that, although the acres were many, the conscripts would be few. The government bestirred itself to amend this state of affairs, and after arriving at the conclusion that goître was produced by drinking bad water (and that its production was promoted by sottish and bestial habits), took measures to cleanse the villages, to analyse the waters (in order to point out those which should not be drank), and to give to children who came to school lozenges containing small closes of iodine. It is said that out of 5000 goîtrous children who were so treated in the course of eight years, 2000 were cured, and the condition of 2000 others was improved; and that the number of cures would have been greater if the parents "had not opposed the care of the government, in order to preserve the privilege of exemption from military service."[1] These benighted creatures refused the Marshal's bâton and preferred their "wallets of flesh!"[2]
No wonder that the Préfet for Haute-Savoie proposes that goîtrous persons shall no longer be privileged. Let him go farther, and obtain a decree that all of them capable of bearing arms shall
- ↑ The substance of this paragraph is taken from the Bullettino del Club Alpino Italiano, No. 13, 1869.
- ↑ Blackie says that " Dr. Mottard mentions the case of a so-called goître well near St. Julien in Maurienne, the water of which encrusted the trees in the vicinity with lime, and the use of which produced goître in a couple of months; and he mentions five young men who had voluntarily drunk its water, and produced goître, in order to be free from military service."
Chabrand, in the pamphlet already quoted, says, "It is deplorable that young people who have a swelling of the thyroid gland (in the Briançonnais), far from endeavouring to get rid of it, occupy themselves only making it bigger, in order to escape military service. Especially as the time of drawing for the conscription approaches, do they use every means supposed to be capable of producing goître; drink much water, take 'courses' with burdens" (on their heads?) "and tighten the cravat above the swelling. . . . From 1842 to 1847 inclusive, 91 in 1000 obtained exemption on account of goître in the Department of the High Alps." The same writer places the number of goîtrous persons in France at 450,000, and of crétins at 35,000 to 40,000.
than one in twenty-five of the men of the 34th regiment of infantry, who were in garrison in 1857, became goîtrous during their stay. This regiment came from Perpignan, where the disease is not common.—Goître et Crétinisme endemique, Paris, 1864, p. 56.
