35 2 
HISTORY OF THE [book iv. 
For the better accommodation of invalids and 
women in child-birth, every plantation is provided 
to board, washing, and lodging; and this is altogether independant of 
the profits of his practice with the whites. I suppose there are few 
plantation doctors in Jamaica, that have less than five hundred ne¬ 
groes under their care; several (with their assistants) have upwards of 
five thousand. 
Among the diseases which negroes bring with them from Africa, 
the most loathsome are the cacabay and the yanvs ; and it is difficult 
to say which is the worst. The former is the leprosy of the Arabi¬ 
ans, and the latter (much the most common) is supposed, by’some 
writers, to lie the leprosy mentioned in Leviticus, c, xiii. Both are 
very accurately described by Doctor Hillary, in his Observations on 
the Diseases of Barbadoes. Young negro children often catch the 
yaws, and get through it without medicine or much inconveniency. 
At a later period it is seldom or never thoroughly eradicated ; and as, 
like the small-pox, it is never had but once, the Gold coast negroes 
are said to communicate the infection to their infants by inoculation. 
I very much doubt if medicine of any kind is of use in this disease.—- 
But the greatest mortality among the negroes in the West Indies arises 
from two other complaints; the one affecting infants between the fifth 
and fourteenth days after their birth, and of which it is supposed that 
one-fourth of all the negro children perish. It is a species of tetanus, 
or locked jaw ; but both the cause of it in these poor children, and the 
remedy, remain yet to be discovered. The other complaint affects 
adults, or rather negroes who are past their prime. They become 
dropsical, and complain of a constant uneasiness in the stomach ; 
for which they find a temporary relief in eating some kind of earth. 
The French planters call this disease mal d'estomac, or the stomach 
evil. I have formerly heard of owners and managers who were so ig¬ 
norant and savage as to attempt the cure by severe punishment; con¬ 
sidering dirt eating, not as a disease, but a crime. I hope the race is 
extinct. The best and only remedy is kind usage and wholesome ani¬ 
mal food ; and perhaps a steel drink may be of some service. Of one 
poor fellow in this complaint, I myself made a perfect cure by persist¬ 
ing some time in this method. 
