26 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



more than six hundred miles, or about twenty-three hours to 

 the east of the center of the " Lows." Dr. Mitchell's own con- 

 clusions, given from observations on this case, in 1S77, are: 

 " Every storm, as it sweeps across the continent, consists of a 

 vast rain area, at the center of which is a moving space of 

 greatest barometric depression, known as the storm center, 

 along which the storm moves like a bead on a thread. The 

 rain usually precedes this by 550 to 600 miles, but before and 

 around the rain lies a belt, which may be called the neuralgic 

 margin of the storm, and which precedes the rain about 150 

 miles." Clinical experience has long since noted the effect of 

 conibined cold and wind in producing neuralgia. 



The relations of water to disease appear in the various forms 

 of myths prevalent among large numbers of .savage tribes 

 and nations. As Tylor, in " Primitive Culture," vol. 2, p. 

 20.S, says: " In all that water does, the poets fancy can dis- 

 cern its personality of life. It gives fish to the fisherman, 

 and crops to the husbandman ; it swells in fury, and lays 

 waste the land; it grips the bather with chill and cramp, and 

 holds with inexorable grip its drowning victim. 



" Tweed said to Till, 

 What gars 3-6 rin sae still. 

 Till said to Tweed, 

 Though ye rin wi speed. 

 And I rin slaw. 

 Yet where ye drown ac man. 

 1 drown twa." 



vSurvixals of these myths appear even in times not very 

 remote. " In Australia special water demons infest pools and 

 watering places. In the native theory of di.sease and death, 

 no personage is more prominent than the water spirit, which 

 affects those who go into unlawful pools, or bathe at unlawful 

 times, the creature which causes women to pine and die, and 

 whose very presence is death to the beholder, .save to the 

 native doctor (an important exception), who may visit the 

 water-spirits' subatpieous abode and return with bleared eyes 

 and wet clollies to tell the wonders of their stay." 



" Carver mentions the hal)it of the Red Indians when they 

 reached the shores of Lake vSuperior or the banks of the 

 Mississijjpi, or any other great body of water, to present the 



