SUPPLEMENTAL HISTORY OF MAN. 137 



provision appear more manifest than between the 

 tropics. There, if the sources of disease be abun- 

 dant, as they most indisputably are, she has chiefly 

 restricted them to those which proceed directly from 

 the soil and the climate, while she has confined 

 those arising from the food provided for man's sub- 

 sistence within narrow limits, as there he is destined 

 by the circumstances already alluded to, to live on 

 a vegetable diet. But even the inflictions which 

 nature thus imposes on the inhabitants of those 

 countries are accompanied by abundant means of 

 preventing their invasion or arresting their progress. 

 The most unhealthy situations not only abound with 

 the most suitable sources of subsistence, but also 

 present the most efficacious means of preventing 

 and of curing the diseases they excite. Thus, rice, 

 the banana, the plantain, the juice of the cocoa-nut, 

 and of the palm, and the oil of the the palm-nut are 

 the most wholesome articles of food in those dis- 

 tricts wherein they most abound. The low grounds 

 on which these are produced are fertile in marsh 

 miasms, and the. stagnant water, which there serves 

 for the necessities of life, abounds with the ova of 

 insects, and with animalcula, and while the one 

 produces ague the other gives rise to diseases of 

 the digestive canal and to the generation of worms, 

 while both causes combine to produce fever, dysen- 

 tery, cholera morbus, #-c. ; but these evils have their 

 attendant remedies. On the borders of the rice 

 grounds grow the different species of capsicums, 

 which form the natural and almost only con- 



