76 



The Influence of Environment on Man. 



By Hobebt Hesslkk. 



(Abstract.) 



The paper traced in broad lines tbe intiueuce of latitude as seen in 

 the frigid, torrid, and temperate zones. Factors that bear on the matter 

 of health and ill-health were taken up in some detail for the temperate 

 zone. 



Local State conditions were then taken up from the standpoint of 

 the biologist and evolutionist, beginning with the primitive inhabitants, 

 the Indians ; the absence of diseases on account of their environment and 

 customs was commented on. The white settlers who came in belonged to 

 a race where elimination through the action of disease had been going on 

 actively for ages and among whom the more susceptible had been killed 

 off and were still being killed off, but today largely dependent on modi- 

 fiable disease-producing conditions. 



Individuals or families or strains whose history goes back to Euro- 

 pean city life may show quite a different reaction to present day environ- 

 ment than does that of those whose ancestry goes back to country life 

 with little elimination on account of diseases The early Jews who ar- 

 rived in this country were almost exclusively from the cities where the 

 disease weeding out process had been most severe ; the Jews coming in 

 today are mainly from the country districts where the air conditions are 

 good, and when these crowd into our dirty cities many fail. Asiatics, 

 again, coming from the highly unsanitary cities are able to thrive in our 

 own cities, because they are the survival of the fittest, fittest to live under 

 unsanitary surroundings. 



Among the descendants of the pre-revolutionary immigrants to this 

 country we have to consider the ancestral urban or rural life, and similar 

 life conditions since in this country, with its attendant elimination or 

 non-elimination. A hardy stock transferred to an isolated environment, 

 as to the soutliern mountains, is to a large extent exempted from ex- 

 posure to diseases and practically all the offspring may reach the re- 



