Clifton College Scientific Society. 31 



the goitre to an excess of calcareous matter present in the sprino;- 

 water or in the soil. Now, in the first place, the water generally 

 drunk by the people is snow-water ; secondly, there are many 

 places in England where the soil is on limestone, but where no 

 traces of goitre are found. Goitre is far more likely to be due to 

 a want of a free circulation of air. Experience has shown that it 

 prevails most in those places where water and air both lie stag- 

 nant ; in moist and warm situations, where a free current of air 

 cannot sweep past and bring away with it the polluted air and 

 vapours stagnant in the valley. In one long valley it is perhaps 

 found that the goitre prevails at one spot, and a little higher up 

 is unknown ; a mile or two further, perhaps, it is again prevalent, 

 and so on. This is notably the case with the valley leading up to 

 the Great St Bernard. The disease, which is unknown at Liddes, 

 prevails at Vercheres, though it is at least 800 feet lower down. 

 At Orsienes, again, almost every one is afflicted with it. Orsifenes 

 is, of course, further from the glacier than Liddes, so that if the 

 disease originated in glacier-water, it would be found at Liddes 

 rather than at Orsienes. A fact in the ancient way of livino- 

 which the Swiss used to practise may bear on this subject. They 

 were collected together into small districts and villages, and the 

 old superstition (though it may seem strange to us) was, that they 

 might not live away from the villages in which they had been 

 born, lest they should be killed by evil spirits. Consequently, a 

 small lot of, say, one hundred live together, and breed there, 

 generation after generation, without changing their abodes or 

 receiving fresh inhabitants into their own villages. This alone is 

 enough, I think, to account for many disorders. Perhaps it may 

 have originated the one in question ; but at all events the disease, 

 once created, would be handed on, since we know that the disease 

 is hereditary. 



Something of the same sort was noticed near Borrowdale, in 

 Cumberland, many years ago. The alarming number of idiots in 

 those districts attracted attention ; and it was also noticed that the 

 inhabitants intermarried to a great extent. This state of things is 

 now happily altered, and no longer are the regions about Borrow- 

 dale the seats of idiocy as formerly. 



Cretinism and idiocy are by no means the same ; but yet they 

 are akin to each other, and cretinism can be looked upon as a 

 form of idiocy. The form of goitre known in England is much 

 milder than that of the Alps and the Pyrenees. It is iden- 

 tical with the so-called " Derbyshire Throat." I mentioned that 

 cretinism usually occurs about the age of puberty ; but children 

 have shown symptoms of weakness of mind, and their heads have 

 begun to increase in size, while they were cutting their teeth. 



