread in flat iron kettles, with iron covers, covered with hot
coals and ashes. These they call ovens. The meat is fried, with only the
exception of when accompanied by "turnip greens."

The question, "What is the principal food of the people who live on
these mountains?" has been asked by me several hundred times. The
almost invariable answer has been, "Corn bread, bacon, and coffee."
Occasionally biscuits and game have been mentioned in the answers. All
food is eaten hot. Coffee is usually an accompaniment of all three
meals, and is drunk without cream and often without sugar. Some families
eat beef and mutton for one or two of the colder months in the year on
rare occasions, though beef is commonly considered "onfit to go
upon," as I was told upon several occasions, and mutton sustains less
reputation. Chickens are used for food while they are young and tender
enough to fry, on occasions of quarterly meetings, visits of "kinfolks"
or the "preachers" and the traveling doctors. Fat young lambs are plenty
in many settlements from March to October, and can be had at fifty cents
each, but I could not learn that one was ever eaten.

A large majority of the adult population use tobacco in some shape--the
men by chewing or smoking, the women by smoking or dipping snuff. They
never have dyspepsia, nor do they ever get flesh, after they pass out of
childhood, though nearly all the children are ruddy in appearance, and
well rounded with fat.

One physical type prevails among the people in middle life, and carries
along into old age but little change; and old age is common there.
Nearly every house has its old man or old woman, or both. Everybody,
father and mother, and frequently grandfather and grandmother, is still
on hand, looking as brisk and moving about as lively as the newer
generations. After they pass their forty years, they never seem to
grow any older for the next twenty or thirty, and the grandfathers and
grandmothers can scarcely be selected, by comparison, from their own
children and grandchildren. The men are taller than the average, and
the women, relatively, taller than the men. They are all thin featured,
bright eyed, long haired, sharp looking people, with every appearance of
strength and power of endurance.

I think the men who live on Walden's Ridge can safely challenge the
world as walkers--aborigines and all; and unless the challenge should be
accepted by their own women folks, I feel quite sure they would "win the
boots." They go everywhere on foot, and never seem to tire.

Nearly all the people of the Tablelands are employed in the pursuits of
agriculture. Very few of them seem to be hard workers. The men are all
great lovers of the forest sports, much given to the good, reliable, old
fashioned long rifles. The women and children are much employed in out
door occupations, and live a great portion of their time in the open
air. The clothing of all classes is scanty. The use of woolen fabrics
for underwear has not yet been introduced, and coarse cotton domestic
is the universal shirting, and cotton jeans, or cotton and wool mixed,
constitute the staple for outer wearing apparel. The men wear shoes
throughout the year much more commonly than boots. They never wear
gloves, mittens, scarfs, or overcoats, and they scorn umbrellas.
Probably this whole 4,000 people do not possess two dozen umbrellas or
twice as many overcoats. The women go about home with bare feet a great
part of the summer. They never wear corsets or other lacing.

I have learned by careful inquiry that very few of the people of the
Ridge have ever had the diseases of childhood. Scarlet fever I could
hear of in but two places, and I suppose that not one person in fifty
has had it. Whooping cough and measles have occurred but rarely, and the
large majority have not yet experienced the realities of either. Very
few people there have ever been vaccinated, nor has smallpox ever
prevailed. Typhoid, typhus, and intermittent fevers are unknown. In the
great rage of typhoid fever which took place ten or twelve years ago in
the Tennessee and Sequatchee Valleys, not a single case occurred on the
Mountains, as I have been informed by physicians who were engaged in
practice in the neighborhood at the time. Diphtheria has never found a
victim there; so of croup. Nobody has nasal catarrh there, and a cough
or a cold is exceedingly rare.

I have said that these observations refer more particularly to Walden's
Ridge than to the Cumberland Tablelands in our State as a whole. This
ridge was chosen by me for this examination, mainly for the reason of
its convenience, but partly owing to its being more generally settled
than any other equal portion of the table which lies in Tennessee.
Lookout Mountain is not as well located; it is on the wrong side of the
Tennessee River, and but a few acres of it belong in this State. Sand
Mountain is altogether out of the State, but it is perhaps nearer like
Walden's Ridge in its physical features than Lookout. That part of the
Cumberlands west of Sequatchee Valley is Walden's Ridge in duplicate,
excepting that it is further west, and nearer the Middle Tennessee
basin. There are some small towns, villages of miners, and summer
resorts there, which interferes with that evenness of the distribution
of population which Walden's Ridge has, rendering it more liable to
visitations of epidemic and contagious diseases. The tablelands north
of the center line of the State, above Grassy Cove, are very similar
to Walden's Ridge, as far up as Kentucky, with the exception before
mentioned--that of climate--it being from one to ten degrees colder in
winter.

This whole Cumberland Table is no small country. It comprises territory
enough to make a good sized State. At present, it is almost one great
wilderness, in many particulars as unknown as the Black Hills. It is
coming into the world now, and will be well known in a few years. The
great city of Cincinnati has determined to build a railroad through
the very center of this great table in the north part of the State,
connecting with Chattanooga in the southern part. This road is nearly
bored through, and in another year or two the Cumberland Tablelands in
Tennessee will be much heard of at home and abroad.

