SWITZERLAND. 500 



oppression of despotic government. Even the Swiss cottages con- 

 vey i.he liveliest image of cleanliness, ease, and simplicity, and cannot 

 but strongly impress upon the observer a most pleasing conviction 

 of the peasant's happiness. In some of the cantons, each cottage has 

 its little territory, consisting generally of a field or two of fine pas- 

 ture ground, and frequently skirted with trees, and well supplied with 

 water. Sumptuary laws are in force in most parts of Switzerland : 

 and no dancing is allowed, except upon particular occasions. Silk, 

 lace, and several other articles of luxury, are totally prohibited in some 

 of the cantons : and even the head dresses of the ladies are regulated. 

 Ail games of hazard are also strictly prohibited ; and in other games, 

 the party who loses above six florins, which is about nine shillings of 

 our money, incurs a considerable fine. Their diversions, therefore, 

 are chiefly of the active and warlike kind ; and as their time is not 

 wasted in games of chance, many of them employ part of their leisure 

 hours in reading, to the great improvement of their understandings. 

 The youth are diligently trained to all the martial exercises, such as 

 running, wrestling, throwing the hammar, and shooting, both with the 

 cross-bow and the musket. 



Goitres and idiots.. ..The inhabitants in one part of this country, 

 particularly in the republic of Valais, are very much subject to goitres^ 

 or large excrescences of flesh that grow from the throat, and often in- 

 crease to a most enormous size ; but what is more extraordinary, 

 idiotism also remarkably abounds amongst them. " I saw," says 

 Mr. Coxe, " many instances of both kinds ; as I passed through Sion, 

 some idiots were basking in the sun, with their tongues out, and their 

 heads hanging down, exhibiting the most affecting spectacle of intel- 

 lectual imbecility that can possibly be conceived." The causes which 

 produce a frequency of these phenomena in this country form a very 

 curious question. 



The notion that snow water occasions these excrescences is totally 

 void of foundation. For, on that supposition, why are the natives of 

 those places that lie most contiguous to the glaciers, and who drink 

 no other water than what descends from those immense reservoirs of 

 ice and snow, free from this malady ? And why are the inhabitants of 

 those countries in which there is no snow, afflicted with it ? For these 

 guttural tumours are to be found in the environs of Naples, in the 

 island of Sumatra, and at Patna and Pernea in the East Indies, where 

 snow is unknown. 



The springs that supply drink to the natives are impregnated with 

 a calcareous matter, called in Switzerland tuf, nearly similar to the 

 incrustations of Matlock in Derbyshire, so minutely dissolved as not 

 in the least to affect the transparency of the water. It is not impro- 

 bable that the impalpable particles of this substance, thus dissolved, 

 should introduce themselves into the glands of the throat, and produce 

 goitres, for the following reasons : because tuf, or this calcareous de- 

 position, abounds in all those districts where goitres are common. 

 There are goitrous persons and much tuf in Derbyshire, in various 

 parts of the Valais, in the Valteline, at Lucern, Freyburg, and Bern, 

 near Aigle and Bex, in several places of the Pays-de-Vaud, near Dres- 

 den, in the vallies of Savoy and Piedmont, near Turin and Milan. But 

 the strongest proof in favour of this opinion, says our author, is de- 

 rived from the following facts. A surgeon whom I met at the baths 

 of Lcuk informed me, that he had not unfrequently extracted concre- 

 tions of tuf-stone from several goitres ; and that from one in partial- 



