“No traces of the exanthematous disorders met our observation. A solitary case of epilepsy was seen in a deaf and dumb boy, who eventually died. Chronic rheumatism occurs, but it is rare and not severe. I have some doubt in saying that scurvy exists among them. A disease, however, having a close affinity to it was witnessed, but as in the only case that came fairly under our notice it was complicated with the symptoms of a previous debilitating disease, the diagnosis was difficult. During the patient’s recovery from one of the abdominal attacks above mentioned, the gums were observed to be spongy, separated from the teeth and reverted, bleeding, and in various parts presenting the livid appearance of scorbutic gums. At the same period arose pains of an anomalous description, and of considerable severity about the shoulders and thorax. These gradually yielded as he recovered strength, but were succeeded by other pains and tenderness of the bones and muscles of the thighs and legs. The citric acid was given to him freely from the beginning, until it interfered with his appetite and bowels, when it was omitted. Topical applications were at the same time used, and afterwards continued. Signs of amendment appeared before it became necessary to withhold the vegetable acid, and it was not recurred to while he remained on board. Urged by impatience of control, he left us to join his countrymen before he had well regained his strength; but we saw him on board several times afterwards in a progressive state of improvement, and, though yet weak, free from scorbutic symptoms.
Another instance offered in a woman, whom I saw but once. Her gums were spongy and reverted, but not discoloured; her countenance sallow, lips pale, and she suffered under general debility, without local pain or rigidity of the limbs. She remained in this state for a long time, and eventually, as the weather improved, recovered without assistance.
“That affection of the eyes known by the name of snow-blindness, is extremely frequent among these people. With them it scarcely ever goes beyond painful irritation, whilst among strangers inflammation is sometimes the consequence. I have not seen them use any other remedy besides the exclusion of light; but as a preventive a wooden eye-screen is worn, very simple in its construction, consisting of a curved piece of wood six or seven inches long and ten or twelve lines broad. It is tied over the eyes like a pair of spectacles, being adapted to the forehead and nose, and hollowed out to favour the motion of the eyelids. A few rays of light only are admitted through a narrow slit an inch long, cut opposite to each eye. This contrivance is more simple and quite as efficient as the more heavy one possessed by some who have been fortunate enough to acquire wood for the purpose. This is merely the former instrument complicated by the addition of a horizontal plate projecting three or four inches from its upper rim, like the peak of a jockey’s cap. In Hudson’s Strait the latter is common, and the former in Greenland, where also we are told they wear with advantage the simple horizontal peak alone.
“There are upon the whole no people more destitute of curative means than these. With the exception of the
hemorrhage already mentioned, which they duly appreciate, and have been observed to excite artificially to cure head-ache, they are ignorant of any rational method of procuring relief. It has not been ascertained that they use a single herb medicinally. As prophylactics they wear amulets, which are usually the teeth, bones, or hair of some animal, the more rare apparently the more valuable. In absolute sickness they depend entirely upon their Angekoks, who, they persuade themselves, have influence over some submarine deities who govern their destiny. The mummeries of these impostors, consisting in pretended consultations with their oracles, are looked upon with confidence, and their mandates, however absurd, superstitiously submitted to. These are constituted of unmeaning ceremonies and prohibitions generally affecting the diet, both in kind and mode, but never in quantity. Seal’s flesh is forbidden, for instance, in one disease, that of the walrus in the other; the heart is denied to some and the liver to others. A poor woman, on discovering that the meat she had in her mouth was a piece of fried heart instead of the liver, appeared horrorstruck; and a man was in equal tribulation at having eaten, by mistake, a piece of meat cooked in his wife’s kettle.
“This charlatanerie, although we may ridicule the imposition, is not, however, with them, as it is with us, a positive evil. In the total absence of the medical art, it proves generally innoxious; while in many instances it must be a source of real benefit and comfort, by buoying up the sick spirit with confident hopes of recovery, and eventually enabling the vital powers to rise superior to the malady, when, without such support, the sufferer
might have sunk under its weight. It was attempted to ascertain whether climate effected any difference in animal heat between them and ourselves by frequently marking the temperature of the mouth; but the experiments were necessarily made, as occasion offered, under such various states of vascular excitement, as to afford nothing conclusive. As it was, their temperature varied from 97° to 102°, coinciding pretty nearly with our own under similar circumstances. The pulse offered nothing singular.
“I may here remark that there is in many individuals a peculiarity about the eye, amounting in some instances to deformity, which I have not noticed elsewhere. It consists in the inner corner of the eye being entirely covered by a duplication of the adjacent loose skin of the eyelids and nose. This fold is lightly stretched over the edges of the eyelids, and forms, as it were, a third palpebra of a crescentic shape. The aperture is in consequence rendered somewhat pyriform, the inner curvature being very obtuse, and in some individuals distorted by an angle formed where the fold crosses the border of the lower palpebra. This singularity depends upon the variable form of the orbit during immature age, and is very remarkable in childhood, less so towards adult age, and then, it would seem, frequently disappearing altogether; for the proportion in which it exists among grown-up persons bears but a small comparison with that observed among the young.
“Personal deformity from mal-conformation is uncommon, the only instance I remember being that of a young woman, whose utterance was unintelligibly nasal, in consequence of an imperfect development of