396 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1778. 



one part of the learned president's discourse drew Dr. G.'s attention in particular, 

 as it regarded this country, and touched on a subject to which he had long ijaid 

 attention, viz. the antiseptic regimen which nature has dictated to the peasants 

 of Russia. Nothing seems clearer than that, if nature had not taught these 

 people habits, and given them a taste which galloping travellers treat with 

 contempt, they must undoubtedly have sunk under the scurvy, as they are, for 

 the greatest part of the year, exposed to the influence of those predisposing 

 causes to putrid complaints that make the body of the Greenland seaman livid ; 

 yet under all these disadvantages such seems to be the efficacy of the regimen 

 they observe, that putrid diseases are strangers to their huts, and the Russian 

 boor enjoys a state of health that astonishes an inhabitant of a country where 

 the dreadful consequences are so well known of bad air within, excessive cold 

 vifithout, joined to a want of fresh vegetables for a length of time. 



The Russian boor lives in a wooden house, made with his own hatchet, his 

 only instrument, in the use of which he is most dextrous : it is caulked with 

 moss, so as to be very snug and close. It is furnished with an oven, which 

 answers the triple purpose of heating the house, dressing the victuals, and sup- 

 porting on its flat top the greasy mattrass on which he and his wife lie. From 

 over the oven, which is on one side of the room, are laid some boards reaching 

 to, and supported by, the opposite wall, raised a little above the stove, so as to 

 receive its heated air. On those sleep the children and secondary personages of 

 the hut ; for the oven itself is a luxury reserved for the first. Round the room 

 runs a bench with a table in the middle, and in the corner is a sort of cupboard 

 for the reception of saints, before whom small tapers frequently burn, or a lamp 

 with hemp oil. During the long severe winter season, the cold prevents them 

 from airing this habitation, so that you may easily conceive that the air cannot 

 be very pure, considering that 4, 5, or 6 people eat and sleep in one room, and 

 undergo, during the night, a most stewing process from the heat and closeness 

 of their situation ; insomuch that they have the appearance of being dipped in 

 water, and raise a steam and smell in the room, not ofl^ensive to themselves, but 

 scarcely supportable to the person whom curiosity may lead thither. 



Now if it be considered, that this human effluvium must adhere to every 

 thing in the room, especially to the sheep skins or mattrass on which they sleep, 

 the moss in the walls, &c. and that the apartment is never ventilated for 6 

 months at least; at the same time that these people are living occasionally on 

 salt fish or meat, and the whole time without fresh vegetables, exposed likewise 

 when out of doors to a severe cold atmosphere, the scorbutic tendency of which, 

 is well known : when all these circumstances are taken into consideration, if it 

 be a fact that they are, in spite of all those predisposing causes, strangers to 

 putrid disease, it will sufficiently justify the first assertion, that the regimen 



