more difficult of digestion, and eating much pork, may likewise contribute to the development this disease: perhaps excess in sexual enjoyments may be considered as one cause of the goitre, as it is at Rio of the sarcocele and hydrocele. It is true, we do not here see the melancholy appearances of idiocy which are so frequently combined in Europe endemically with the goitre; yet the look of the persons who have the disorder in a high degree is not merely drowsiness and want of energy, but even stupidity, in the strict sense of the expression. It is customary to apply, at the commencement of the disease, poultices of warm gourds, the patient at the same time drinking water which has stood for several days upon the pounded mass of large ant-hills. The component parts of the ant-hills, which are from five to six feet high, in the construction of which the insect makes use of a peculiar animal slime as a cement, certainly seem capable of counteracting the causes, which produce the goitre. Perhaps, too, the acid of ants may have a beneficial influence on the relaxed nerves of the patient, as well as on the debility of the lymphatic system. The negroes here, as in Africa, make much use of mucilaginous substances: they use, for instance, Gum Arabic against the goitre with good success; a mode of treatment which seems to point at the origin of this disease as proceeding from the diet.
In the course of our journey from Jacarehy,
