“Our first communication with these people at Winter Island gave us a more favourable impression of their general health than subsequent experience confirmed.  There, however, they were not free from sickness.  A catarrhal affection, in the month of February, became generally prevalent, from which they readily recovered after the exciting causes, intemperance and exposure to wet, had ceased to operate.  A solitary instance of pleurisy also occurred, which probably might have ended fatally but for timely assistance.  Our intercourse with them in the summer was more interrupted; but at our occasional meetings they were observed to be enjoying excellent health.  It is probable that their certain supplies of food, and the nomade kind of life they lead in its pursuit during that season, are favourable to health.  Nutrition goes on actively, and an astonishing increase of strength and fulness is acquired.  Active diseases might now be looked for, but that the powers of nature are providentially exerted with effect.

“The unlimited use of stimulating animal food, on which they are from infancy fed, induces at an early age a highly plethoric state of the vascular system.  The weaker, over-distended vessels of the nose quickly yield to the increased impetus of the blood, and an active hemorrhage relieves the subject.  As the same causes continue to be applied in excess at frequent intervals, and are followed by similar effects, a kind of vicarious hemorrhage at length becomes established by habit; superseding the intervention of art, and having no small share in maintaining a balance in the circulating system.  The phenomenon is too constant to have escaped the observation of those who have visited the different Esquimaux people; a party of them has, indeed, rarely been seen, that did not exhibit two or three instances of the fact.

“About the month of September, the approach of winter induced the Esquimaux at Igloolik to abandon their tents and to retire into their more established village.  The majority were here crowded into huts of a permanent construction, the materials composing the sides being stones and the bones of whales, and the roofs being formed of skins, turf, and snow; the rest of the people were lodged in snow huts.  For a while they continued very healthy; in fact, as long as the temperature of the interior did not exceed the freezing point, the vapours of the atmosphere congealed upon the walls, and the air remained dry and tolerably pure; besides, their hard-frozen winter stock of walrus did not at this time tempt them to indulge their appetites immoderately.  In January the temperature suffered an unseasonable rise; some successful captures of walrus also took place; and these circumstances, combined perhaps with some superstitious customs of which we were ignorant, seemed the signal for giving way to sensuality.  The lamps were accumulated, and the kettles more frequently replenished; and gluttony,