If we retrace our steps towards Berri, Bourbonnois, we will find the miliary fever, or "millot," peculiar to these countries, often attended with inflammatory fevers, petechial eruptions, &c. Obstructions and jaundice are prevalent at Chalons-sur-Saône, in Burgundy; in other places malignant pustules are seen breaking out; and it has been particularly observed that wherever a great quantity of hemp is steeped in standing water, it assists the developement of this anthrax, although it may be said to be also caused by other circumstances. In some parts of Alsace and Franche-Comté the inhabitants are subject to verminous affections.

The upper-Auvergne is a country free from any intermittent fevers, but exposed to the diseases of the lungs; this peculiarity is much more remarkable in Vivarois and the Cevennes, where the inhabitants are violent and passionate. Such natural dispositions of the body exist all over the "Gaule Narbonnoise" of the ancients, at Nimes, Montpellier, Toulouse, and inLanguedoc,and even Gascony; for, affections of the chest, caused by a sudden change from a warm to a cold weather, hemoptysies, asthmas, cough, inflammatory phthisis,* prevail in countries most exposed to a keen air; yet the shores of the Mediterranean sea, being,in some places,covered with marshes, the inhabitants are of a pale and sallowish complexion, languid, subject to infiltrations, especially of the scrotum; we observe among them various cutaneous diseases, tetters, and even leprosy; for instance at Martigues in Provence. On the humid soil of Languedoc, children become subject to the "sarrette," a kind of trismus of the jaws, to crinodes, sub-cutaneous worms, known also at the north of Europe, according to Ettmuller. Gangrenous bubos, or anthrax, are also frequent in Provence, as well as affections of the chest; but sometimes malignant, ataxic, soporiferous fevers break out towards the sea shores, and especially at

*See Hautessierk, Recueil de mem. des hopit. milit. &c.

Aigues-Mortes. In time of old, gibbosity was common in Aquitaine.

Switzerland,the mountainous parts of Savoie and Piedemont present in some degree the same affections. The warm and humid gaps of those mountains, where the inhabitants live upon milk, originate bilious or gastric fevers, gangrenous angina, pemphigus, scarlet fevers, which become endemic. Mucous and often verminous fevers are seen in the low places. However, nostalgia which affects the Swiss and highlanders in foreign lands, is the greatest and truest encomium of their countries. The inhabitants of the country of Vaud, Faucigny, Maurienne, especially Valais, are subject to critinism, bronchocele, swellings and obstructions of the glands, coupled with cachexy, dropsy, idiotism; and in those deep valleys, during the hot days of the summer, many cases of frenzy, insolation, break out.

In Italy, the affections are diversified according to the situation of the countries. In Piedemont, the rice-fields produce ague, petechial eruptions, especially the miliary one described by Allioni, and which spreads over the plains of ancient Lombardy; it is accompanied with a stupor or soporous state more or less fatal. Goitres are common in the Bergamask. In the Milaneze, pellagra and hypochondriac complaints are to be met with. The country about Mantua is infected by the diseases, common to marshy countries. Such diseases are numerous towards the marshy places in the territory of Venice, the swamps of Pisa, Cezena; they are especially increased,during the autumn, by the mal'aria, of the Pontine marshes in Romagna, this latter cause chiefly originates ataxic fevers of the most fatal character.* In the territory of Venice, hemorrhoids,varrices and wens occur in great number.

* Lancisi, De noxiis palud. effluviis; Torti, Ramazzini, &c.

The semi-tertian fevers, frequent among the Romans in Galen's time*, are still remarked in our days. Most of them degenerate into phthisis or dropsy,particularly among churchmen given up to the pleasures of the table. Tusca ny or Etruria is the driest and healthiest part of Italy; yet we see there many epileptic convulsions, especially among children. Calabria, Abruzzi and Apulia, are warm and dry countries; their inhabitants are subject to pleurisy, ardent fevers or causus, and particularly to very singular spasmodic affections, formerly attributed to the sting of the tarentula spider. Tarentulism,f like St. Vitus's dance, is also, according to Baglivi, accompanied with mania and other nevroses among the bony and passionate inhabitants of the Apennin: "genus acre virúm Marsos. Towards Naples, we see red spots on the skin, or a sort of urticaria fever, and prickly-heat, &c.

