MEDICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTES. 



GENERAL, NOTES. 



For the man of broad ideas and entlmsiasm for hiuiiauity, more especially for the medical 

 man, there exists but one jieopie, namely, the human race, wliich 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 difterences exist in the race 

 when regarded from a biological or a medical aspect; and the infirmities of men, notwithstanding 

 tiieir pliysical inequalities and tlie extended range of the nosological table, are much the same the 

 world over, no matter whetlier they be classitied as belonging to the Caucasian, Mongolian, or 

 IIy])erborean 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 clianges and variations that are brought about in the human economy 

 by climatic influences and tlie environments of high latitudes— by the surroundings, in fact, of that 

 part of the earth wliich Hippocrates places under the constellation of the Bear and beyond the 

 Riphi«an 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 tlie usual mixture of true and false 

 which fills the pages of the ancients 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. Tabulous 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 "Hyperboreaj one" 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 Hecafjeus of Abdera down to 

 the days of Mr. James Gordon Bennett. 



Among the numerous historic men who have sought adveuture 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 suft'ering 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 tlie 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-Mississijipi River, I joined the Arctic Kelief 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 tliat a healtliy man rcciuires. The in.saiubrity of the 



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H. Ex. 105 2 



