The Colored Race 149 



women the serious complications of salpingitis and pelvic 

 peritonitis are traceable to the same cause. Both these fac- 

 tors must influence the colored, for this disease is always 

 serious with them, both from predisposition and the most 

 flagrant carelessness. I have never among the whites seen 

 such neglected cases of old strictures where urethral abscesses 

 and fistulae have formed, and where they have been con- 

 tent to go along without interference until, perhaps, ex- 

 travasation of urine has compelled them at the eleventh hour 

 to seek surgical help. One of these cases I have just oper- 

 ated upon and with fatal result, and hardly a month has 

 passed since I was called to a negro whom I found lying upon 

 a dirty floor d3'ing from an extravasation of urine which had 

 taken place several days before, and for whom nothing had 

 been done or any surgical aid sought, although probably 

 twent};- negroes in the settlement knew of his condition. I 

 mention this as showing that apathj^ that indifference to 

 make a struggle for life, which is such a strong racial trait. 



Of the returns from venereal diseases the tenth census 

 states : "In those parts of the country where the distinctions 

 are made between white and colored, and Irish and German 

 parentage, the proportions are, colored, 3.0, whites, 1.7, 

 Irish, 1.4, and German, 1.3 per 1000 deaths from known 

 causes." The returns trom alcoholism and venereal diseases 

 are always very imperfect, and I give these figures for what 

 they are worth. 



The negro once could boast of his unsusceptibility to 

 malaria and live secure in regions fatal to the white man. 

 But this exemption has been growing less and less complete, 

 and to day the colored mortality from malarial and miasmatic 

 diseases is very much greater than it once was. The reasons 

 for this are various. In the first place a large part of this 

 mortality is from the mixed element which is more suscepti- 

 ble than the pure negro by virtue of the white admixture. 

 This is .self-evident. In the second place, a less resistive 

 power naturally follows a less healthy physique. In the 

 third place, in the so-called malarial and miasmatic diseases an 