In Sicily, Morea, or ancient Greece, there are few special diseases, except the melancholic affections always numerous in these countries: yet leucophlegmacy was observed in Boeotia. Even in Hyppocrates time; epilepsy was as frequent in the Archipelago as it is now. Almost all the inhabitants of the Island of Mycone were bald at the age of twenty,§ and those of Delos subject to an œdema of the superior parts of the body, which rendered them pale, and whitened their hair.|| The Greeks were also subject to the common or tuberculous leprosy,so well described by Areteus, sometimes on the chin (mentagra,) sometimes producing aplopexy, but quite different from the elephanthiasis of the Arabians. Moreover a great

* De morb. vulgarib.; lib. I. Comment. 2.

+ Strangers are not liable to that disease which is periodical in those countries. Kohler, Comment. de rebus in med. gestis, v. 8, p.6. Virgil.. Georg., 1. ii, v. 167.

Pline. Histoire naturelle, liv. xi, c. 37; Eustathe, ad Dionys., vers 526; Tournefort, Voyag., v. i. lett. 6.

Eschinus. in Epist, Philocrati.

many persons, especially in Attica,suffered from gout. It would be worth while to ascertain what kind of diseases could originate from the education, and the severe ner of living among the Spartans.

man

Spain and Portugal have also their endemic diseases. We know that itch, scurf on the head, are frequently seen in Galicia and Biscaye. Thierry has described the "mal de la rosa", or a kind of scorbutic leprosy, very common in the hnmid gaps of the Asturian mountains; scrofulas are in great number, and even the common leprosy is not unknown there.

The rachialgic colic, known under the name of entrepana, and skillfully described by Luzuriaga, prevails in the two Castilles, and particularly at Madrid; it rages always violently among strangers. Valence, being a marshy country, produces a great number of ascites, leucophlegmacies; almost all females are subject to the "fluor albus" and to a hemorrhage for a long time after parturition. It is not so in the Andalusia, where many melancholic affections are observed; some main tain that frenzy, suicides and murders are owing to the east wind. Generally speaking, the flatulent hypocond ria,hemorrhoids and immoderate menstruation among females, are very common in Spain. Leprosy exists also in Portugal,and fevers are more or less fatal in several countries watered by the Douro river. Algarve, Alentejo, the whole south of that peninsula, as well as the islands of Majorca and Minorca, &c. present many spasmodic affections, nevroses, very acute gastric fevers, and other diseases of the tropics, according to Cleghorn; ataxic or malignant fevers are numerous in New-Castile. Formerly phthisis was frequent in Portugal.

* Jour. med. v. 2. p. 337.

Bourgoing, Voyage, v. 2, p. 264, Paris 1788 in 8vo.

ON THE ENDEMIC AFFECTIONS OF ASIA, AFRICA, AND AMERICA.

It would be impossible for want of information, and I should say useless here, to give a full account of the diseases of those immense regions of the earth, as we did for Europe. It will be sufficient to present their principal affections, and above all, to consider how the same disease is modified by the nature of each climate. For instance syphilis is a very mild disease between the tropics,on account of the continual perspiration and the vegetable diet, but becomes very violent in the northern climates. In some countries it breaks out especially under the form of bubos; in the damp countries it appears particularly by ulcers and a discharge; at Naples by indolent tumors, exestoses, &c. We will not wonder at those various effects, if we consider that in each country the divers organs of its inhabitants acquiring a greater relative development or weakness from the climate, the diseases must, of course, invade any given system of the constitution, with more or less energy.

OF ASIA.

The northern part, or the level and elevated country of Tartary, is inhabited by a great variety of tribes of the Mongul or Calmuc race; most of them are nomades.

*Small pox appeared in Mahomet's time, and syphilis in Christopher Columbus's.