ny, are owing to the abuse of cider and sharp rhenish wines. According to Forster and other travellers, the phagedenic ulcers, among the inhabitants of the South sea,ought to be attributed to an acrid drink prepared with the roots of a kind of pepper. The people of Friseland, the Alps, and of all countries abounding in cattle, living upon milk, butter and cheese, are leucophlegmatic and subject to obstructions; those diseases, are less properly endemic, than the result of the manner of feeding finally, dysentery and diarrhoeal flux, so fatal under the hot climates of the tropics, are rather caused by an immoderate use of fruits, crudities, and strong liquors, than the effect of local influences; for it is easy to be free from those affections, by carefully avoiding the excesses which originate them.

Generally, the nature of each country, modifies the human constitution, predisposing it to one or more kinds of diseases, or protecting it from those of a contrary nature. This has been perfectly explained by Hippocrates in his treatise on the "air, waters and soils." He shows us the dull inhabitant of the Phasis, subject to the cachexy of the lymphatic system,as well as the Sauromate of the Palus-Mœotides. He contrasts the mild and timid Asiatic, with the strong and daring European, the weak and fat inhabitant of the fertile valleys, with the bony and muscular highlander. It is also observed that in the low and damp countries, where the air does not circulate freely, and sometimes, like Holland, is crossed by the heavy and hot west and south winds,* putrid and exanthemateous diseases originate from the noxious exhalations; the languid inhabitants are subject to vertigo, deafness, humid ophtalmies, dyspnoeas, cough, lethargy and apoplexy; catarrhs and defluxions often display there a frightful energy.

*The plumbeus auster mentioned by Horace. See Levinus Lemnius, Natur. miracul, lib. iii,'

On the contrary, in the elevated countries exposed to the bleak north and east winds, the mistral &c, as in the upper Auvergne, Vivarais, Marseilles, Montpeler, Grenoble, inflammatory phthisies, active hemorrhagies, a propensity to acute diseases, phlegmacies, peripneumonies, rheumatisms, dry ophtalmies, prevail the most; consumptions are more common among inhabitants of cold and elevated countries.

These two characters of country produce opposite endemic affections; for, in the low, humid and tepid regions, the body is always in a state of great flaccidity, the abdomen yields to the touch, and is disposed to a diarrhoeal flux, the diseases take a chronic character, the crises are imperfect; we remark, in almost all the inhabitants a humoral degeneracy, a sad countenance, a poor state of health, a premature old age, torpid and languid senses. In return,

in the high, barren, cold countries exposed to a free air, the body is in a state of contraction, which renders it more robust and healthy, the abdomen more costive, the head and superior parts stronger, the secretion of the milk less, vomitings more frequent than alvine dejections, &c. This accounts for the ulcers of the legs, being more easily cured in Montpellier, those of the head in Paris.

It results from those endemic dispositions, that strangers are often exempt from the diseases to which the natives are exposed, and on the contrary, what comports with the health of a native, becomes cause of disease to a stranger placed under the same circumstances. Thus the wa

ter of the Seine causes a diarrhoea to every one but the Parisian, who is accustomed to drink it. The cretin of the gorges of the Valais, loses his stupidity when exposed to the dry and sharp air of the high neighboring mountains, and the sanguine highlander is less subject to hemorrhagies and acute affections, on going down into the thick and foggy air of the valleys.

Hence it comes, that like plants, all diseases are not equally developed under every climate; for instance, the

miliary fever, common in Normandy is unknown in other provinces;-aphtoe so frequent in Holland, are exceedingly scarce in Vienna ;--the gangrenous anthrax, so numerous in the south, are very seldom to be seen at the north of France. On the same grounds it may be said,that the type of the human affections is modified and changed by the nature of each climate; for instance, a pleurisy will acquire a greater intensity in mountains, than in valleys. Thus, however exact Baglivi, Huxham, Stoll, Pringle, Haen, Piquer, Grant, &c. may have been in the description of diseases, yet they have by no means accurately observed the varieties presented by our climates. All those facts prove the importance of correct topographies of every region, to form a sound judgement on the nature of the endemic affections, and even of epidemics invading each country.

ON THE PRINCIPAL ENDEMIC DISEASES
OF EACH NATION.

OF EUROPEANS.

We do not intend giving, as did Leon- Ludow Finke, a general geography of practical medicine for the whole human species, but to recount in a brief manner the various diseases habitually existing in each nation in general, together with the causes, if known, to which they are attributed. Travellers who unlike Prosper Alpin, Kaempfer, Bontius, Pison, Cleghorn, Lind, Hillary, Chalmers, PouppéDesportes, Bajon, &c. were destitute of a sufficient knowledge in medicine and natural philosophy, have left us in the dark in such matters; however we may extract from their relations, useful documents. This study of the various dispositions of climates rectifies and eludicates the notions,sometimes too circumscribed, which we acquire from the perusal of the profound treatise of Hippocrates.

Let us begin at the extremity of the north of Europe. According to Schoeffer and Linnæus, Laplanders are subject to peripneumony, cephalalgy, especially to ophthalmy, to the lippitude occasioned by smoke and dust, and to the sphacelus of the limbs originating from the cold. Milk of rein-deer or smoked meat very often cause to them violent cholic, followed by an abundant ptyalism, called ullem or hotme. They are much subject to worms and spasms; yet, the plague, acute, or even intermittent fevers, are unknown to them,

The scorbutic diathesis, which appears either in spots, or by the swelling of the gums, ulcers on the legs, and

heaviness, prevails in a high degree in Norway, Sweden, a part of Finland, Russia, Pomerania, Courland, Livonia, &c. We find also intermittent fevers, palsy, gout, dropsy, rheumatism, in proportion to the dampness and coldness of the region; for, the driest parts of Iceland, the mountains of Norway are healthy, their inhabitants longlived. The case is the same in the Orcad and Schettland Islands, with the exception of a few instances of scurvy and consumption. Horrebow and some authors said that in Ferroe Islands, and on the shores of some parts of Iceland, a kind of leprosy or tetter, called Spitaelska, is owing to the fishes (salmons) often putrified, which compose the food of the inhabitants.

Olaus-Magnus, Crantz, Cromer, Ziegler, Peucer, &c. have related marvelous histories of the northern nations, that posterity of the Cimbri and Scandinavians: in fact, an extreme propensity to superstition, fabulous traditions and to the most wonderful actions, is to be remarked among them. It is because the scorbutic diathesis prevailing round the Baltic, disposes the inhabitants to melancholy, spleen, and lycanthrophy. Curious instances of visionaries are to be found, in our days, among the highlanders of Scotland. In Denmark, the thick and foggy air, a coarse and indigestible food seem to create that state of atrabilarious cacochymy, the cause of many suicides, and the gloomy thoughts so admirably painted in Hamlet.

The Muscovites, Cossacks, Tartars of Kasan, inhabiting healthier countries, are liable but to a few diseases, if we except chilblains or affections of the chest originating from the cold; they are long-lived, great eaters, and subject to bulimy during the greatest frosts: yet,according to Pallas, rheumatism, miliary fevers, many cases of hemorrhoids are seen in some districts, and dropsy, intermittent fevers along the swampy banks of the Volga, Don and Dniepper rivers.

We know that a peculiar lesion of the hair called plica is endemic in Poland, Lithuania, Transylvania, Sile