GOITRES AND CRETINS.

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between our bodies and our minds, that the one ever sympathises with the other ; and itis by no means an ill-grounded conjecture, that the same causes which affect the bodyshould also affect the mind; or, in other words, that the waters which created obstruc-tions and goitres should also occasion mental imbecility.

“ Although these idiots are frequently the children of goitrous parents, and haveusually those swellings themselves, yet they are sometimes the offspring even of healthyparents, whose other children arc properly organised, and are themselves free fromguttural excrescences. I observed several children, scarcely ten years old, with verylarge goitres. These tumours, when they increase to a considerable magnitude, check per-spiration, and render those who are afflicted with them exceedingly indolent and languid.”

Coxe here alludes to the supposed agency of water in producing these diseases. Buton this point diverse opinions are entertained. Many persons have attributed goitre tothe use of snow-water as drink; but the disease occurs where there is no snow, as illSumatra , and in several parts of South America . Still further, the Swiss who drinksnow-water are free from the disease, while those who use hard spring-water are thegreatest sufferers from it. Captain Franklin remarked, during one of his Arctic voyages,that several persons who drank river-water were attacked with the disease, while thosewho drank snow-water escaped. Even in Geneva it was observed, that those who drankhard spring-water were most liable to goitre.

Cretins are not so widely spread as goitres, being confined to the villages and hamletsof the Lower Valais , among the Alps , and of the Val d’Aosta in Piedmont. In thelatter place the women wear black or white caps, fastened under the chin, for thepurpose of concealing the goitres, which most of them have ; and many of them arelikewise cretins. “ In the valley of Ollomont, as at Aosta, ” says Professor Forbes, “ theenjoyment of natural beauty is rendered impossible by the loathsome deformity of theinhabitants ; we were really shocked to find that none of the villages through which wepassed seemed to contain one reasonable human being :—goitres and cretinism appeareduniversal and inseparable. Repeatedly I tried to obtain an answer to a simple questionfrom the most rational-looking of the inhabitants, but in vain. This astonished andshocked us, for we were still at a height of 4,000 English feet above the sea, where thesemaladies commonly disappear ; and we looked forward with despair to the prospect ofobtaining a guide for the difficult and unknown country which we were next to traversefrom amongst such a population. But in this, as in very many similar cases, firstappearances are not to be interpreted to the letter.” On further inquiry it was found,that “ the effective population ” were mostly absent in attendance on a fete at the chiefplace of the district, and that “ others were with their herds in the mountains.”

The cretins scGm to prevail on the immediate borders, both Italian and Swiss , of theAlps , and to be rare in the more northern parts of Switzerland . It may seem strange,but it is no less true, that “we of England have not only idiocy and goitre to anuncredited extent, but we have among us cretinism in its genuine and most typicalforms,—just as truly as they have it in the Alps and the Andes . We have it not onlyin this geological locality or in that, but more or less diffused everywhere; in the highand goitrous levels of the mountain limestone districts of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, inSomersetshire , in Hertfordshire , in London , and in our towns—the towns where diseaseis endemic, and the towns where sanitary reform has become a principle.”*

It is pleasing to turn from these afflictive facts, to the consideration of any means fortheir diminution. Thus iodine was found, not many years ago, to be a most valuableremedy for goitre. Iodine is one of the ingredients in sea-weed, and also in sponge ;and as burnt sponge was one of the remedies employed for goitre, it occurred to an

Athentcuin, March 26, 1853.