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senters under the rigorous establishments of Europe were unknown in Carolina. The moderation of the established church was great-the toleration of the dissenters was complete. Except the patronage from government, and support from the public treasury, the civil rights and privileges of both were nearly equal. The former were too apt to look down with contempt on the latter, as an inferior grade of beings, but abstained from all private acts of injury or oppression. The one gradually abated of their haughtiness, the other of their scrupulosity. Fashion induced several prosperous individuals among the dissenters to join the established church. The American revolution leveled all legal distinctions, diminished prejudices, and brought both into a nearer connection with each other. Marriages between persons of different denominations became more common and excited less wonder. Fashion no longer led exclusively to one church. The name of meeting-house and the ridicule attached to those who frequented them were done away. The difference now is more in name than reality. The peculiarities, formerly characteristic of each, have been so far dropped that there is no longer any other obvious mark of distinction than that which results from their different modes of performing divine service.

Among the Carolinians deism was never common. Its inhabitants at all times generally believed that a Christian church was the best temple of reason. Persons professing arian or socinian doctrines, or that system of religion which has been denominated universalism, are so very few that they form no separate religious societies. The only church in which these doctrines were publicly professed has long been completely extinct. The bulk of the people who make an open profession of any religion are either Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Independents, Methodists, Protestants of the German or French reformed churches, Presbyterians, or Seceders. All these agree in the following doctrines, which have a direct tendency to advance the best interests of society and the peace and happiness of its members.

There is a God and a future state of rewards and punish

ments.

God is to be publicly worshipped.

The holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the word of God.

The present state of man is a state of sin and misery.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world. There will be a resurrection of the dead, and a general judgment, in which retribution will be made to every individual of the human race according to his works.

But these sects differ in matters respecting church politics,

some preferring the government of one, others that of a few or of the many; by bishops, presbyteries, associations, the whole body of the people, or by vestries, elders, or select portions of them. While all agree that ministers or public teachers of religion are of divine appointment, some contend for a distinction of ranks, and others for a parity among them. The former are subdivided; some considering an uninterrupted succession from the apostles to be necessary-others that ordination derived from John Wesley, or his successors, is as valid as that from St. Paul or any of the Apostles. In addition to these acknowledged legitimate sources of ordination, the other sects contend that three or more ordained ministers are fully competent to the work of ordination, and that all ordained ministers are of equal grade in the church.

All agree that public prayers to the Deity are of divine institution; but some prefer prayers by form, others in an extempore manner.

All agree that baptism is a divine ordinance, and that it may be rightly administered when adults are its subjects and immersion the mode. Others add that it may also be rightly administered when the children of believers are its subjects and sprinkling the mode. Among professors who agree in so many fundamental points embracing the substance of Christianity, and differ only in matters relating to its husk and shell or necessary appendages, there is an ample foundation for a friendly understanding and a liberal exchange of all the kind offices of reciprocal church fellowship; while there is no real cause for treating each other with shyness or cold indifference.

MEDICAL HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA,

FROM 1670 TO 180S.

South Carolina lies between the 32d and 35th degrees of north latitude, and in the same parallel with Cyprus, Candia, Morocco, Barbary, Damascus, Tripoli, Palmyra, Babylon, and other parts of Turkey in Asia, and with parts of Persia, India, and China. In comparing American climates with those of Europe, to bring them on a par with each other, a difference of 12 degrees should be allowed for peculiarities in the American continent. The most remarkable of these is such a predominance of cold as subjects an American, living in north latitude 35 to an equal degree of cold with an European residing

in north latitude 47.* If this opinion is correct we should look for a resemblance of South Carolina, not in the countries which have been mentioned as lying in the same latitude, but in Aix, Rochelle, Montpelier, Lyons, Bordeaux, and other parts of France; in Milan, Turin, Padua, Genoa, Parma, Mantua, and other parts of Italy; in Buda, Benda, Crimea, and other parts of Turkey in Europe; in Circassia, Astracan, and other parts of Russian Tartary, and of Chinese Tartary, which lie between the 44th and 47th degrees of north latitude. It is certain that the points of resemblance are more numerous in the latter than the former case.

The climate of South Carolina is in a medium between that of tropical countries and of cold temperate latitudes. It resembles the former in the degree and duration of its summer heat, and the latter in its variableness. In tropical countries the warmest and coldest days do not in the course of a twelvemonth vary more, from each other, than sixteen degrees of Farenheit's thermometer. There is consequently but little distinction between their summer and winter; but a variation of 83 degrees between the heat and cold of different days of the same year, and of 46 degrees in the different hours of the same day in South Carolina is to be found in its historical records.

Since 1791, the difference between our coolest and warmest summers has ranged between 88 and 93, and the difference between our mildest and coldest winters has ranged on a few particular days from 50 to 17.† Our greatest heat is sometimes less and never much more than what takes place in the same season in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York; but the warm weather in these places does not on an average continue above six weeks, while in Carolina it lasts from three to four months. Our nights are also warmer than theirs. The heat of the days in Charlestown is moderated by two causes, which do not exist in an equal degree to the northward of it. Our situation open and near the sea, almost surrounded by water and not far distant from the torrid zone, gives us a small proportion of the trade winds which, blowing from the southeast, are pleasantly cool. These generally set in about 10 A. M., and continue for the remainder of the day. A second

If the meteorological observations which have been made at Williamsburg, Cambridge, Quebec, and Hudson's bay, in America, be compared with those which have been made at Algiers, Rome, Poictiers, and Solyskamski, places whose latitudes are nearly equal, it will be found that the European continent is now twelve degrees warmer than that of America.-Williams' Vermont, p. 384.

