The diseases of the season

[This is a letter to Joseph Cabell on July 27, 1807, on the effect of our capital’s tide-waters on people’s health, especially for older Congressional members.]

The diseases of the season incident to most situations on the tide-waters, now beginning to show themselves here, and to threaten some of our members, together with the probability of a uniform course of things in the Chesapeake, induce us to prepare for leaving this place during the two sickly months, as well for the purposes of health as to bestow some little attention to our private affairs, which is necessary at some time of every year. Our respective stations will be fixed and known, so that everything will find us at them, with the same certainty as if we were here; and such measures of intercourse will be established as that the public business will be carried on at them, with all the regularity and dispatch necessary.