One blue-eyed girl, with a fair skin and well combed hair, looked well in the face, but the doctor said her body was in a terrible state.
As I walked round the room, I observed another young woman, stretched on a bed in the corner, with dark luxuriant hair—very un-Norwegian in tint—and with peculiarly bright flashing eyes, with which she gazed at me steadfastly.
“Come hither,” said the doctor to me; “shut your eyes, Bergita.”
The poor thing gave a faint smile, and slightly moved her lids; but this was all. She will never shut those eyes again, perhaps, not even in death.
In another bed was a woman with her teeth uncovered and lips apart.
“Now, mother, try and shut your lips.”
A tremulous movement of the lower jaw followed, but the muscles would not work; the disease had destroyed the hinges, and there she lay, mouth open, a spectacle of horror.
In some cases—indeed, very many—when the disease has seriously set in, it throws a white film over the iris of the eye, the pupil becomes contracted, the ball loses its colour, becomes a whitish mass, and gradually rots out of the socket. Each patient had a religious book by his side, and some sat on the bed or by it reading. They all seemed unrepining at their lot. One poor woman wept tears of gladness when I addressed a word or two of consolation to her. Indeed, the amount of pain felt by these poor sufferers is very small in comparison with what might have been expected from the marks of the fell talons imprinted on their frames. The doctor said they were chiefly carried off at last by hectic fever. Scurvy ointment is used in many cases, frequent cupping in others. One poor woman, with a leg like an elephant’s, so deformed and shapeless was it, declined amputation. And there she will go on, the excessive sensitiveness to pain succeeded by an utter anæsthetic state, and one extremity rotting off after another, till she is left a mere blotched trunk, unless a merciful death relieve her before.
One poor woman had been afflicted for no less than fifty years; her parents, if I remember rightly, were free from the malady, but her grandfather and grandmother had suffered from it. But we have seen enough of this melancholy place. It is a satisfaction to know that, at all events, although the disease cannot be cured by medicine or any other remedy, yet as much is done as possible to alleviate its miseries. The surgeon and chaplain are daily in attendance; abundance of active young women—not old gin-drinking harridans—discharge the office of nurses. The diet is much better than these people would obtain at home. I examined the spacious kitchens, and learned that meat is served thrice a-week to the patients, not to mention soups, puddings, &c. It has been asserted that the disease has lately been on the increase in Norway, but this statement is based most likely on insufficient data.
In the rest of Europe, Scotland especially, to judge from all accounts, it was at one time as bad as it is now in this country. Neither was it confined to the lower classes. Robert Bruce died of it. But as it is now almost, if not altogether, exterminated in Scotland, there seems no reason why, if the advice of the Government above-mentioned is followed, it should not also die out in Scandinavia. In other respects, the population is healthy and strong, and not affected by goître or any of the usual mountain complaints.