PATHOLOGY: LOVE AND DAVENPORT 
59 
ten years, — where the colored have about 2 times the admission rate of white 
troops. In tuberculosis of other organs the rate for colored troops is twice 
that for white. 
In both lobar and broncho-pneumonia the morbidity rate of colored men 
exceeds that of white. For 1917 the rate for lobar pneumonia was 4J times, 
for broncho-pneumonia 3 times, as great for colored as for white men. In 
the ten year record the colored rate is 2.2 times the white rate for broncho- 
pneumonia. Given, then, troops under similar environment in the presence 
of conditions favoring pneumonia, there are relatively two to three times as 
many colored troops as white who show symptoms of the disease. 
(c) Venereal disease. — In the Army that was mobilized in 1917, the rate 
for syphilis was about 4 times as great in colored as white troops, for chan- 
croid 4i times, for gonococcus infection 2J times. Combining the data of the 
last ten years the rate for all venereal diseases for colored troops is a little 
less than double that for whites. The difference between the races in inci- 
dence of venereal diseases is probably due partly to a difference in social pres- 
sure, partly to a difference in ability to control the sex instinct. 
This greater infection of colored troops with venereal disease leads to the 
greater incidence in that race of various complications of those diseases. 
Thus, retinitis, iritis, cerebro-spinal meningitis, various diseases of the spinal 
cord — largely, probably, complication of syphilis — are commoner among the 
colored soldiers. Similarly, arthritis, osteomyelitis, endocarditis, nephritis 
and urethritis — complications of gonorrhea — are 2 to 3 times commoner in 
colored troops than in white. 
Of other diseases there are few in which the colored rate is markedly greater 
than the white. The colored indeed show about 100% more epilepsy and 
hysteria than the whites, more drug addiction and double the amount of 
neuralgia and hemorrhoids; and that is about all. 
Of diseases that are less common in colored than in white troops there are, 
first of all, skin diseases. Thus acute abscesses and inflammations of the 
connective tissue of the skin are about one-third as common in colored as 
white soldiers; boils are one-fourth as common; dermatitis from traumatisms 
one-third as common and venomous bites and stings have much less effect. 
As is well known, the reaction of the skin to cuts differs in the two races. 
Colored persons tend to form keloid tumors, or skin ridges, along the scar. 
In civil life deaths from skin cancer are one-fourth as common in colored as 
white citizens. This by no means exhausts the catalogue of skin differences 
in the two races. 
Also, in the quality of the teeth there is a difference. It is not rare to find 
negroes who at twenty to thirty years have lost nearly all their teeth through 
the use of mercury. But, on the other hand, it is much commoner to find 
negroes than Anglo-Saxons who, at twenty to thirty years, have teeth that 
show no sign of decay, even where no especial care has been taken of them. 
The negro teeth are naturally resistant to the organism of tooth caries. 
