THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — PHYSICAL 293 



adverse, had, until recently, no communication for 

 thousands of years with the races of the Old World, 

 among whom tuberculosis arose. Hirsch lays much 

 stress on the susceptibility of Africans, as may be seen 

 from the following : — ^ 



" No race or natwnality enjoys a decided immunity 

 from consumption ; but in respect to the frequency of 

 its incidence, the negro race takes first place. Proof of 

 this is furnished by the medical reports from all those 

 parts of the world to which the negro has migrated, and 

 in the mixed population of which he forms a considei-able 

 ingredient : such as the United States, the West 

 Indies, the Mosquito Coast, Brazil, the Argentine 

 Republic, Peru, and Bolivia, Algiers, Egypt, the East 

 African Islands, Ceylon and the East Indies. 



" In the convict prisons of the United States, from 1829 

 to 1845, the average mortality from phthisis among the 

 prisoners of the white race was 11'16 per 1000; but 

 among the negroes confined in the Eastern Penitentiary 

 of Pennsylvania it was 4074, and in the Mai-yland Peni- 

 tentiary 28'49 ; while among the coloured population 

 living at large in New York it was 11 per 1000. At 

 Wilmington, N. C, 0'9 of the whites died of phthisis 

 in 1880, and of the blacks 2-6 (Wood). 'It is 

 a remarkable fact,' says Bai-tolacci in his work on 

 Ceylon, 'that of 9000 Kaffirs (negroes from the East 

 Coast of Africa) who had been imported at various 

 times by the Dutch Government into Ceylon, and had 

 been drafted into regiments, scarcely a trace of their 

 descendants remains; they would certainly not be 

 recognized at all among the present population of the 

 island. In the years 1803 and 1810 the British 

 Government imported three or four thousand negroes 

 from Mozambique into Ceylon to form into regiments, 

 and of these in December 1820 there were left just 

 440, including the male descendants.' 



" Whether this preponderance of phthisis among 

 negroes is an affair of physiological predisposition due 



