166 THENORTHPOLE 



chopping dog meat or shouting, were to be made from 

 ten o'clock at night until eight in the morning. 



While living on the Roosevelt, in winter quarters, we 

 abandoned much of the routine of ship life afloat. The 

 only regular bells were those at ten and twelve at night, 

 the first a signal for all loud noises to cease, the latter a 

 signal for lights to be turned out. The only watches 

 were those of the regular day and night watchmen. 



With the exception of a few cases of grip, the health 

 of the party was good during the whole period of our 

 life at winter quarters. Grip in the Arctic, coincident 

 with epidemics in Europe and America, is rather an 

 interesting phenomenon. My first experience with it 

 was in 1892, following one of the peculiar Greenland 

 storms, similar to those in the Alps — a storm which 

 evidently swept over the entire width of Greenland from 

 the southeast, raising the temperature from the minus 

 thirties to plus forty-one in twenty -four hours. Follow- 

 ing that atmospheric disturbance every member of my 

 party, and even some of the Eskimos, had a pronounced 

 attack of grip. It was our opinion that the germs were 

 brought to us by this storm, which was more than a 

 local disturbance. 



Aside from rheumatism and bronchial troubles, the 

 Eskimos are fairly healthy; but the adults are subject 

 to a peculiar nervous affection which they call piblokto 

 — a form of hysteria. I have never known a child to 

 have piblokto; but some one among the adult Eskimos 

 would have an attack every day or two, and one day 

 there were five cases. The immediate cause of this 

 affection is hard to trace, though sometimes it seems to 

 be the result of a brooding over absent or dead relatives, 



