IO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 60 



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 are 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 die. 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 — tuber- 

 culosis, beri-beri, and decayed teeth. 



The bad diet probably impels the people to conserve their body 

 heat and live in the overwarm, confined atmosphere, just as our 

 pigeons fed on white bread sit, with their feathers out, huddled 

 together to keep each other warm. 



The metabolism, circulation, respiration, and expansion of the lung 

 are all reduced. The warm, moist atmosphere lessens the evapora- 

 tion from the respiratory tract, and therefore the transudation of 

 tissue lymph and activity of the ciliated epithelium. The unex- 

 panded parts of the lung are not swept with blood. Everything 

 favors a lodgment of the bacilli, and lessens the defences on which 

 immunity depends. In the mouth, too, the immune properties of the 

 saliva are neutralized by the continual presence of food, and the 

 temperature of the mouth is kept at a higher level, which favors 

 bacterial growth. Lieutenant Sein (Norwegian navy) informs us 

 that recently in northern Norway there has been the same notable 

 increase in tuberculosis. The old cottage fireplaces with wide 

 chimneys have been replaced with American stoves. In former days 

 most of the heat went up the chimney, and the people were warmed 

 by radiant heat. Now the room is heated to a uniform moist heat. 

 The Norwegians nail up the windows and never open them during 

 the winter. At Lofoten, the great fishing center, oil motor-boats 

 have replaced the old open sailing boats and rowboats. The 

 cabin in the motor-boat is very confined, covered in with a watertight 

 deck, heated by the engine, crowded with a dozen workers. When 

 in harbor the fishermen used to occupy ill-fitted shanties, through 

 which the wind blew freely ; now, to save rent, they sleep in the 



