[p. 77]
serious ; they are of short duration, unless a general
epidemic take place after a violent change. When
they are more than fifty years old, they are paralyzed
by catarrhs supervening from the brain, when the
sun suddenly strikes their head or they are chilled.
These are their endemic diseases, but besides, they
are liable to any epidemic disease that prevails
through the change of the seasons.
PART 4
IV. But the following is the condition of cities
with the opposite situation, facing the cold winds
that blow from between the summer setting and
the summer rising of the sun, being habitually
exposed to these winds, but sheltered from the
hot winds and from the south. First, the waters
of the region are generally hard and cold. The
natives must be sinewy and spare, and in most cases
their digestive organs are costive and hard in their
lower parts, but more relaxed in the upper. They
must be bilious rather than phlegmatic. Their
heads are healthy and hard, but they have in most
cases a tendency to internal lacerations. Their
endemic diseases are as follow. Pleurisies are
common, likewise those diseases which are accounted
acute. It must be so, since their digestive organs
are hard, and the slightest cause inevitably produces
in many patients abscesses, the result of a
stiff body and hard digestive organs. For their
dryness, combined with the coldness of the water,
makes them liable to internal lacerations. Such
