The Colored Race 147 



ereal troubles which are allowed to go on until irreparable dam- 

 age has been done. For the same reason you rarely get a 

 malignant growth in its beginning ; it is only when it has 

 gone so far that radical treatment is out of the question that 

 they finally see the physician. A carcinoma of the breast is 

 left until the axilla becomes involved and the violent pain 

 finally compels the patient to seek aid. A phagedenic sore is 

 allowed to reach a great size before it occurs to the poor patient 

 that it had better be looked after. This explains how often 

 the physician is sent for when the patient is moribund, how 

 often a death-certificate is demanded of the Health Officer for 

 cases which have never been seen by a physician. And here 

 are the figures to speak for themselves, 95 whites with a certi- 

 ficate of "undefined" against 879 colored with the same blank 

 certificate; and 118 whites dying without medical attention 

 against 1,849 colored unattended, and in the last nine years, 

 and in a population not exceeding 50,000, and with the whites 

 between 5,000 and 10,000 in excess. And this indifference is 

 largely due to an insensibility to pain as well as a lack of 

 pride in physical well-being, pride in the possession of a com- 

 plete body with all its faculties operative, a quality possessed 

 by the higher order of man. This insensibility is seen in 

 minor surgical operations, in the parturient woman, and in 

 the neglected wounds and lesions, and the many little ills 

 which the more sensitive would seek relief from. The loss 

 of an eye or a member carries with it but little concern. And 

 all this is but that fatalism which has come to them from the 

 past. 



In considering the high infant mortality I spoke of syphilis 

 in its effects upon premature and still-births, and I shall now 

 speak of the effects of the two venereal diseases upon the 

 adult population. We shall never get any figures which can 

 even approximately show us the real influence deathward of 

 these troubles. That they are all-potent in the white race must 

 be admitted, and their ravages among the colored become very 

 real to the physician practicing among them. The figures 

 which I have been able to obtain from our mortuary tables are 

 too small to have any value. I give them, however, for what 

 they are worth. 



