822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



peans, as with gonorrhoea and some other complaints, furnish the 

 worst victims. As regards its treatment, quinine has far less effi- 

 cacy with them than with us, and arsenic is more of a specific 

 remedy to them, though this depends on the actual variety of the 

 fever. With the negro, after-effects upon the constitution are 

 quite exceptional. 



Yellow Fever. Special liability and increased mortality 

 belong to the light-haired Europeans, and acclimatization is by 

 no means absolute; yet pure-blooded negroes possess congenital 

 immunity, which is certainly absent from Redskins, or Hindoo 

 coolies, though the Chinese are almost exempt. 



Cholera. The African races incur the greatest danger from 

 this dread disease, dying off without an effort at resistance and 

 with the greatest rapidity, giving little opportunity for treat- 

 ment. Europeans and Hindoos, however, provided the latter are 

 under fair hygienic conditions as to food, etc., suffer very simi- 

 larly. After a famine the Indians, deprived of all resisting 

 power, fall ready victims. 



Typhoid Fever gives a typical instance of acclimatization of 

 race through heredity, for in tropical regions the disease is often 

 completely limited to strangers. During my visit to Jinjeera, off 

 the Malabar coast, I was informed that the foul water of the large 

 " tank " is certain death to a European through this fever, and yet 

 it forms the ordinary drinking-water supply of the crowded inhab- 

 itants. Among such people mild cases, due probably to the same 

 poison exerting a much mitigated action, are, however, not infre- 

 quent. In this instance time has apparently produced a modified 

 form of the disease by a general protective process of natural 

 infection, similar in its effects to inoculation, as well as by the all- 

 pervading action of natural selection and accommodation to envi- 

 ronment. 



Leprosy is well known specially to select tropical races, and 

 to run a more rapid course with them. 



Syphilis punishes negroes of the coast of Africa often and 

 very viciously. Phagedsena forms an ordinary complication, as 

 also does bone-disease; and specific treatment has to be pushed 

 with perseverance. On the other hand, the central Africans are 

 remarkably exempt, as are also Icelanders and Greenlanders. In 

 Chinese ports Europeans suffer extremely when compared with 

 the natives, as if the poison, like other living species, had its 

 varieties. Perhaps, too, an inherited natural inoculation becomes 

 a protection to particular races. 



Bronchial Catarrh for some reason, it may be carelessness as 

 to clothing and dwelling, inflicts greater punishment on indige- 

 nous dark races than on strangers among them, runs a much more 

 trying course, and is more resistant to therapeutic influence. 



