United States or Palau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To Coni fifteen miles; the first seven or eight through a beautiful valley fringed with chestnut woods; every thing, however, appeared diminutive, as our eyes had not yet recovered the strain which the enormous scenery of the Col had occasioned. In this fine open valley, goitres abound as much as near Sion; this malady, therefore, cannot be attributed, as some think, to the stagnation of air.
If waters impregnated with tuf, or certain calcareous substances, produce the Goitres, it will follow, that in every place where they abound, the inhabitants should drink of waters so impregnated, which seems consonant to the truth of the fact."
In fine, we may observe, that if snow water occasions the Goitres wherever they abound, there should also be snow water, which experience proves not to be the fact.
But as the party was returning at nightfall across the fields, and laughing over Lassalle's sprightly anecdotes, suddenly a dozen diabolical gnomes burst upon them with savage roars and incomprehensible inarticulate jabberings, and began striking at hazard with their short, solid cudgels, almost ere the startled picnickers could recognize in these bestial creatures, with their enormously swollen heads and horrible hanging goitres, the afflicted idiot peasants of the valley.
So long as the testimonies confined themselves to complaints which might be due to nervous imagination, he was satisfied that their cures were possibly due to religious enthusiasm, which dispelled their belief in something which they did not have, but when they were cured of cancer, consumption, locomotor-ataxia, goitres, shortened limbs, hernia he did not wish to say they were liars, they seemed too sincere to do that, but he fancied they were simply mistaken.
This gentleman added, that, to complete the cure of young persons attacked by this complaint, he either removed them from waters impregnated with tuf, or recommended them to drink only of water that had been purified. The children of goitrous parents are often born with these swellings; but there are also instances of children born with goitres, whose parents are free from them."
Burnt sponge has been tried and found to remove the disease but an exposure to the same cause immediately reproduces 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.
The population having been thus exterminated, the district was settled anew some years later, in the reign of Louis XII., who gave his name to the valley; and a number of "good and true Catholics," including many goitres and idiots, occupied the dwellings and possessed the lands of the slaughtered Vaudois.
They are diligent artificers in various manufactures, but are much subject to thick legs, and the goitres or large wens on their throats, occasioned by the bad quality of the waters of the country. The province of Cotam follows between the east and the north-east . It is subject to the nephew of the great khan, and has many cities and towns, the chief city being called Cotam.
I could not learn whether it was necessary that both parents should have goitres, to produce cretin children: indeed the want of chastity in the half-breed women would be a bar to the deduction of any inference on this head."
Word Of The Day