appears that the first effects of a sojourn in the tropics is to induce symptoms which point toward the peculiarities of the native type. Thus the increase in the size of the liver indicates the operation of those causes which have finally made the negro's liver normally larger than that of the European.[1] The only present difficulty is that an unusual strain is suddenly put upon the various organs in this process of gradual adaptation which is often too severe; as, for example, the high mortality among Europeans from derangement of the liver, such as hepatitis, bilious fever, abscesses, and the like, which indicates that some physiological change has taken place which has entailed an excessive demand upon the activities of this organ. Similarly the extreme liability of the negro to disases of the lungs in the temperate zone may be due to his lack of physiological accommodation to those circumstances which have in hundreds of generations produced the European type. To expect that man can in a single generation compass the ends which Nature takes an age to perform is the height of folly. The exact nature of the physiological processes induced by the tropics is, however, so imperfectly known that we must in general rely upon concrete experience for our further conclusions.
Results of Hygiene.—Hygiene and sanitation have accomplished wonderful results in assisting the individual to withstand those immediate effects of climatic change which, as we have said, are so often fatal.[2] The yearly loss at one time in India was eighty for each regiment of one thousand men. In 1856 it had been reduced to sixty-nine; from 1870 to 1879 it ranged about sixty-two; and in 1888 the annual loss was only fifty, including deaths and invaliding.[3] The loss in Cochin-China per regiment
- ↑ This is suggested by Bastian in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Part I, 1869; vide also J. R. Mayer, Die Mechanik der Wärme, p. 97 (Stuttgart, 1867), and Jousset, p. 108. The physiological characteristics of the negro are well described by Jousset as follows: A weakly developed chest (p. 85), less respiratory power and lung capacity (p. 88), more rapid pulse (p. 95), diminished muscular tension (p. 100), lower temperature (p. 107), less perspiration (p. Ill), and a tendency toward slimness (p. 139). The lessened vitality and power of endurance is also to be noted (p. 144). Pruner Bey confirms these results in his studies of the vascular system of the negro. Vide also Quatrefages, op. cit., p. 407. Drs. Baxter and Gould, in their studies on our soldiers during the civil war, confirm this fully. (Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers, Cambridge, 1869; and Medical Statistics of the Provost-Marshal General's Bureau.)
- ↑ Discussed by Hunt, op. cit., p. 140, and by Dr. Montano, op. cit., p. 8 et seq.; by Davidson, op. cit., for India; and by Dr. Farr, in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, xxiv, p. 472. Vide also, for statistical information, ibid., iv, p. 1; viii, pp. 77, 193; ix, p. 157; X, p. 100; xiv, p. 109; xv, p. 100. Tables of the comparative mortality of British troops in various countries are conveniently given in Revue d'Anthropologie, new series, iv, p. 175. Macculloch, Statistical Report on the Sickness and Mortality of Troops, London, 1840, gives a vast amount of information.
- ↑ Scottish Geographical Magazine, vii, p. 647.
