STUFFY ROOMS 381 



talk of seven and even eight per 1,000 in certain districts. The gen- 

 eral death-rate is a low one. The fishermen fish off shore, work for 

 many hours a day in the fishing season, and live with their families 

 on shore in one-roomed shanties. These shanties are built of wood, 

 the crannies are " stogged " with moss, and the windows nailed up, so 

 that ventilation is very imperfect. They are heated by stoves and 

 kept at a very high temperature, e. g., 80° F. Outside in the winter 

 the temperature may be 30 degrees below freezing. The women stay 

 inside the shanties almost all their time, and the tuberculosis rate is 

 somewhat higher in them. The main food is white bread, tea stewed 

 in the pot till black, fish occasionally, a little margarine and molasses. 

 The fish is boiled and the water thrown away. Game has become 

 scarce in recent years; old, dark-colored flour — spoken of with dis- 

 favor — has been replaced by white flour. In consequence of this diet 

 beri-beri has become rife to a most serious extent, and the hospitals 

 are full of cases. Martin Flack and I have found by our feeding 

 experiments that rats, mice and pigeons can not be maintained on 

 white bread and water, but can live on wholemeal, or on white bread 

 in which we incorporate an extract of the sharps and bran in sufficient 

 amount. Eecent work has shown the vital importance of certain 

 active principles present in the outer layers of wheat, rice, etc., and in 

 milk, meat, etc., which are destroyed by heating to 120° C. A diet of 

 white bread or polished rice and tinned food sterilized by heat is the 

 cause of beri-beri. The metabolism is endangered by the artificial 

 methods of treating foods now in vogue. As to the prevalency of 

 tuberculosis in Labrador, we have to consider the inter-marriage, the 

 bad diet, the over-rigorous work of the fishermen, the over-heating of, 

 and infection in the shanties. Dr. Wakefield has slept with four other 

 travelers in a shanty with father, mother and ten children. In some 

 there is scarce room on the floor to lie down. The shanties are heated 

 with a stove on which pots boil all the time; water runs down the 

 windows. The patients are ignorant, and spit everywhere, on bed, 

 floor and walls. In the schools the heat and smell is most marked to 

 one coming in from the outside air. In one school 50 cubic feet per 

 child is the allowance of space. The children are eating all day long, 

 and are kept in close hot confinement. They suffer very badly from 

 decay of the teeth. Whole families are swept off with tuberculosis, 

 and the child who leaves home early may escape, while the rest of a 

 family dies. Here, then, we have people living in the wildest and 

 least populated of lands with the purest atmosphere suffering from all 

 those ill-results which are found in the worst city slums — tuberculosis, 

 beri-beri and decayed teeth. 



The bad diet probably impels the people to conserve their body 

 heat and live in the over-warm, confined atmosphere, just as our 



