SOCIAL AND WORLD ASPECTS 235 



doctrine that his mental growth ceases at adolescence. 

 Many writers regard the negro as a case, not of 

 arrested mental development which might be over- 

 come by educational effort (although the utmost effort 

 in education does not prevent the arrest in mental 

 development of the feebleminded), but of a primitive 

 mentality with less control of the impulses and 

 emotions and less ability to deal with the abstract 

 or symbolic. The wisdom of Booker T. Washington's 

 programme of manual education for the negro as 

 most appropriate to his mental status is clearly shown. 

 As far as the muscular and nervous systems and the 

 sense organs are concerned, there is apparent^ no 

 great difference between negroes and whites, but that 

 physical differences exist is shown by the data in the 

 following paragraph. 



Love and Davenport (191 9), from an analysis of the 

 sick reports of American troops in camp in the 

 United States during the war, find some notable 

 differences between white and coloured troops. That 

 negroes are relatively lacking in resistance to tuber- 

 culosis and pneumonia is shown by the fact that the 

 rate for tuberculosis was over twice as high among 

 coloured troops, while for pneumonia it was two or 

 three times as high. The rate for venereal disease 

 is three or four times higher in coloured troops, 

 epilepsy, hysteria, neuralgia, and haemorrhoids are 

 about twice as frequent, addiction to drugs is more 

 common, while skin diseases are less common than in 

 white troops. That not only the skin but also the 

 lining of the mouth and naso-pharynx is more re- 

 sistant,* is shown by the lesser frequency of diphtheria, 

 scarlet fever, German measles, and influenza. The 

 nervous system of the negroes also showed less 

 liability to neurasthenia and alcoholism, eye and 



* It seems more probable that the greater incidence of respira- 

 tory diseases among negroes is due to their wide flaring nostrils. 



