SURGEON'S REPORT. cxxv 



and they know well that good living and active exercise are indispensable to the cure. 

 Their sole internal medicine is train oil. This is, in fact, their panacea; and, if it fail, 

 the conjurer is their only refuge. 



All northern expeditions have furnished cases of frostbite, or, as we call the milder 

 affections in our own temperate region, chilblains, for they differ only in degree. With 

 due care, these accidents ought not to occur, but to be at all times on our guard is almost 

 impossible. Security is mortals' chiefest enemy, and a long immunity from suffering 

 renders us negligent of danger. In all, we had about a dozen cases. That of George 

 Taylor, one of the mates, demands distinct observation. This poor fellow had gone 

 out with a travelling party, and was at the time about forty miles from the ship. In 

 the morning, he had put on a wet stocking; when on his journey, he felt his foot 

 cold and benumbed, but imprudently persisted in walking without noticing it. In 

 the evening, when ordered by Captain James Ross to put on the usual night-stockings, 

 he discovered that the whole of his foot was frostbitten up to above the ankle. I did 

 not see the case till his return, three days afterwards; Captain James Ross had judi- 

 ciously ordered the limb to be rubbed with snow, and to be immersed in ice-cold water. 

 On examination I found the foot much swollen, painful, and in a state of incipient gan- 

 grene : anodyne poultices were applied, but it soon became necessary to amputate, 

 a measure which the man urged me to delay till Sir John Ross's return, and which I at 

 length performed with a favourable result. The other cases were of minor importance, 

 and all did well. 



If the preservation of a uniform temperature by external means be of the highest 

 importance, it must be admitted that the due and vigorous generation of caloric by u 

 proper selection of food is not less so. The natural food of this climate seems well 

 adapted to the purpose. Every one knows that solar caloric, caloric by combustion, 

 and that generated by animal life, are the three chief sources by which our temperature 

 is sustained. Now, it seems but reasonable that in a region where our supply from the 

 two first is so exceedingly limited, the more active evolution from the last source should 

 compensate for the deficiency. It is not so difficult, though certainly far from easy, to 

 explain the laws of heat when exerted on inanimate matter, so as to produce the known 

 vacillations of atmospheric temperature. But to explain these laws as influencing, and 

 influenced by, the laws of vitality— in other words, to show how the affinities of matter 



