66 
America, Africa, India and China, and see how differently the people live. 
On the coast of Guinea, where I myself have served, the natives take as 
much beer, and beef, and rum as they can get, but if you go to Ceylon you 
will find that the people live almost entirely on grain and fish. And if you 
take Singapore, and so on, you will still find that the line of latitude is no 
criterion as to the food the people live on. And there is another thing to 
be remembered wirh regard to the British race. We must recollect that 
our soldiers and sailors are British. If they were Indians, of course they 
could live as the Indians do ; but as British people they naturally retain the 
habits that are natural to the British race, and I think many of us will 
admit that, when we go to the hotels on the Continent, the change of food 
very soon upsets us. A remark was made as to the comparative adaptability 
of the native African troops and the British regiments to the climate of the 
West Indies. That the black troops suffer more than the British under 
certain circumstances is a fact not only shown in the statistics, but well 
known to the experience of any one who has served with them as I have. 
Take the note to section 28 of my paper. The averages are for the 
ten years previous to 1879, and the ratios are per 1,000 of the white 
troops admitted to the hospitals were .911 ; of the Africans, 1,047, showing 
that there is a great deal more sickness among the natives than among the 
whites. Then the deaths among the white troops were eleven per 1,000, 
and among the blacks nineteen per 1,000. Then there were invalided 
nineteen whites and twenty-seven blacks ; constantly sick, forty-one whites 
and fifty-four blacks ; and yet the one set of troops was in a foreign climate, 
and the other more or less in a climate that was natural to them, while with 
regard to hygiene there is as much care bestowed on the black troops, 
whether Asiatic or African, as there is on the British. As to the difficult 
and complicated question of colonisation, there is a peculiar race of com- 
paratively new inhabitants, in what is perhaps the most unhealthy part of 
the Terai, at the foot of the hills — a people, called the Taroos. They have 
been there for about two hundred years ; but, although the mortality among 
them was very great at first, they now seem to be absolutely proof against 
the prevalent malaria. They are, moreover, the most drunken and dissipated 
set of people to be met with in that country. Although when I read this 
paper it was my desire to avoid purely professional matters, nevertheless, 
as one speaker has made some special remarks from a rather pro- 
fessional point of view, I hope that I may be allowed to give my 
reply,— I refer to what has been said with regard to M. Pasteur’s theories. 
I suspected, when I wrote the part of my paper referred to, that something 
of this kind might happen and, therefore, rather than express my own views 
upon the subject, I have brought with me an authority which I desire to cite. 
According to the report of a Commission appointed by the Hungarian 
Government, animals that have been inoculated according to Pasteur’s 
method, if rendered “ proof ” against artificial charbon, died in increased 
numbers by other diseases. It is also a question how far the flesh and milk 
of such animals remain wholesome as articles of human food. In France, 
