Scientific Intelligence Anthropology , 193 
ed several of the individuals afflicted with it, and endeavoured 
to obtain every information on the subject from the most authen- 
tic sources. The following facts may be depended upon : The 
disorder attacks those only who drink from the water of the river. 
It is indeed in its worst state, confined almost entirely to the half- 
breed of women and children who reside constantly at the fort, 
and make use of river-water, drawn in winter, through a hole 
made in the ice. The men, from being often from home, on 
journeys through the plain, where their drink is melted snow, are 
less affected : and if any of them exhibit, during the winter, 
some incipient symptoms of the complaint, the annual summer 
voyage to the sea-coast generally effects a cure. The natives, 
who confine themselves to snow-water in the winter, and drink of 
the small rivulets which flowthrough the plains in the summer, are 
exempt from the attacks of this disease.” A residence of a single 
year at Edmonstone, is sufficient to render a family bronchocelous. 
Many of the goitres acquire great size. Burnt sponge has been 
tried, and found to remove the disease ; but an exposure to the 
same cause immediately produces it. A great proportion of the 
children of women who have goitres, are born idiots, with large 
heads, and the other distinguishing marks of cretins. I could not 
learn whether it was necessary that both parents should have 
goitres to produce cretin children.” I may here remark, that in 
no instance have I observed mental imbecility, or the disease 
called Cretinism, in the least connected with bronchocele, as it 
occurs in this part of the country. From what has been stated 
above, it is sufficiently clear, that elevation of situation, and tem- 
perature of the water, ha^e nothing to do with the production 
of bronchocele. That it is occasioned by something in the wa- 
ter commonly used, in the place where the disease is endemic, 
is, I think, sufficiently proved by the extracts from Captain 
Franklin’s Journal, given above. As to the particular sub- 
stance in solution in the water, that occasions bronchocele, I 
freely confess my complete ignorance ; but let us hope that this 
noxious matter will sooner or later be detected by some one 
gifted with superior talents for chemical research 
* The above notice is extracted from a valuable and important medical work, 
lately published, under the title, u Medical Researches on the effects of Iodine in 
Bronchocele by Alexander Manson, M. D. 
VOL. XIV. NO. 27. JANUARY 1826. 
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