historical and scientific perspectives on the health of canada's first ...

yields more foxes <strong>and</strong> more trade when the Eskimos neglect their caribou hunting
<strong>and</strong> buy insufficiently nourishing but preposterously expensive, imported
products. 40
Studies among the Inuit, found a more than
500% greater incidence of arterial calcification
among 40 to 69 year old Inuit males, who had
spent more than ten years in settlement
communities, as compared with those men who
had more recently lived in remote nomadic
groups. Among various groups a statistically
significant association was noted between
dental status <strong>and</strong> the incidence of aortic <strong>and</strong>
peripheral arterial calcification. This experience
provides compelling evidence that behind many
Inuit Woman Fishing (date unknown)
medical phenomena with which every
practitioner in the Western world is now confronted, lies a nutritional factor. When an Inuit man
gave up his traditional nomadic lifestyle <strong>and</strong> moved into a settlement, he, his wife <strong>and</strong> children
all underwent some remarkable changes. The children grew faster <strong>and</strong> taller, <strong>and</strong> reached puberty
much sooner. Their teeth rotted, his wife probably came down with gall bladder disease <strong>and</strong>,
likely as not, other members of the family will also suffer one of the degenerative diseases for
which the Euro-Canadians are well known. 41
Samuel Hutton who served as a permanent physician on the Labroador coast in the years 1902-
1908 found that the Inuit people there were losing much of their ancient strength.
The Eskimos living among these settlers have to a large extent adopted the
‘settler’ dietary… <strong>and</strong> not only does scurvy occur among them in its typical form,
but their physique is less robust than is that of their northern brethren. They have
lost the… sleek outlines to the Eskimo face <strong>and</strong> figure; the nose is more prominent
<strong>and</strong> the jaw less square. They endure fatigue less easily, <strong>and</strong> their children are
puny <strong>and</strong> feeble. 42
Two decades after Hutton’s arrival on the Labrador coast a Czech professor named Suk arrived
in the region. He later authored a paper correlating the changed dietary of the Inuit in Labrador
with significantly increased levels of tuberculosis. “Especially those pure Eskimos who in spite
of the presence of the White man still maintain their old established dietary are particularly free
from it [tuberculosis], but it is quite different with the [Inuit] settlers, who without exception lie
entirely on European food.” 43
When based in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, ophthalmologist Elizabeth Cass, on various
field trips, examined the eyes of 2,124 Inuit, some of whom were still living in traditional
settings, <strong>and</strong> others had been resettled in permanent settlements. Interestingly she expressed that
before the year 1940 among the Inuit people (of all age groups) in one region of Canada’s
Northwest Territories myopia was non-existent. However, in the year 1940 virtually all of the
school age Inuit children <strong>and</strong> young people from that region were placed into a Catholic
14