136 SUPPLEMENTAL HISTORY OP MAN. 



miasmal sources of disease with which those coun- 

 tries abound. In both the Indies, and in inter- 

 tropical Africa, the natives of low and moist 

 situations live almost entirely on rice and maize ; 

 with these they consume as a condiment, a very 

 large proportion of the hot spices, which are so 

 abundant in these countries, and use them in all 

 their diseases ; the tonic and stimulating qualities 

 of these spices are beneficial in preserving the human 

 frame from the noxious effects of the rainy seasons, 

 and from the invasion of worms and the various pa- 

 rasitic animals which prey on man. To these 

 species even the feathered race, and many other 

 animals resort, especially during the more un- 

 healthy seasons to which those climates are subject. 

 Were the natives of these countries, constituted 

 as they are, to addict themselves to the use of animal 

 food more than they do, vascular plethora would 

 be the result, the nervous and vascular system would 

 be more generally and more highly excited, the 

 irritability would become much sooner exhaustedj 

 and the predisposed frame would be more subject to, 

 and fall sooner beneath, the diseases which belong 

 to those climates. It is in consequence of the adop- 

 tion of too full an animal diet, that Europeans, in 

 the low, moist, and hot situations, between the tro- 

 pics, fall so soon the victims of, disease. Nature 

 adapts her productions, in every climate, to the 

 necessities of man, and she even restricts the 

 exuberance of these productions to his real but not 

 to his imagined wants ; and in no climate does this 



