exists, and took place long before the intercourse
of the Hindus, not to say of the Arabs, with the
Indian Archipelago*
In our present state of knowledge, I fear we
must pronounce that the origin of the nations which
inhabit the Indian islands seems buried in unfathomable
obscurity, and hardly appears less mysterious
than that of the indigenous plants and animals
of the country they inhabit.
Having rendered this account of the personal appearance
of the Indian islanders, I shall take a view
of their constitutions in the relations of health
and disease. In treating of this subject, it is of
the more civilized tribes alone I shall speak, and
as it is one which peculiarly demands precision,
my observations will chiefly refer to the Javanese,
of whose condition alone, on matters so much in
detail, I can speak confidently.
The Indian islanders possess strong and robust
constitutions, capable in their own climate of withstanding
much fatigue and privation ; their minds,
from the moral agency under which they are formed,
certainly acquire; a kind of premature ripeness
earlier than in Europe ; but their bodies do not.
Puberty comes on at the same age as in Europe ;
the body continues to grow as long, women bear
children to as late a period of life, and longevity, as
a proof of all the rest, I believe to be just as frequent
as there. These subjects will be discussed
at greater length in the chapter on Population;
and to the same place I must refer for accounts of
the relative mortality at different ages, which will
be found under the head of the checks to the increase
of population.
In the diseases of the Indian islanders, what will
strike the European observer most forcibly, is the
singular freedom of the people from inflammatory
disorders, from that long train of complaints most
frequent and most fatal in what we are pleased to call
temperate climates. They are preserved from these by
the flexibility of their fibres. The difference of their
frames and ours is strikingly illustrated in the effect
produced upon both by violent accidents, and surgical
operations. They recover in sound health
from accidents under which an European would
sink; but let the same accident, as in the case of
a surgical operation, happen to both, when reduced
by sickness, and when the tendency to inflammation
is removed in the European, the vigour of
constitution which belongs to the latter will often
enable him to survive an injury which would inevitably
prove fatal to the native of a warm climate. *
* “ It is a common custom in that place to bargain with
the executioner, for mitigating the punishment; for there is
never a day but the king orders a nose, eye, ear, hand, foot,
or testicle, to be cut off from some body or oth er; and upon
these occasions the executioner gets money for doing his bu siness
handsomely, and with little pain; for, if the criminal
does not come up to his price, and pay him in ready money