the English physique: another has been stated, namely, that the atmosphere is too fine and dry to require, or even to permit, the free use of spirituous liquors. Paralysis is rare; scrofula and phthisis are unknown, as in Nebraska—the climate wants that humidity which brings forward the predisposition. It is also remarkable that, though all drink snow-water, and though many live in valleys where there is no free circulation of air, goitre and cretinism are not yet named. The City Council maintains an excellent sanitary supervision, which extends to the minutest objects that might endanger the general health. The stream of emigrants which formerly set copiously westward is now dribbling back toward its source, and a quarantine is established for those who arrive with contagious diseases. Great Salt Lake City is well provided with disciples of Æsculapius, against whom there is none of that prejudice founded upon superstition and fanaticism which anti-Mormon writers have detected. Dr. Francis, an English Mormon, lately died, leaving Dr. Anderson, a graduate of Maryland College, to take his place: Dr. Bernhisel prefers politics to physic, and Dr. Kay is the chief dentist.
The normal complaints are easily explained by local peculiarities—cold, alkaline dust, and overindulgence in food.
Neuralgia is by no means uncommon. Many are compelled to wear kerchiefs under their hats; and if a head be not always uncovered, there is some reason for it. Rheumatism, as in England, affects the poorer classes, who are insufficiently fed and clothed. Pneumonia, in winter, follows exposure and hard work. The pleuro-pneumonia, which in 1860 did so much damage to stock in New England, did not extend to Utah Territory: the climate, however, is too like that of the Cape of Storms to promise lasting immunity. Catarrhs are severe and lasting; they are accompanied by bad toothaches and sore throats, which sometimes degenerate into bronchitis. Diphtheria is not yet known. The measles have proved especially fatal to the Indians: in 1850, "Old Elk," the principal war-chief of the Timpanogos Yutas, died of it: erysipelas also kills many of the wild men.
For ophthalmic disease, the climate has all the efficients of the Valley of the Nile, and, unless suitable precautions are taken, the race will, after a few generations, become tender-eyed as Egyptians. The organ is weakened by the acrid irritating dust from the alkaline soil, which glistens in the sun like hoar-frost. Snowblindness is common on the mountains and in the plains: the favorite preventive, when goggles are unprocurable, is to blacken the circumorbital region and the sides of the nose with soot—the kohl, surmah, or collyrium of the Far West: the cure is a drop of nitrate of silver or laudanum. The mucous membrane in horses, as among men, is glandered, as it were, by alkali, and the chronic inflammation causes frequent hemorrhage: the nitrous salts in earth and air exasperate to ulcers sunburns on the nose and mouth:
