The people here use a kind of bread called Blodbrod (Blood Bread), made of small fresh fish, bruised and mixed with a little quantity of flour. This is baked or roasted on a jack before the fire, but it is used only in hard times.
There are no common flies, bugs, nor snakes, on these Alps.
The Laplanders however abound with lice, which in winter are allowed to freeze, when they turn red, and are easily killed. In summer they come forth from the clothes, if exposed to the sun, and are then de
stroyed with the nails, these people having no firelock to shoot them with[2].
I was informed that in this neighbourhood the inoculated small-pox is remarkably fatal. If the patients have but seventy or eighty pustules, they die of it as of the plague. They fly to the mountains, when infected, and die. The same is the case with the measles. It appears that both these diseases are aggravated by the violent cold, whence the patients die in so miserable a manner[3].
Swelled necks (goitres) are frequent.
Sore eyes are universal, especially in the spring, when the Laplanders remove towards the Alps. The glittering of the snow has then a pernicious effect on their eyes. Aged people are very often blind.
Female obstructions are rare, though sometimes met with among the better sort of people; neither are the catamenia immoderate, nor in common so copious as with us. The Lapland women are entirely ignorant of the leucorrhœa.