PATHOLOGICAL VARIETIES. 61 



asked for a battalion of blacks from the viceroy of Egypt, con- 

 sisting of men recruited from the limits of Soudan, from Ber- 

 ber to Khartoum. It was not without anxiety that the issue 

 of this physiological experiment was watched, since it did not 

 happen, as in our laboratories, in anima vili. Some had con- 

 fidence in the functional uniformity of the Negro race, as being 

 beyond all local action ; others believing wrongly, as we said, 

 in a former acclimatisation of the only inhabitants of the 

 western coast of Africa, expected to find that all these Negroes 

 from the other side of the continent would perish. However, 

 in spite of what they had at first said, they could very soon 

 verify the almost complete immunity of the Negro battalion at 

 Yera-Cruz.* It was the first time, if we are not mistaken, that 

 anthropology has been directly applied in the Old World to 

 social science. Some time ago anthropologists were consulted 

 by the government of the Northern States of America upon 

 certain questions of slavery, at the time when terrible dissen- 

 sions were budding in the shadows of the distance. 



* See Memoires de MMecine et de Chirurgie Militaire, November and De- 

 cember 1863 ; Societi d' Anthropologie, meeting of 19th March, 1864. 



