20 DISEASES OF [PART I. 



pass their lives in eating, smoking, and sleeping. 

 No medical man will deny that in this mode of 

 living alone a sufficient cause is found to account 

 for many of the diseases which prevail. Po- 

 tatoes are unwholesome if they form the only 

 food, and if those who live upon them do not use 

 great bodily exercise. Salt is not in use among 

 them. This stimulant, so necessary to the human 

 frame, they formerly obtained in eating cockles 

 and other shell-fish. By their present mode of 

 diet a chyle is produced unsuited to a healthy 

 circulation. From the exclusive use of potatoes 

 prominent paunches begin to be common among 

 children, which are by no means natural to the 

 race, and are not met with among the tribes in the 

 interior. 



The natives have adopted part of our food and 

 part of our clothing, but they have not adopted the 

 whole. Unconsciously we have brought them the 

 germs of diseases, which accompany many of them 

 through life, and consign them to an early grave. 

 I have often known a sickly native to be soon re- 

 stored to health after being clothed in a shirt, 

 trousers, and jacket, instead of a blanket only, 

 which he can, and does, throw off at any moment ; 

 and when provided with a strengthening diet, with 

 meat and a glass of wine or beer, in fact, when he 

 lives altogether as we do, it is singular how well 

 this mode of treatment generally succeeds, if no acute 

 disease exists. 



