PART 4
But the following is the condition of cities which have the opposite
exposure, namely, to cold winds, between the summer settings and the
summer risings of the sun, and to which these winds are peculiar,
and which are sheltered from the south and the hot breezes. In the
first place the waters are, for the most part, hard cold. The men
must necessarily be well braced and slender, and they must have the
discharges downwards of the alimentary canal hard, and of difficult
evacuation, while those upwards are more fluid, and rather bilious
than pituitous. Their heads are sound and hard, and they are liable
to burstings (of vessels?) for the most part. The diseases which prevail
epidemically with them, are pleurisies, and those which are called
acute diseases. This must be the case when the bowels are bound; and
from any causes, many become affected with suppurations in the lungs,
the cause of which is the tension of the body, and hardness of the
bowels; for their dryness and the
[p. 22]coldness of the water dispose them
to ruptures (of vessels?). Such constitutions must be given to excess
of eating, but not of drinking; for it is not possible to be gourmands
and drunkards at the same time. Ophthalmies, too, at length supervene;
these being of a hard and violent nature, and soon ending in rupture
of the eyes; persons under thirty years of age are liable to severe
bleedings at the nose in summer; attacks of epilepsy are rare but
severe. Such people are likely to be rather long-lived; their ulcers
are not attended with serious discharges, nor of a malignant character;
in disposition they are rather ferocious than gentle. The diseases
I have mentioned are peculiar to the men, and besides they are liable
to any common complaint which may be prevailing from the changes of
the seasons. But the women, in the first place, are of a hard constitution,
from the waters being hard, indigestible, and cold; and their menstrual
discharges are not regular, but in small quantity, and painful. Then
they have difficult parturition, but are not very subject to abortions.
And when they do bring forth children, they are unable to nurse them;
for the hardness and indigestable nature of the water puts away their
milk. Phthisis frequently supervenes after childbirth, for the efforts
of it frequently bring on ruptures and strains. Children while still
little are subject to dropsies in the testicle, which disappear as
they grow older; in such a town they are late in attaining manhood.
It is, as I have now stated, with regard to hot and cold winds and
cities thus exposed.
