138 



THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



think, be no doubt therefore that, given a little sanitation, 

 as regards the coolies living on estates, a very sensible de- 

 crease in their mortality would at once take place, and there 

 would be far fewer cases utterly broken down in health, with 

 sallow, earthy complexions unfit to work for a few hours 

 together/' 1 



222. The difference in habits between Europeans and 

 Asiatics explains why in India the former appear sometimes 

 to suffer less than the latter. " The following is a table 

 compiled by Waring of the malarial sickness during ten years 

 among the troops in the Madras Presidency: 



"The native troops accordingly suffered from simple 

 malarial fever to a greater extent than even the Europeans, 

 but the number of cases of remittent fever observed was 

 three times less among the former than among the latter." 2 



223. In other words, Europeans, to whose race the disease 

 was strange but who were less exposed to infection, suffered 

 three times as much from the disease in its severer forms as 

 the natives to whose race it was familiar a fact to which 

 many parallels may be found. Thus Professor Hirsch 

 remarks 



" In the malarious regions of the tropics the natives take 

 the milder forms of the fever, while the foreigner, and par- 

 ticularly those not acclimatized, take the disease in its severer 

 forms ; and in accordance with that fact, the types with the 

 longer intervals occur in the former, and those with the 

 shorter intervals in the latter." 3 



" Just as the history of malarial disease shows it to have 

 been a malady of all times, so the inquiry into its geography 

 leads us to recognize in it a disease of all races and national- 

 ities. This predisposition to malarious sickness is developed 

 in the highest degree among all peoples belonging to the 

 Caucasian stock, not only on European soil, but also among 

 the Arab population of the Barbary States, and in the malari- 



1 Ozzard, British Guiana Medical Annual and Hospital Report, 

 1893, p. 91. 



2 Hirsch, vol. i., p. 244-5. * Ibid., vol. i., p. 241. 