Farenheit's thermometer is what is every where meant in this publication; and the observations on it therein referred to, unless otherwise specified, were reported to the medical society as taken by Dr. Robert Wilson at his house, the west end of Broad-street, at the hours of 8 in the morning, between 2 and 3 in the afternoon, and at 10 in the evening. The instrument was suspended in an open passage about ten feet from the floor.

reason may be assigned from the almost daily showers of rain which fall in the hottest of our summer months, and are frequently accompanied with much thunder and lightning, and therefore are called thunder showers.

The degree of heat in Charlestown is considerably less than in the interior western country. In the summer of 1808, at Columbia, it was frequently at 96 and 97, and sometimes at 98 ; while at Charlestown it did not exceed 91.

The number of extreme warm days in Charlestown is seldom above thirty in a year; and it is rare for three of these to follow each other. On the other hand, eight months out of twelve are moderate and pleasant. The number of piercing cold days in winter is more in proportion to our latitude than of those which are distressingly hot in summer: but of these more than three rarely come together. There are on an average in Charlestown about twenty nights, in a twelvemonth, in which the closeness and sultriness of the air forbid in a great measure the refreshment of sound sleep; but this severe weather is for the most part soon terminated by refreshing and cooling showers. April, May, and June, are in common our healthiest months, with the exception of the cholera infantum and bowel diseases among children. August and September are the most sickly; April and May the driest; June, July, and August the wettest; November the pleasantest. Our old people are oftenest carried off in cold weather; the young, the intemperate, and the laboring part of the community, when it is hot. In some years January, and in others February is the coldest month. It is remarkable that when orange trees have been destroyed by frost, it has always been in the month of February. It is also remarkable that oranges, though plentiful forty or fifty years ago, are now raised with difficulty. Once in every eight or ten years a severe winter destroys the trees on which they grow. Of this kind were the winters of 1776, 1779, 1786, and 1796. The transitions from heat to cold have in the same period been great and rapid. Mr. John Champneys has observed on three different occasions the thermometer fall more than fifty degrees in less than fifteen hours. The coldest days on record are December 23d and 24th, 1796. In both of which the thermometer in doctor Wilson's house fell to seventeen. These changes, probably the effect of the country being more opened and cleared, discourage the hope of naturalizing tropical fruits. November and December are the best months in the year for strangers to arrive in Carolina. Such should calculate so as not to make their first appearance either in summer or in the face of it, or in the first months of autumn. The hottest day of the year is sometimes as early as June, sometimes as late as September, but oftenest in July

or August. The hottest hour of the day in Charlestown varies with the weather; it is sometimes as early as ten in the forenoon, but most commonly between two and three in the afternoon.

In the spring when the sun begins to be powerful, a langour and drowsiness is generally felt; respiration is accelerated, and the pulse becomes quicker and softer. Strangers are apt to be alarmed at these feelings and anticipate an increase of them with the increasing heat of the season, but they find themselves agreeably disappointed. The human frame so readily accommodates itself to its situation that the heat of June and July is to most people less distressing* than the comparatively milder weather of April and May. On the the other hand, though September is cooler than the preceding months, it is more sickly and the heat of it more oppressive. Perspiration is diminished and frequently interrupted: hence the system, debilitated by the severe weather of July and August, feels more sensibly and more frequently a sense of lassitude. Besides the coolness of the evenings in September and the heavy dews that then fall, multiply the chances of getting cold. It is on the whole the most disagreeable month in the year.

In winter the mountains near the western boundary of the State are often covered with snow. From thence to the sea shore snow but seldom falls so as to cover the ground except on extraordinary occasions. The soil is sometimes in like manner bound up with frost. This seldom extends into the ground more than two inches. In shady places it will not thaw for several days; and the waters and ponds at the same time are generally frozen, but seldom more than half an inch thick, and rarely strong enough to give an opportunity for the wholesome exercise of skating. This freezing lasts only for a few days, and the weather breaks up mild and warm so as to render fires unnecessary in the middle of the day. In the winter these changes from heat to cold, and the reverse, fre

* On the 3d of July, 1806, Doctor Harris suspended a thermometer six feet above the surface, exposed to the full influence of the sun. The mercury rose under these circumstances to 131 degrees, though it stood at 90 within doors. On his placing its bulb in his mouth it fell to 98. As it frequently rises to 90 in the shade, and stands so for some hours, the inhabitants of Charlestown then out of doors exposed to the sun are breathing an atmosphere heated to 131 degrees, or 33 degrees more than the heat of the human body; and it is supported by them without any manifest injury.

† On December 31, 1790, wind N. E. a severe snow storm began in Charlestown which continued for twelve hours. In consequence of which the streets were covered with snow from two to four inches deep. Another took place on the 28th of February, 1792, wind N. W. which continued for several hours, and till it covered the ground five or six inches. Similar snow storms fell in January 1800, and were thrice repeated in twenty-three days, and amounted in the whole to more than ten inches. But these phænomena are rare.

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