MEDICALy AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTES: 
GENERAL NOTES. 
For the man of broad ideas and enthusiasm for humanity, more especially for the medical 
man, there exists but one people, namely, the human race, which he studies in all its varieties, physical 
and moral, in order not to hesitate, according to the expression of Hippocrates, in the treatment of 
disease. Experience and observation show, however, that no wide differences exist in the race 
when regarded from a biological or a medical aspect; and the infirmities of men, notwithstanding 
their physical inequalities and the extended range of the nosological table, are much the same the 
world over, no matter whether they be classified as belonging to the Caucasian, Mongolian, or 
Hyperborean races. 
The object of this paper is to record, in a fragmentary way, some observations, as they have 
occurred to the writer during a late hyperborean experience, which afforded exceptional advan- 
tages for noting a few of the changes and variations that are brought about in the human economy 
by climatic influences and the environments of high latitudes—by the surroundings, in fact, of that 
part of the earth which Hippocrates places under the constellation of the Bear and beyond the 
Riphwan Mountains whence blows the north wind, and where the sun, says he, is near them only 
in the summer solstice, but warms these places only a short time; the winds which blow from warm 
countries reaching there but seldom and with little force. 
These simple, true, and philosophical observations of the “divine old man,” it may be remarked, 
are in striking contrast to those of Tacitus, who indulges in the usual mixture of true and false 
which fills the pages of the ancieuts when treating of geographical subjects. 
Whether the early Greek conception of the people living beyond the north wind and giving rise 
to the Delian legends was based on any geographical relations at all, or was originally the myth- 
ical notion of the poets relative to an imaginary race, it is difficult to say—the question only raising 
a doubt that places us in a dilemma. Fabulous or not, we know that the subject was one of pop- 
ular interest in high antiquity, giving rise to a work on the Hyperboreans in the time of Alexander 
the Great, and that when Virgil and Horace speak of the ‘‘ Hyperbore ore” and ‘* Hyperborei 
campi” to indicate most northerly, they only made use of expressions which have served as con- 
necting links in literature to extend the interest from the epoch of Hecatzeus of Abdera down to 
the days of Mr. James Gordon Bennett. 
Among the numerous historic men who have sought adventure in this most weird, remote, 
and wonderful part of the globe from the early times of Naddod the Viking and Garder, down to 
Markham and De Long, we hear such tales of privation, disease, and suffering that the wonder 
is that men should still see about the mysterious regions of the north so much that is fascinating 
and romantic. But as the subject is not to be treated from a sentimental or an esthetic point of 
view, these prefatory remarks must yield to considerations of a more practical and commonplace 
character. 
THE VOYAGE. 
In obedience to instructions I proceeded overland to San Francisco, Cal.; and after an unavoid. 
able delay of several days from irregularities of railway travel, which had been interrupted by the 
floods of the Missouri-Mississippi River, | joined the Arctic Relief steamer Corwin on May 2. An 
inspection showed the Corwin to be in good sanitary condition with the exception of imperfect 
ventilation of the berth-deck and ward-room, the means for furnishing air to these overcrowded 
apartments being inadequate to supply every occupant with the twenty cubic feet of fresh air 
every minute which the best authorities agree that a healthy man requires. The insalubrity of the 
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H. Ex. 105——2 
