134 Eugene Rollin Corson 



Though tlie colored mortality exceeds that of the whites, the 

 disparity is much less than in the case of trismus nascentium. 



According ,to the Tenth Census the proportion of deaths 

 from tetanus and trismus nascentium are for the whites 33.5 

 and for the colored 39. 3 per icoo deaths from known causes. 

 I cannot think that these figures are reliable. The much 

 greater susceptibility of the negro is generally recognized. 



Gastro-intestinal diseases, with their accompanying disor- 

 dered digestion and malnutrition, carry off the largest pro- 

 portion of white infants and young children. With all 

 nations it is among the poor and overcrowded that we see the 

 highest mortality, where ignorance and poverty swell so 

 greatly the death list. These factors, of course, exist among 

 the colored to a large extent, though I do not think they ever 

 have to endure anything like the lethal influences of the tene- 

 ment life of our great cities. Living in warmer climates they 

 escape the sufferings of intense cold poorly provided for, and 

 their homes which consist of one-story frame houses or huts, 

 are infinitely better, with all the dirt, than the small rooms 

 ■ and high stories of the city tenements. If the colored had to 

 live under such conditions the infant mortality would greatly 

 exceed that of the tenement poor of the great cities as well as 

 their own present death rate. Fresh air and proper, clean 

 food, would probably reduce this death rate one half. This 

 important factor of proper food never enters the head of the 

 ordinary colored mother. Even when liberally provided 

 with nature's food, the breast is soon discarded for dirty 

 feeding bottles and all sorts of abominations. You will 

 frequently see a colored child, the canines not yet through 

 the gums, sitting up at the table taking its regular dinner 

 with the older members of the family, a dinner consisting 

 of rice, greens, bacon and pot-liquor, and perhaps other 

 abominations besides. This child may stand this better than 

 the white child, but for all that it pays dearly for its smart- 

 ness. 



As a result of this we find gastro-intestinal catarrhs in all 

 their forms, with reflex congestions of brain and other organs. 

 The data from the mortuary tables are unsatisfactory so far as 



