WHITE RACE IN THE TROPICS — WARD 575 



adjustment is usually fj^rcatly retarded and hindered by a persistence 

 in habits of food, drink and general mode of life which, however 

 well suited to the home climat<^, do not lit troj)ical conditions. Dur- 

 ing the adjustment, especially if complicated by irrational habits, 

 the body is naturally abnormally sensitive to the new diseases to 

 which it is exposed. Even should no specific diseases be contracted, 

 there are anemic and neurasthenic tendencies and other degenera- 

 tive changes. Experience teaches that white men can not with im- 

 punity do hard manual labor under a tropical sun, but that they 

 may enjoy fairly good health as overseers, or at indoor work, if they 

 take reasonable precaution. Acclimatization in the full sense of 

 having white men and women living for successive generations in 

 the Tropics, and reproducing their kind without physical, mental, and 

 moral degeneration — i. e., colonization in the true sense — is impos- 

 sible. Tropical disease and death rates, as has been abundantly 

 shown, can be much reduced by proper attention to sanitary laws, so 

 that these rates may become not much, if any, higher than those in 

 the extra-Tropics. And with increasing medical knowledge of the 

 nature and prevention of tropical diseases, as well as by means of 

 modern sanitary methods, a white resident in the Tropics will con- 

 stantly become better able to withstand disease. It can not truthfully 

 be said that scientific investigation has shown that climate is an 

 insuperable obstacle to the white man's residence in the Tropics. 

 Further investigation is, however, very greatly needed. As Sir Pat- 

 rick Manson expressed it, acclimatization is less " an unconscious 

 adaptation of the physiology of the individual " than " an intelligent 

 adaptation of his habits." For greater comfort, for better health, 

 and for greater success, properly selected hill stations will, however, 

 always be essential to northerners who have to live in the Tropics, 

 especially to white women and children. 



It has been said, I believe by General Wolseley, that the white 

 soldier in the Tropics is " always in campaign, if not against the 

 enemy, at least against the climate." This sentence may be made 

 to fit the case of the white civilian by changing it to read : The 

 white race in the Tropics is always in campaign against its enemy, 

 the climate. 



What of the future? Tliere will be a slow and limited settlement 

 of the most favorable portions of the Tropics by nonnatives, who 

 will construct houses suited to the conditions: Large, well-ventilated 

 and artificially cooled, and well exposed to free-moving air. Elec- 

 trical appliances of all sorts, for cooking, for refrigeration, for 

 ventilation, will prove a tremendous boon to those whose lot is, in 

 the future, cast in hot tropical climates. Proper clothing, modern 

 sanitary measures, good hygiene — all will prove increasingly im- 