It seems to me this country has merits. It is located in the latitude of
mild climate; not so far south as to be scorched by the hot summer sun,
or visited by the great life destroying epidemics; not so far north as
to meet the severe and lengthened winters.

Climate, we know, is a fixture; it has a government; it has rules; the
weather may change, but climate does not; it is a permanent out-door
affair, and what is true of to-day was true centuries ago, and will
be true forever, in the measure of any practical scope, at least. The
people of the world are beginning to know that the greatest destroyer of
human life has its remedy in climate.

Mr. Lombard, in his famous exhibit in relation to the prevalence of
consumption among the people of different occupations, circumstances of
life, and place of dwelling, gives the lowest number of deaths from this
cause to those who live in the open air. He found the people who lived
most in the open air, as would be readily conjectured, in the mild
latitudes, not in the countries of hot sands or cold snows.

[The above article, in regard to which we have noticed frequent
allusions in many of our exchanges, all erroneously attributing it to
_Dr. Wright_, of Tennessee, and for which we have received repeated
requests quite recently, was read by the lamented Dr. E.M. Wight at
the 43d annual meeting of the Tennessee State Medical Society, held
at Nashville, April 4, 5, and 6, 1876. Its distinguished and talented
author will long be remembered as one of the most active, earnest, and
zealous members of the State Society. At this meeting he also read a
very admirable paper on "The Microscopic Appearance of the Blood in
Syphilis," and prepared the report of the Committee on State Board
of Health, to which report may be ascribed the honor of securing the
necessary legislation organizing the Board. A true, upright, honest man,
an earnest, devoted and zealous physician, universally esteemed and
beloved by all who knew him; himself the subject of tuberculosis, dying
in the prime of a brilliant manhood. He had but few equals in the
glorious profession he honored and loved so well.

From a careful reading of his paper, we find that he describes a large
area of territory, free, absolutely free, from subsoil moisture, a
climate mild and equable, a soil capable of producing nearly everything
necessary for the comfortable maintenance of human life, surroundings
that tempt, nay, compel the greatest possible amount of open air
life. His description is exceedingly accurate of a plain, primitive,
simple-minded people with but few wants, many of the virtues and few
of the vices of humanity. With their surroundings, soil, climate,
residence, and mode of living, need we be surprised that "there is
a people," or a land "free from consumption"?--ED.]--_Southern
Practitioner_.

* * * * *

THE TREATMENT OF HABITUAL CONSTIPATION.

Dr. F.P. Atkinson thus writes in the _Practitioner_, January, 1884: I
suppose there is no derangement of the system we are more frequently
called upon to treat than habitual constipation; and though all kinds of
medicines are suggested for its relief, they rarely produce more than
temporary benefit--and it is difficult to see how the result can well be
otherwise, while the root of the evil remains untouched. Now by far the
more numerous subjects of this disorder are women; and as they do not
seem to know that regularity is essential to the performance of every
one of nature's operations, they appoint no stated times for trying to
get the bowels relieved, but trust to receiving intimation when the
rectal accumulation and distension can be borne no longer. This method
of action may and does answer fairly well for a time; but nature
gradually gets upset, the sensation of the lower bowel becomes blunted,
and at last it ceases to respond to the ordinary stimulus. Then
aperients are regularly resorted to, and although these act fairly
well for a time, they gradually have to be increased in strength
and frequency. Now, as regards the treatment, the first thing to be
accomplished is of course to get the rectum well relieved; the next,
to get the actions to take place at fixed times; and lastly, it is
necessary to get more tone imparted to the muscular tissue of the
bowels, so that the regularity of action may be helped and also
maintained. In order, then, to get the bowels relieved in the first
instance, it is well to give five grains of both compound colocynth and
compound rhubarb pill at bed-time (this rarely requires to be repeated),
then to take a tumblerful of cold water the next morning on waking, and
repeat it regularly at the same time each day. Should the bowels remain
sluggish for some time, the same quantity of water may be taken daily
before each meal. Supposing no action takes place on rising or shortly
after, a small injection of warm water may be resorted to. After each
movement of the bowels, a small hand-ball syringeful of _cold_ water
should be thrown into the rectum and retained. A soup plateful of coarse
oatmeal porridge (made with water and taken according to the Scotch
method, viz., by filling half the spoon with the hot porridge and the
other with cold milk) each night at bed-time, or even every night and
morning for a time, is often a very great help. But above all things,
it is necessary for the patient to _try_ and get relief at a certain
_fixed_ time regularly every day. If these directions are strictly
carried out in their entirety, the evil, even if it has been of long
standing, will generally be corrected, and the patient will improve in
health and appearance. Of course where the constipation results from
exhaustion of the nervous system (such, for instance, as is brought
about by self-abuse), the special cause has to be taken into
consideration, and such treatment adopted as is suited to the particular
necessities of the case.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9