lungs are rare; more coughing may be
heard during a Sunday service in a New England meeting-house than in six
months in Quito. The diseases to which the monks of St. Bernard are
liable are pulmonary, and the greater number become asthmatic. Asthma is
also common in Quito, while phthisis increases as we descend to the sea.
Individuals are often seen with a handkerchief about the jaws, or bits
of plaster on the temples; these are afflicted with headache or
toothache, resulting from a gratified passion for sweetmeats, common to
all ages and classes. Digestive disorders are somewhat frequent
(contrary to the theory in Europe), but they spring from improper food
and sedentary habits. The _cuisine_ of the country does not tempt the
stomach to repletion, and the climate is decidedly peptic. So the
typhoid fever of Quito is due to filth, poor diet, and want of
ventilation. Corpulency, especially among the men, is astonishingly
rare.

According to Dr. Lombard, mountain districts favor the development of
diseases of the heart; and contagious diseases are not arrested by the
atmosphere of lofty regions. This is true in Quito. But while nervous
diseases are rare in the inhabited highlands of Europe, in Quito they
are common. Sleep is said to be more tranquil and refreshing, and the
circulation more regular at high altitudes; but our experience does not
sustain this. Goitre is quite common among the mountains. It is a sign
of constitutional weakness, for the children of goitred parents are
usually deaf and dumb, and the succeeding generation idiots.
Boussingault thinks it is owing to the lack of atmospheric air in the
water; but why is it nearly confined to the women? In the southern
provinces about Cuenca, cutaneous affections are quite frequent. In the
highlands generally, scrofulous diseases are more common than in the
plains. There are three hospitals for lepers; one at Cuenca with two
hundred patients, one at Quito with one hundred and twelve patients, and
one at Ambato. Near Riobamba is a community of dwarfs.

D'Orbigny made a _post-mortem_ examination of some Indians from the
highest regions, and found the lungs of extraordinary dimensions, the
cells larger and more in number. Hence the unnatural proportion of the
trunk, which is plainly out of harmony with the extremities. The
expanded chest of the mountaineers is evidently the result of larger
inspirations to secure the requisite amount of oxygen, which is much
less in a