The Following Remarks On A Well-Known Disease Are Extracted From Dr.
Richardson's Journal:
Bronchocele or Goitre is a common disorder at Edmonton.
I examined
several of the individuals afflicted with it and endeavoured to obtain
every information on the subject from the most authentic sources. The
following facts may be depended upon. The disorder attacks those only who
drink the water of the river. It is indeed in its worst state confined
almost entirely to the half-breed women and children who reside
constantly at the fort and make use of river water drawn in the winter
through a hole cut in the ice. The men, being often from home on journeys
through the plain, when their drink is melted snow, are less affected;
and if any of them exhibit during the winter some incipient symptoms of
the complaint the annual summer voyage to the sea-coast generally effects
a cure. The natives who confine themselves to snow-water in the winter
and drink of the small rivulets which flow through the plains in the
summer are exempt from the attacks of this disease.
These facts are curious inasmuch as they militate against the generally
received opinion that the disease is caused by drinking snow-water; an
opinion which seems to have originated from bronchocele being endemial to
subalpine districts.
The Saskatchewan at Edmonton is clear in the winter and also in the
summer except during the May and July floods. This distance from the
Rocky Mountains (which I suppose to be of primitive formation) is upwards
of one hundred and thirty miles.
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