such things as were imported from Europe to Greenland during the Middle Ages. This is the general
statement on health. The particular one concerning rickets is that an investigator of Nor- lund's own
nationality, Alfr. Bertelsen, has shown the disease is today fairly common in Greenland within the
families of Danes who live mainly on food imported from Europe ; and that rickets is practically
unknown among those Eskimos in Green- land who still live on their native diet.
Dr. William A. Thomas of Chicago reported on deficiency diseases through the Journal of the Amer- ican
Medical Association from his observations in Greenland and northern Labrador. In Greenland he
concluded that "among these primitive, carnivor- ous people there is neither scurvy nor rickets," thus
confirming Bertelsen. In Labrador the natives have for so long been in contact with civilization that they
have abandoned their primitive diet in favor of European foods. Among these Doctor Thomas found
rickets to be "almost universal."
More recent Norwegian testimony confirms the Danish and American sources with regard to rickets. Dr.
Arne Hoygaard published at Oslo in J 937 "Some Investigations Into the Physiology and Nosology of
Eskimos from Angmagssalik in Green- land : A Preliminary Statement." He says: "There was possibly
slight rickets in the case of three small children in the colony, but none in the outlying district." The
context shows the "slight rickets" to have been among families who lived partly on native and partly on
European food ; the absence of rickets was where European food was also absent.
Physical breakdown unlikely
While the most striking Norlund argument is that the Europeans of Greenland during the Mid- dle Ages
suffered from rickets because they had in- sufficient European food, he also gives a picture of general
physical breakdown. Such a breakdown would necessarily include tuberculosis. It is, there- fore,
pertinent that Doctor Hoygaard writes (per- sonal communication dated June 29, 1938) that he has
been investigating the relation of tuberculosis to diet in East Greenland, and that he has found a better
prognosis when the patients live in the primi- tive way than when they use, in addition to the meat,
considerable amounts of a food rich in carbo- hydrates. Now grains (the only noteworthy source of
carbohydrates available by European commerce to the medieval Greenlanders) rank high, if not at the
top, among those food elements for the want of which Norlund thinks the Europeans died out from
Greenland during the Middle Ages. Thus he recommends for