The Colored Race 



133 



grand groups, for white and colored, and of Irish and Ger- 

 man parentage. It will be seen from this table that the mor- 

 tality in child-birth is about twice as great in relation to the 

 deaths from known causes in the colored female as it is in the 

 white, and that it is markedly greater in those of German 

 than it is in those of Irish parentage. The same rule holds good 

 as regards abortion although the difference is less marked. A 

 large proportion of deaths due to criminal abortion are report- 

 ed as deaths from peritonitis, which is the cause in part of the 

 excess of deaths in females reported as due to that disease.*" 



The colored infant comes into the world under very ad- 

 verse circumstances, and the many dangers besetting it be- 

 fore its fifth year make one wonder it ever reaches maturity. 



One of its first dangers is trismus nascentium. The following 



figures make the colored mortality from this disease more than 

 six times that of the white. Modern research has shown 

 the cause of tetanus to be a bacillus common in garden mould. 

 Here is a case of marked racial susceptibility. The filthy 

 way in which the infant is dressed renders it still more liable. 

 I have never seen a case recover ; and here in our city alone 

 232 colored infants have died from this disease in the last nine 

 years ! 



I give here for comparison the cases of tetanus in the adult 

 for white and colored for the last nine years. 



*Vol. XII, p. Ixxi. 



