and irregular.

The number of these unfortunate beings in the mountainous districts of
Europe, and especially of Central and Southern Europe, is very great. In
several of the Swiss cantons they form from four to five per cent of
the population. In Rhenish Prussia, and in the Danubian provinces of
Austria, the number is still greater; in Styria, many villages of four
or five thousand inhabitants not having a single man capable of bearing
arms. In Würtemberg and Bavaria, in Savoy, Sardinia, the Alpine regions
of France, and the mountainous districts of Spain, the disease is very
prevalent.

The causes of so fearful a degeneration of body and mind are not
satisfactorily ascertained. Extreme poverty, impure air, filthiness of
person and dwelling, unwholesome diet, the use of water impregnated with
some of the magnesian salts, intemperance, (particularly in the use of
the cheap and vile brandy of Switzerland,) and the intermarriage of near
relatives and of those affected with goitre, have all been assigned, and
with apparently good reason; yet there are cases which are attributable
to none of these causes.

The disease is not, however, confined to Europe. It is prevalent also
in China and Chinese Tartary, in Thibet, along the base of the Himalaya
range in India, in Sumatra, in the vicinity of the Andes in South
America, in Mexico; and sporadic cases are found along the line of the
Alleghanies. It is said not to occur in Europe at a higher elevation
than four thousand feet above the sea level.

The derivation of the name is involved in some mystery; most writers
regarding it as a corruption of the French _Chrétien_, as indicative