A CCLIMA TIZA TION. 667 



of which the Japanese share to some extent. Their liability to 

 consumption seems to be akin to that penchant for alcoholism, 

 which is lacking among the Chinese because of the national 

 opium habit. 



The negro even in the tropics is especially subject to all affec- 

 tions of the lungs, a fact which constitutes a serious bar to his 

 wide extension over what has been designated by Dr. Fuchs the 

 catarrhal zone, in contradistinction to the dysenteric zone of the 

 tropics.* The black races have in general less fully developed 

 chests f and less respiratory power J than the European race. 

 They perspire less freely,* and their skin is thicker, or at least 

 more dense, so that oxygenation by the lungs alone is more neces- 

 sary. They are consequently exceedingly sensitive to atmospheric 

 changes, and are severely handicapped in any migration for this 

 reason. || Almost invariably, where the European succumbs to 

 bilious or intestinal disorders, the negro falls a victim to diseases 

 of the lungs even in the tropics. An interesting case is instanced A 

 of a caravan in Senegal, composed of ninety-five negroes and 

 ninety Europeans, in which the average mortality for each of the 

 two contingents was exactly equal for two years. Yet only one 

 of the whites was affected with disease of the lungs, while five of 

 the eleven negroes who died succumbed to diseases of this class. 

 Similar to the effect of change of climate upon the negro in in- 

 ducing respiratory derangement is the influence exerted by alti- 

 tude, which will be discussed in another place. 



Dr. Ashmead has suggested an interesting reason for the pre- 

 disposition of the negro for consumption namely, that the broad, 

 open nostril of the race is unfitted to perform the necessary service 

 of warming the air before its entrance into the lungs. Q Leptor- 

 rhinism, he asserts, is due to natural selection, which has fixed 

 upon that form of nose as most suitable to the temperate zone ; and 

 the negro, deprived of this advantage, suffers from disease of the 



* Dr. Rey, op. cit., has fully discussed this. 



f Jousset, p. 85. 



\ Ibid., p. 88. The same point is startlingly proved by the statistics of the civil war 

 in the reports of the Sanitary Commission and of the Provost Marshal General, and in the 

 recent reports of the Surgeon General of the Army as for 1895. 



*Ibid., p. 111. 



|| Dr. Buchner, in Correspondenzblatt der deutschen Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, 

 xviii, p. 17, distinguishes ektogenen (from the environment, such as malaria) from endogenen 

 diseases (from within, such as tuberculosis). The white race, he avers, is most liable to the 

 former, the negro to the latter. Certain facts seem to lend slight color to this generaliza- 

 tion, as, for example, the immunity of the negro from septicaemia. ( Vide example on p. 

 669 infra.} Spencer notes this peculiarity of primitive peoples in Principles of Sociology, 

 i, p. 49. 



A Revue d' Anthropologie, v, p. 95. Other examples might be multiplied indefinitely. 



Science, March 31, 1893. 



